Gracefully, finally, without farewells
Posted on 18 January 2012
You may have heard this new item already.
A century ago this spring, as the Titanic entered its death throes and all its lifeboats had been launched, Capt. Edward Smith told his crew: “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Now it’s every man for himself.” One witness recalled seeing him, probably washed overboard, clutching a child in the water as the Titanic disappeared. A member of the crew always believed it was Captain Smith’s voice he heard from the water after the Titanic was gone, urging him and others on: “Good boys! Good lads!”
“Every man for himself” is a phrase associated with the deadly Costa Concordia disaster, but not as a last-minute expedient. It appears to have been the natural order of things. In the words of one newspaper account, “An Australian mother and her young daughter have described being pushed aside by hysterical men as they tried to board lifeboats.” If the men of the Titanic had lived to read such a thing, they would have recoiled in shame. The Titanic’s crew surely would have thought the hysterics deserved to be shot on sight — and would have volunteered to perform the service.
Women and children were given priority in theory, but not necessarily in practice. The Australian mother said of the scene, “We just couldn’t believe it — especially the men, they were worse than the women.” Another woman passenger agreed, “There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats.” Yet another, a grandmother, complained, “I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls.”
Guys aboard the Costa Concordia apparently made sure the age of chivalry was good and dead by pushing it over and trampling on it in their heedless rush for the exits. The grounded cruise ship has its heroes, of course, just as the Titanic had its cowards. But the discipline of the Titanic’s crew and the self-enforced chivalric ethic that prevailed among its men largely trumped the natural urge toward panicked self-preservation.
Women and children went first, and once the urgency of the situation became clear, breaches weren’t tolerated. The crew fired warning shots to keep men from rushing the lifeboats. In an instance Daniel Allen Butler recounts in his book, “Unsinkable,” a male passenger trying to make it on one lifeboat was rebuffed and then beaten for his offense.
The survivor statistics tell the tale. More women from third class — deep in the bowels of the ship, where it was hard to escape and instructions were vague or nonexistent — survived than men from first class. Almost all of the women from first class (97 percent) and second class (84 percent) made it. As Butler notes, the men from first class who were lost stayed behind voluntarily, true to their Edwardian ideals.
They can look faintly ridiculous from our vantage point. Benjamin Guggenheim changed into his evening clothes that night: “We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Whom would you rather have around your wife or daughter, though, when there is only one slot left on the lifeboat?
My comment: A while back I wrote a short article on the appeal of High Fantasy versus Sword and Sorcery, where I opined that no one has a real taste for High Fantasy who does not think the modern age has lost something precious.
This obvious (bordering on tautological) observation generated an amount of irritation, even wrath, in certain persons I respect, but, alas, to this hour my bewildered wit cannot deduce the source of the outrage.
Perhaps I was seen as unpatriotic to the New Millennium. But it is a false and shallow patriotism which holds an American cannot say “no one has a real taste for the beauty of the kimono who has no love for Japan” America may be the most splendid nation on Earth, but we did not invent the kimono. There is no perfection short of Heaven, and no matter what the virtues of the modern age, we have our vices. Some mankind has always had, some are peculiar, or peculiarly visible, in us.
But I do not see how anyone, any honest soul, can read this account and not feel, if only for a moment, that sense of loss and nostalgia which is the heart of High Fantasy. We have lost our men.
——–
Apropos of this, allow to quote from CS Lewis:
A Confession, by C. S. Lewis
I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening–any evening–would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able.
To me each evening looked far more
Like the departure from a silent, yet a crowded, shore
Of a ship whose freight was everything, leaving behind
Gracefully, finally, without farewells, marooned mankind.
Red dawn behind a hedgerow in the east
Never, for me, resembled in the least
A chilblain on a cocktail-shaker’s nose;
Waterfalls don’t remind me of torn underclothes,
Nor glaciers of tin-cans. I’ve never known
The moon look like a hump-backed crone–
Rather, a prodigy, even now
Not naturalized, a riddle glaring from the Cyclops’ brow
Of the cold world, reminding me on what a place
I crawl and cling, a planet with no bulwarks, out in space.
