The Titanic and the Titan.....
The moment the Titan submersible imploded on its trip into the deep Atlantic to visit that other vessel sunk by arrogance and pride is the great existential moment of our 21st Century…so far. The titanic was considered unsinkable. She became a metaphor for the sin of the technological arrogance of the early 20th Century. Over 100 years later, the Titan implodes about 1000 feet from wreckage of the Titanic killing all five men aboard. This makes the Titan a metaphor for 21st Century human pride that we can do what we want. After all, we have walked on the moon.
When I first heard the news that all communication had been lost with the mother ship, my imagination ran wild with the existential angst of these men lost in a tin can on the bottom of the ocean. What were they thinking? What were they feeling? The truth is, nothing. They were already dead. The fact that communication and location had been lost in the same moment should have been a clue. The craft had imploded under the intense pressure of the deep ocean. I found that news a relief. At extreme pressure and depth, the Titan would have been crushed in an instant. We will never know for sure how it played out. One school of engineers say it would have happened without warning. Other engineers with the same evidence say they might have had a 60 second warning that the skin of the sub was about to fail. First, the sensors that there was a problem, the lights go out, the rapid fall in the dark probably with vibrations. Then "Bam" it's over. A moment of pure terror for the 21st Century and a warning. We are not invincible. Icebergs and oceans can take us out. (It wasn't even a very big iceberg.)
Our beloved planet is giving us plenty of warnings: hurricanes, heat waves, blizzards, plagues, earthquakes, floods, droughts. Mother Earth is trying to tell us something.
