personal tolerance
lessons from this week
Isaac Newton was perhaps the greatest mathematician and theorist although I realise it may well have been Albert Einstein; that is a judgment well over my head. Each and both contributed so much to our knowledge. Newton’s Principia expounded on his laws of motion and so much else as Natural Philosophy.
I view Newton’s Second Law of Motion as so applicable to life. That Law says ‘When a body is acted upon by a force, the time rate of change of its momentum equals the force.’ In other words, for every action, there will be an equal reaction. (Whether it pushes you over is the good or bad part.) But, that’s just my simple thinking that helps me remember actions matter.
Actions create consequences. Some are phenomenally good. Others are catastrophically bad. Actions include choices we make.
This reverberates as the accusations mount regarding the submersible found on the ocean floor, probably pulverising five men who were aboard. It was a strange design, uncomfortable, ‘pathbreaking’ as it desceded thousands of feet to the remnants of the Titanic where it has rested for 111 years.
The stories being told indicate OceanGate’s owner, Stockton Rush, pushed the limits on the safety of an on-going experimental field regardless of other people’s doubts and the depths of the sea where he sought to run the tourist venture. Now that the disaster occurred, the number of people who were incredulous the entire enterprise persisted after one question arose after another is a bit shocking. But, the intrepid travellers launched Sunday on what was advertised as a pretty straightforward outing on Father’s Day 2023.
Yet…this was an experimental vehicle. There was no inspection regime or any organisation to accredit or evaluate the company’s product they had climbed aboard. This cost thousands of dollars per person. The submersible locked them in, according to reports, with no mechanism allowing them to open from the inside nor was there any mechanism to hoist the submersible should an emergency rescue become necessary. Seems a bit hard to fathom.
Three of the other four (apparently not the 19 year old son of a businessman who some reports say was decidedly unhappy about embarking but sought to satisfy his father) individuals on Sunday’s trip each made a decision to trust Rush’s optimism and experience. The trips had been occurring successfully for several years so this was billed as safe. Plus, it was definitely a thrill appealing to individuals who had lots of successes behind them in life. How many folks get to see the Titanic miles below the surface of the ocean? Certainly this was not a common accomplishment everyone has at the next trip to the Hampton’s, was it?
I cannot imagine they did not sign forms that they understood the risks. Did they?
I am not sure they understood the ocean’s power to crush objects at that depth. Did they?
I am not sure they had ever suffered great failures in their lives. Had they?
In fact, part of the decision to go was the personal risk tolerance each of the five travellers had. We don’t talk about risk in many situations. Yet we are always, constantly reassessing risks without even realising it.
We laud guts, chutzpah, ambition, drive, and the forward leaners who lead us into new ideas and new worlds. Some people do consider how the decision will affect others but most of our decisions happen so quickly that we don’t apply that judgment because don’t have the time.
Yet we forget that each decision always has the potential to go awry. We simply view the risk as low enough or our tolerance high enough to justify the call we make.
Some folks thrive on this while others shy away. There is nothing wrong with either choice but they are based on human calculations occurring at the speed of the human brain over and over and over throughout our afternoons, much less our entire lives.
The decisions are personal but they have effects on others. Governments around the world spent millions of dollars on rescue efforts, for example, yet we have some evidence the Navy heard the implosion of the submersible within two hours of its launch on Sunday. The five individuals left families, businesses lost their leaders, scientists gathered data on another human-made mechanism trying to master the forces of nature, in this case incredible pressure below the ocean’s surface. I hope it doesn’t traumatise youngster hearing about it from studying oceans in the future for fear it could happen to them.
Every choice we make involves a risk and every one creates some other consequence just as any action described by Newton’s Second Law. It’s worth thinking about that once is a while. It’s easy to blame others but we make most of the decisions for our lives. FIN
Ben Ashton, ‘Student, 19, killed on Titanic sub was ‘terrified’ about ‘Father’s Day’ Trip’, 23 June 2023, retrieved at https://metro.co.uk/2023/06/23/titanic-sub-student-19-killed-was-terrified-about-going-on-trip-19001353/
Jenny Gross, ‘Submersible Expert Raised Safety Concerns After 2019 Trip on Titan’, NewYorkTimes.com, 23 June 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/titan-safety-warnings-titanic.html