Never the white sun of the wintriest day
Struck me as un crachat d’estaminet.
I’m like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom
A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom
Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,
Compelled to live on stock responses,
Making the poor best that I can
Of dull things…peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran
Silver weirs, new-cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,
The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem.
Feminists and the women who abet them have no right to complain. Equality means every man for himself, now and always. After all, we’re equals, right? They’ve taken away whatever ground there was for “women and children first” to stand on. As much as I am disgusted by the hysterical men, I am just as disgusted by the idiot women who act surprised that this happened. Welcome to your world.
Yeah, we’ve lost our men. We lost them with a whimper.
Similar to my thought.
Only I don’t think we’ve lost our men, but beaten them down, insulted them, and shamed them until there are none to be found when the shite hits the fan.
I think if you had had an example as precise, poignant and concrete as this one in the original post it would have served to line- drive your point home as probably nothing else could have. I understood your point in your original post, but this example concretized it in a way that nothing in the original could have. It’s almost like the lab test of East/West Germany – two isolated examples that illuminate the abstraction.
And I agree. What horrendous behavior. I wonder if some of these men were shoving their own wives, mothers, and daughters out of the way.
This is one reason why I find it easier to be a Christian than an Objectivist.
While Ayn Rand herself dismissed feminism as unromantic (and I think correctly so) nevertheless the basic principles of ethical egoism have an insurmountable difficulty in explaining the proper morality in a situation like this — a lifeboat situation.
Her reply (I don’t recall which essay I read this) to questions about such lifeboat situations was that they were rare, and could not be used to erect a moral code applicable to all of life. This is an inadequate response, because irrelevant. Even if rare, they still occur; even if not the basis for the rest of life, one’s moral code still must give clear and correct direction in these cases when they arise.
With some mental effort, one can perhaps come up with an explanation to justify self-sacrifice of one’s own life for the life of the daughter of a perfect stranger, but in the Christian worldview, the mere fact that one does not own one’s own life, and one must answer for how one lived and died at the Last Judgment, makes the matter clear and concrete in a way that abstract reasoning cannot.
Would have replied sooner, but lost power for two days.
First, the essay you are referring to is The Ethics of Emergencies from The Virtue of Selfishness. Those were truisms within her argument, but they were not her main point. Having stated these truisms, she then proceeds to answer the question the proper way (we don’t have to agree on her answers here, but I am speaking of approach) meaning with a context, a defined code of ethics, a nature of man, and a standard of value. I note that a Christian would have the same arsenal. But a lifeboat theorist would not, he just jumps in on assumptions he knows not what.
Some of the topics covered in this essay: altruism vs. value, the altruist and the brute as two sides of the same coin, value hierarchy, sacrifice and integrity, strangers and friends, life and good will, metaphysics of the lifeboat and the metaphysics of normalcy, moral purpose of life and exceptions.
What you offered was an unessential sound bite.
What about the Titanic? I am going to borrow your worldview argument:
How one lived? Determined how? That they must answer in another life is clear, but that leaves the code way open. They are judged by some standard are they not? The standards by which a Christian is to live, the way he is to conduct his life is by abstract reasoning, correct?
It is not by Christ’s example alone, although that is the fountainhead of it, the story of Christ inspires it.
I don’t really need abstract reasoning in such a situation either.
But let’s replace those doomed Christians (we can safely assume most were) of the fated Titanic, and replace them with Hank Rearden and Galt, and Francisco (and a boat of generally like-minded individuals). It is a bromide – what would Jesus do? Myth informs in ways that abstract reasoning cannot. Whether one believes the stories to be literal or not, they teach by showing us “this is important” “this is the proper way to live” “this is right, that is wrong”. Rand recognized the power of Judeo-Christian stories, it was the whole reason she gave her philosophy in novel form.
