A Little Bit About Me:
Phillips Exeter Academy, 1976
Harvard University, BA, 1980
Antioch
University, MA, 1995
I am an analyst and Marriage, Family and Child Counselor in Sierra
Madre, California. I have been interested in the Titanic since I was a
little kid in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1960s, first from the movie of A
Night to Remember, and later from the book. Why? Because the story works on
so many levels:
- as a dissection of Western society's class systems
- as a lesson on over-confidence and complacency, over-reliance on science and engineering
- as a psychological laboratory to study human behavior under stress
- as a romance, and a Gothic horror story
- as a reminder of man's arrogance and stupidity
- for the mixture of cowardice and nobility
But my favorite story about the Titanic comes from the Wall
Street Journal, April 15, 1912, from the morning edition on the day she
sank. Before the news reached shore, rumors were running wild in New York City,
but nobody guessed that a catastrophe had occurred. In the absence of
authoritative news, the Wall Street Journal, like so many other newspapers,
assumed that man had assumed dominance over nature. This is hubris defined.
Nature and Human Thought
"Slowly but surely human thought is neutralizing the largely
incalculable forces of Nature. This is not the first lesson which will
generally be drawn from the accident to the Titanic.... The gravity of the damage to the Titanic is apparent; but the
important point is that she did not sink. Her watertight bulkheads really were
watertight.... she kept afloat after an experience which might well appall the
stoutest heart....
"Man is slowly but steadily bringing into order and usefulness the
devastating forces of Nature. Man is the weakest and most formidable creature
on the Earth. His physical means of protection and offense are trifling. But
his brain has within it the spirit of the divine, and he overcomes natural
obstacles by thought, which is incomparably the greatest force in the
Universe."
“Greatest force in the universe” or not, at the time he wrote this, the Wall Street Journal’s writer didn’t know that the Titanic had already been at the bottom of the sea for a good twelve hours. I would have liked to have seen his face later in the day when the truth finally arrived on shore.