Why Titanic Mania Lives

Why are people (such as myself) still obsessing about the wreck of this “unsinkable ship” more than 111 years after it slipped into the bottom of the North Atlantic ocean?

The answer is really quite simple: why are YOU reading this article?

THAT is why.

If you can’t ignore it, it must hold some interest for you too. If you think it immature or yokelish to indulge in this global dialog, fine—go back to playing your video game or contemplating your own navel, or whatever it is that consumes your better intellectual preference.

All this condescension about not wanting to have anything to do with its discussion are just a Freudian projection of one’s opposite subconscious desire.

Sometimes tragedy is the epitome of the human experience. We are mortal. We are perishable. What Achilles said to Briseis in “Troy” (Warner Bros. Pictures’ 2004 filimization of Homer’s “Iliad”) rings true for all time.

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we are mortal. Because any moment could be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

The century-old saga of the Titanic grips me, and I speak for no one else, because it capsulizes the fragility of my own human existence. That unsinkable ship represents our best technological attempt at immortality gone crashing down upon our simplest recklessness and oversight.

All my life, as anyone else’s I suppose, is an endeavor to prolong its tenure and promote its quality. We all want “unsinkable” lives. And yet, we all will meet our end because of a tiny negligence, some chronic defiance of some risks that we were continually alerted about.

As proud as we can be for how long we have treaded water successfully in the middle of life’s ocean, as shocked as we will be how quickly we are just as capable of sinking.

This is what enables me to look past all the cynicism about the foolhardiness of the Titan’s designers, the greed of its owner for monetizing the lure of the Titanic and the entitlement of its billionaire passengers seeking to buy a bit of mortal experience the rest of us cannot afford. Trust me, that is pure jealous bitterness speaking.

There is nothing in common at all between the 1,500 people who died when Titanic sank and the five fools who died when Titan imploded.

The 1,500 Titanic passengers were told they were getting aboard a ship that could never sink—and they believed it.

The five who let themselves be sealed in a pressure casket were told they were getting into a bubble that can burst anytime and kill them—and they DIDN’T believe it.

So I commemorate the death of the Titanic passengers because I emphatize with their victimhood.

But I celebrate the hesitant bravery of the Titan five because they suffered for me what they showed I should never let myself suffer even if given the chance.

I do not agree that their death was in vain, or that their abbreviated lives were an arbitrary waste. For good or for bad, their names will now be remembered even more starkly than any other victims of the Titanic—whereas yours and mine will be quickly forgotten. We will not be written about in history. History will never forget them.

They died sooner than we will, perhaps even sooner than they themselves should have. But in the time scale of eternity, those who died earlier than us and have crossed into the Great Beyond would not have lived a shorter existence than the rest of us left behind and still struggling.*