Do you see these men acting like the baboons on the Concordia? James Taggert, Robert Stadler, Mooch, yes, I can see them screaming in high pitched sissy screams as they frantically throw 3 year old girls in cute little dresses over-board to steal their seats. And I can see Francisco’s expert marksmanship blowing off one of these bastard’s heads in the mayhem. I can see them grouping together and putting every wit they could into devising a way to save the ship, getting everyone through some engineered pulley system to one of the icebergs. Ragnar Danneskjöld, having taken over security, would order the strict enforcement of women and children first (except for those women that wish to help) and then put the ablest man in charge of commandeering every able bodied man to the effort of saving the ship or whatever plan the other three had thought up. Concordia Taggerts are simply shot.
Do you see these men acting like the baboons on the Concordia? Well I don’t see myself doing it either, neither would I go down without a fight.
I note that sacrifice didn’t even come up in this scenario. We Objectivist don’t like sacrificing in either direction.
They say that how you approach death is at least as important as how you approach life. I think the way you approach life is also the way you approach death. I may not have to answer in another life (according to my beliefs) but I have to answer to my self up to the closing of the eyes and the cessation of my breath.
I honestly don’t there is much difference in the way an honorable Objectivist and an honorable Christian would act in the lifeboat situation, but the Objectivist’s sense of honor cannot logically be derived, nor is it compatible with, ethical egoism, since that egoism postulates as an axiom that one’s own life is the source of value and it is not to be sacrificed. The Christian sense of honor demands self sacrifice in the lifeboat situation clearly, both as the example of Christ Himself, and as endless iterations of Catholic and Orthodox and Protestant teaching for centuries upon centuries have shown. When you say “by what code?” I need only point to Christendom, the reigning code of civilization around the Mediterranean from circa AD 300 to circa AD 1930, where all civilized nations were Christian and Christianity formed the standard by which civilization was judged.
Ayn Rand in her novels advocates self-sacrifice, under the rubric that John Galt, for example, places a higher value on the life of his lover than on his own, and Rand mislabels this selfishness. This contradicts her clearly enuciated moral principles, which she (unlike every other modern philosopher) is honest and clear enough to deduce through logical steps from clear first principles.
But a sense of honor and chivalry and admiration for masculine virtue and for heroism underpins her novels and forms the backbone of their emotional appeal. This is what she calls a stolen concept. She is using these unique Christian civilization characteristics — for chivalry, the idea of saving women and children at the expense of oneself, is not found outside Christendom.
I have both an abstract and noble reason for being self sacrificing, and a reason that ties into my self-interest: namely, I will face a judge of which none greater can be conceived on Doomsday. Ayn Rand basis her system on self-interest. Self-interest and self-sacrifice are mutually contradictory. She has an abstract and noble sentiment for portraying self sacrifice as noble, but cannot give a reason in her system for it.
Why would not John Galt get off a sinking ship before the moochers and looters who sank the ship? That is exactly what he does to the sinking ship of state in the book. He lets Eddy Willers sit in the desert and die. Willers goes down with the ship. Galt sails away to Atlantis.
One day you will have to let me play as something other than Rand’s apologist. I could just as easily argue this without having to “go to scripture”. Although it does keep my premises clear. Eh, never mind.
If you want the mantle of self-sacrifice, you are welcome to it, I was not trying to wrest it from you. Honor is not the equivalent of self-sacrifice – it is adherence to that which is right. I notice you include using the term Objectivism and the generic term ethical egoism that subsumes many different theories. It is your use of the term axiom that makes me unclear about your usage.
First, it is not an axiom, Rand goes through quite a few preliminaries before reaching egoism, none of those preliminaries are themselves self-evident. It may appear to you to be an axiomatic postulate with no antecedents, it may be an axiomatic postulate within other variants of ethical egoism. Strictly in philosophical presentation Peikoff’s OPAR has almost two whole chapters on meta-ethics and the examination of value before the topic of egoism comes up, and that topic depends on every single prior point – in addition all the preceding rests on the entirety of metaphysics and epistemology. That is the opposite of an axiom.
Unless you mean axiom in such a general sense that it loses any real meaning. If we pop in at any point of a system and declare it a starting point and thus an axiom, that is so by your arbitrary declaration, but not a legitimate philosophical practice.
The banishment of force is not an axiom, just because you barge into politics without covering the prior 3 or 4 floors it rests on.
