I’m aware that three of the passengers in that stricken submersible Ocean Gate Titan are billionaires. I see no point in naming them because I doubt that you or I know any of them.
Missing for five days now, optimism is dwindling that they could still be found and rescued in time before they run out of breathing oxygen.
But instead of hope, some choose to traffic in fear and cynicism. Because 3 of these Titan passengers are “obscenely rich tourists” who paid as much as $250,000 for a slot in the 5-man dive mission, some suggest that perishing in this very risky voyage is only fitting comeuppance for these rich people who have lived in luxury and privilege most of their lives.
When ever have we become that snobbish and class struggle-conscious that we now find comfort in inwardly wishing that rich people die—because their wealth is offensive to our lack of it?
One blogger even quoted the adage that “a fool and his money are easily parted” which, if you think about it, is really the foolish thing to say.
He doesn’t get it.
ALL of us, wise and foolish alike, and our money however much or little of it we have, will ultimately be parted. All of us. Death is the ultimate equalizer no one can escape.
But saying let those billionaires perish in their ostentatious privilege to vindicate those that can only envy them are words cast in a template you won’t really like if applied to other criteria.
How about letting the handsome and the beautiful die to comfort the rest of the uglier ones? Or letting the taller ones die as consolation to the midgets and hobbits among us?
Or—why not?—let the intellectuals die to promote the gene pool of the dumb and the dumberer. Wealth is not the only criteria of unevenness, which is why it is wrong to celebrate or counter-exploit unevenness in any respect.
Even the grim circumstances facing the survivors (perhaps soon to be fatalities, God forbid) in this developing drama are not unique: drowning 13,000 feet deep in the ocean in a sub.
Yet, if you get knocked over unconscious you can drown in water only 5 inches deep in a tub.
Ironically, if rescuers fail to locate the Titan minisub, even if it were just bobbing on the surface of the ocean somewhere, the 5-man crew can still die in plain sight of a glorious and beautiful sky visible through their reinforced glass porthole.
This is because the Titan was designed to be sealed from outside by guys driving 17 special bolts into the bulkhead with impact wrenches. There’s no way for the crew to open the hatch from inside.
An international flotilla of search and rescue assets are now assembled at the accident vicinity. Many of them have submersibles of their own with the capability to dive even deeper than the Titanic’s wreck, and lift out of the water an object even several times heavier than the Titan submersible.
All that needs to still be hoped for now is that these rescue vessels just LOCATE the stricken sub. What is there to lose in holding out hope just a little bit more?
I can’t believe, even if they’re right, that some skeptics won’t even go out on a potentially embarrassing limb to pray and ask God for a miracle.
I believe that these five men will be rescued. And if I end up wrong, it was still worth believing what others missed the golden opportunity to believe when all odds pointed to the rarity of those who were willing to.*
About the Author
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”
About Images: Some of the images used in the articles are from the posts in Atty. Joel Rodriguez Dizon’s Facebook account, and/or Facebook groups and pages he manages or/and member of.