I quickly concede you have a more readied context and background than anything I have. 50 years (as a microscopic group of people lower on the respect scale than the Moonies and Hare Krishnas ) to 2000, 20 or so intellectuals to several thousand. Cultural saturation. Hardly a contest.
Galt’s action is not a self-sacrifice. It is self preservation. He clearly states that he does not care to live on their terms, and he would not care to see her long drawn out murder. Yes, his death would save her, possibly, and if she herself cared to continue on. But since he is not only the source of his values, but of his capacity as such to value, he would have no values to seek after her torture and death, and he does not wish to live without values. This he clearly states.
Are you saying that Rand’s depiction of heroism is concept stealing on her part, because outside of Christian ideals stands the brute? She specifically used such things to cast her arguments under old lights. For instance, a case could be made, and presented to give a seat to a little girl as a rational thing for an egoist to do. There are three courses of action in this instance. Give the girl the seat and wait to die (the Christian thing), throw her overboard and take her seat (the brute thing) give her the seat and find another way (I venture that as the Objectivist way, although I doubt an Objectivist man properly should be sitting on his ass waiting for others to “somehow” save him, that is a betrayal of his only duty.).
The soul does exist (which is what Galt was preserving), although I don’t believe eternally. The price to pay for taking that little girl’s seat is payable now, in this life, and is cumulative. This works just the same in the opposite direction. Do you want to venture that a callousness such as to doom a little girl to death to save your own seat is not paid in this world? No matter what psychological defenses a whore may put up to do what she does, her soul is infected each and every day by the choices she makes and the actions she commits. It changes who you are. It affects your ability to function, it is a danger to your mind, it is a danger to your esteem, to your character, to your view of reality, it is all a danger to your ability to live.
Now any man can panic, the Objectivist can commit a terrible thing under such a duress, give in to cowardice. A Christian is no less protected.
But to touch on the concept stealing. What do you think the story of Rearden is? It is a redemption story, plain and simple. Who is his angel? Francisco. Point in fact I am rereading Quo Vadis (if you have not read it, shame on you three times) right now because I am pretty certain Rand got some of Rearden’s story from that. None of this is any mystery, even Galt lays out for torture Christ-like.
Hold it, do they act differently or don’t they? Are you changing your mind at the end of the post, or what? Were there looters and moochers on the Titanic?
Please, let’s not forget I know this book as well or better than any Christian knows their Bible. There was no way to save the sinking ship of the state, that was made abundantly clear. You have to disagree with the entire notion of the book’s premise by this light. Galt’s only course of action, according to this line, was to shut up and sacrifice for the good of the state. He could sacrifice himself piecemeal to the mothers and daughters of the country, or whatever other victim class the government wanted to create or promote, through controls and economic manipulation, as they ate him, and then the one after him all the while the real burden being put a little farther ahead until the check comes back Account Overdrawn to some future, as yet unborn progeny – ah – hold on! that is what we are doing right this moment in reality.
Damn, that’s a good little book!
Willers didn’t want to start over. He specifically tells Dagny this in the office before he goes to the desert. This charge against Galt is ridiculous. Not only does he not know what is going on with Willers, but Willers expects to return to New York. It is only after he sees the horse wagon caravan that he loses it. It is not determined that Willers dies, it is left open.
“One day you will have to let me play as something other than Rand’s apologist.”
No one else who is familiar with her comes by to talk to me. You don’t want me to spend my time arguing with Mecha-Shakespeare-man, do you? He doesn’t know an axiom from a hole in the ground.
But, to be sure, we have many other common areas of interest, you and I.
Sure, but the original post only said that fans of High Fantasy are nostalgic for the things the modern world has lost.
As far as I know, each fan might have a different thing on his list of the losses: one might regret the rise of smoggy factories; another the loss of small-town intimacy; a third the dreary secularism of the age; a fourth might miss the lack of chivalry; a fifth might wish she had lived in the days of horses rather than honking automobiles; a sixth might wonder what life was like when maps had edges beyond which was the unknown; a seventh might regret the loss of the pomp of monarchy, or the days when kings indeed took the sword in hand and stood on the battlefield with their men; an eighth might appreciate the care with which craftsmen made beautiful things; an ninth might bemoan the loss of the frontier, or the lack of churchbell music, or the slattern ugliness of modern dress; a tenth might simply think cloaks look nicer than overcoats; an eleventh might be enamored with the glamor of swordplay, or the charm of hearing a harpist in the hall singing the ancient lays of heroes of yore rather than rock&shout music “Yeah, yeah, yeah” over a tinny transistor radio.
And the list goes on. Of these things, some might admire some things about the past and detest others. Some of the things on this list really were better in the old days, and some only are romantic nostalgia. But that is the appeal.
I assumed you meant something more profound than most of the stuff on that list. I mean, the loss of church bell music? I’m sure there is something on iTunes!
More evidence that outdated sexual morality had a primary effect of female protection. Seems to me feminists who complain about Victorian prudery forget Victoria was a queen. (Yes, I know the Titanic was Edwardian.)
(proceeds across the grass, gently puts down soap box, and proceeds to step upon it…)
The heart of chivalry — at least according to my inexpert understanding — is the chaining of the male ego to the classic higher purposes: service to women and family, service to God and country, and service to one’s fellow men, be they high or low. Loosed to its own ends, the male ego is a beast. Selfish and self-serving. I cannot blame feminists for what men have become. A foolish woman may insult a chivalrous man, but a chivalrous man need not repay the woman’s foolishness by discarding himself. No, I think the post-modern era has simply made it publicly acceptable for men to be their natural selves.
And who is the natural man? If the host will permit me to quote from the scripture of my faith, though it is not the scripture of his. I believe he will find this passage resonant:
The natural man is a creature of lusts, and of self-preservation, above all else. Since he has abandoned all notion of submission before the Lord — because the natural man has destroyed God, and elevated his own intellect to replace Him — there is of course no submission before higher duties. The natural man is not beholden. In fact, the natural man considers it obscene to put anyone or anything before himself. Especially if it might mean discomfort, pain, or death. Lacking a belief in higher purposes or life eternal, he sees only what’s in front of him, and grasps at it with greasy, smelly, fat fingers.
“Out of my way,” he cries, rushing for the life boat. “I matter more than you do!”
Alas, I fear the hammer of judgment may fall hardest on those who mock the hammer’s very existence.
(steps off soap box, calmly retrieves it from the lawn, walks slowly away….)
I hope you do not walk away too quickly to allow me to shake your hand. Well said, sir. Well said.
Your handshake is gratefully returned. This blog is like a cool, clear fountain in the wilderness of the speculative and fantastic arts. I see few who dare to speak as you have spoken, and you usually do it so well, and with such a broad command of language and of subject matter, I wish to doff my hat. Thank you, sir. Please continue. And much obliged.
I blush with humble pride.Your servant, sir
What is it about this blog that attracts terrific Mormons?
Or maybe the percentage of terrific Mormons to normal Mormons is naturally high, so if only a normal amount of Mormons shows up, we get a disproportionate number of terrif ones?
Just a theory.
There are things like this that show us that we have not lost all of our men.
Salt Lake City, I notice. GO MORMONS! The people from the secular world would have stood around and watched the victims burn in the flames or sink in the icy water.
Here are two different recent ones from CA. They are much less likely to be LDS than people in Logan, Utah.
http://www.10news.com/news/30119827/detail.html
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=8499219
I must say I agree not only with the thesis that feminism has contributed to this mess, but also that the result of widespread faithlessness, even amongst many of the nominal Christians and adherents of other faiths, has caused man to revert. Mr Torgerson is right, but he is wrong to exclude the contributory factors of feminism.
Because feminism, or at least sexual equality, is regarded as essentially the only moral position to hold, it is taught in schools and in the media. It’s even taught from pulpits. It’s hard just to say what ought to be a most obvious fact: That men are generally stronger than women. You say that, and someone will challenge you and find counter-examples aplenty, because (in their attempt to show you’re an evil misogynist) they maliciously interpret it as all men are stronger than all women. So the notion that, as a man, you’re probably stronger than everyone else here in this ship going down—it’s just not there.
So it’s no surprise that men think they have equal rights to women, and even to children and the elderly. Why shouldn’t they?
And thus, they revert.
The solution is obvious: make men into Christians, and then teach them properly. Sure, many of them will be bad Christians: But if the idea’s there, if it can be publicly professed, then the old norm can be renewed.
James Lileks makes a comparison (perhaps veiled) between the ship and the decline of once great European nations in general.
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/12/0112/011812.html
I don’t think it’s a case of losing our Men. Men will not die for nothing. They will die for their community. That can be his comrades (The Stoic, Military Unit community) or his family and/or the community that is made up of his family and their peers (The community made by Marriage). In Europe, the first has been repressed with all the power of the State in a attempt (A stupid one, I believe) to stop another World War. Abortion and No Fault Divorce have ended the second one.
What of US Airways Flight 1549? There the captain acted heroically, the crew did their jobs, the passengers were orderly, and women and children were evacuated first.
Heroic! I swelled with vicarious pride that day just as I shake my head with vicarious shame this day.
Capt. Sully was old school…
Also, there was a news story I saw a couple of years back where a man, wielding a sword, had kicked a door in because he thought a woman was being raped in a neighboring apartment. Turns out it was just a guy with a porno turned up too loud.
“As Butler notes, the men from first class who were lost stayed behind voluntarily, true to their Edwardian ideals.”
There is nothing more important than this.
In my own experience, I have seen men face death heroically and hide from it cowardly. In a life threatening situation, the emotional force is generally such that the intellect is stunned. Seeing a man die strips away all pretenses. There is no time for reasoning.
A man will act from habit, training, and discipline.
He will act from fear.
He will fail to act at all.
The first is a virtue, the second cowardice, and the last common.
And this is what CS Lewis meant in the Abolition of Man about “men without chests”. The emotional force must be tamed and trained to act rightly.
Unfortunately, nowadays we seem to be committed to keeping the emotional force as unrestrained as possible.
Two examples:
In World War II, the Americans spent far more energy at rescuing pilots or sailors who would otherwise be lost at sea than the Japanese. In one Japanese account, they watched a huge American flying boat land about a half-mile offshore to pick up a pilot in a rubber raft. The Japanese fired with their 25mm gun trying to destroy the flying boat. They got a few hits, but ultimately the boat was able to take off after rescuing their man. The writer (again I emphasize he was Japanese) marveled at the rash stupidity and carelessness of the Americans to risk a giant aircraft and 8 crewmen in order to save one man. But he also said at the end of his letter, “I wish our navy would do the same.”
At the Marianas, we launched our last wave of aircraft at extreme range, and near the end of the day. As a result, when our planes were returning to their carriers, they were low on fuel and night had fallen. Standard doctrine was to keep landing lights off at night, because the Japanese were expert night flyers, and had some huge land airbases not far away. To preserve the fleet, therefore, lights-out was the rule. Spruance and Mitschner ordered the fleet to turn on ALL their lights in a blaze of glory, to ensure that as many lost pilots could return as possible. They put the entire fleet at risk in order to save a few hundred men. It paid off, but even if they had been punished by a Japanese attack, I believe they would have done the right thing. I imagine that every single carrier pilot in the fleet would walk through fire for Spruance after such a decision.
We consistently engaged in daring rescue operations, putting other ships, planes, and men at risk. The result was not only that we fought the more Honorable war (ironic, considering the japanese obsession with same), but our men had an entirely different attitude towards combat. We knew that someone was trying to help us. The Japanese, by contrast, frequently told their men that they were on their own. Or they would outright lie about upcoming reinforcements.
At Stalingrad, the Germans stopped giving rations to their own wounded, because it was the “logical” act in order to resist longer. Also at Stalingrad, Stalin refused to evacuate the civilian population because he thought it would encourage the soldiers to fight harder. (Nonetheless I regard the Russians as the heroes of the conflict – just not Stalin.) Compare the Christian nation (USA) to the heathen (Japan & Germany) or atheist (Germany & Russia) ones. As we become more atheist and heathen, I believe it is logical that we will also see a corresponding drop in our morals.