Obviously the topic springs to my mind due to the tragedy of the Costa Concordia and the actions of the ship’s Captain Francesco Schettino. Regardless of what happened, whether he actually slipped and fell into a life boat, the tradition of boarding women and children first has come into the “public conscience” as a topic of debate. People site evolution and genetic ingraining to explain why the tradition exists, but it reads like hogwash as they simply make the statement and expect it to be self evident. I wish to present evidence that men are not hardwired to allow women to disembark from a sinking vessel first and as a result of this public debate may not in the future. The truth I wish to shine through however is that they must let women and children go first.
Women and children must not board lifeboats first because they are weak; they must board first because men are weak. Men who do not practice chivalry are not men at all, they are not even over grown boys, they are more like animals. They push and fight for an ever narrowing interest until it focuses squarely upon himself; this puts single men at even greater disadvantage.
The difference can be shown in the differences in survivors aboard the Lusitania and the Titanic. The Lusitania’s lifeboats, as the ship went down quickly, were filled exclusively with men and women who were young and fit. Whereas aboard the Titanic there were hours to “organize” according to age, gender, and class. When the knee jerks, actual Darwinian theory is tested, and the physically fittest survive.
Some decry the way the Titanic evacuations were handled, especially with regard to class as the third class was not even let on deck until it was too late. This illustrates what I am talking about. The life boats were limited and most had sailed and people want greater democratization touched with empathy. They have no right to expect this from nature; but they have every right to expect it.
Should the ingrained genetic argument be correct in and of itself the Lusitania’s lifeboats would have surely had almost exclusively women of fertile childbearing age and children. The hardwiring should have bucked harder in the shortened time frame not been left out altogether. The women who survived were of child bearing age but they were also fast and strong. That was the factor at play not the state of their uterus. They held their own, they merited their survival. This is the nature of nature.
If we are honest the real wonder is not that the lifeboats are not stacked with women like cordwood. The wonder is that there are any women at all in the lifeboats.
I believe my friend, Deacon Bob, would take the time to illustrate the point with this experience he had in Vietnam. He was sitting on the roadside with two Vietnamese who helped the Americans. When he saw a Vietnamese family walking by he wondered aloud why the husband walked ahead of the wife by a designated number of paces. One of the Vietnamese stated it had always been this way to which the other stated it had not always been this way; the wife walked ahead of the husband when the husband was afraid of landmines. I would like now to apologize to Deacon Bob for he tells the story with mastery and I just butchered it. The lesson can, I think, be gleaned even in my poor telling; chivalry is not natural.
One may get a grasp of what is natural by observing the documentary “Becoming Chaz”. In which Chaz Bono and others who are going through hormone therapy are interviewed and observed. The stated results are aggressive behavior, especially sexual appetite which is greatly increased. Chaz’s girlfriend, Jennifer Elia, stated the change was such that Bono went from being the nicest person she had ever met to someone she did not even like. Studies have shown that by exposing women to even small doses of testosterone they become less empathetic. I do not wish to insinuate that this state is permanent and without hope of adapting. I simply wish to explain that male hormones are often described as being nothing nice. A man’s testosterone levels naturally greatly decrease just before the birth of his child and never reach the same levels as when he was single as if readying him to become a father and nurturing husband; this further illustrates how the single man is at a disadvantage.
I believe this may explain a lot about men throughout history and through anthropologies. With this fabulous excuse of male hormones and the evidence of men in and through histories and in anthropologies why is it still my contention that men should be chivalrous to the point of death aboard an ocean liner?
“Hold it the greatest sin to prefer existence to honor and for the sake of life lose the reasons for living.” Juvenal, Satires.
Is that not what this is about? It is indeed, but to grasp the statement’s meaning one cannot lose touch with the reasons for living. Our society as it becomes perverse and degraded by materialism, our world views become sociopathic. Secular Humanism seems too kind for the bile produced as one needs to be human in order to be a secular humanist.
Because a man without honor is worse than an animal; he is a cancer. He is an aggressive cancer which only seeks to suck the life from as much of humanity as he is exposed to. He has an insatiable appetite and no matter the seeming focus of his attention what he actually destroys is life.
He will do it in the name of progress. He will say women should have set up their own boundaries. He will do as one woman who survived the Costa Concordia described and muscle their way to the life boats, “Men first and women and children are on their own.”
“I will not serve!” this is the sin of cancer and the quote of Satan moments before he fell from heaven. “I will not serve!” this is the antithesis to honor and the cause of a man’s ruin. “I will not serve!” is the only phrase the walking dead speak. The phrase is rearranged and elaborated upon until it is a language of death and the language of our culture.
33” Whosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” (Luke 17:33)Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. We will all die. We can never force enough experience into these small years to overcome some experiences. Some experiences fill us and some hollow us out. To sacrifice one’s life so another can go on, especially when this action is joined to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, will fill those moments with an infinite meaning. The alternative is to fill an infinite number of minutes with an eternal deficit, to dig a hole that can always be dug deeper. One may act hollow and morbid, one may try to fill the hollowness with vice, and one will create more and more experiences which are harder and harder to overcome. Survival, even of the fittest, is no guarantee of a fairy tale ending. The answer is to act with honor and respect life enough to defend it until the very end of your own.
In the movie The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman) Antonius Block, played by Max von Sydow, is in the confessional confessing to Death, played by Bengt Ekerot.
“I want knowledge. Not faith or conjecture but knowledge. I want God to reach out His hand. Show His face, speak to me, but He is silent. I cry to Him in the darkness, but sometimes it feels as no one is there.”
“Perhaps no one is there.”
“Then life is just senseless horror. No man can live facing death knowing that everything is nothingness.”
“Most people give no thought to death or nothingness.”
“One day they will stand at the far edge of life peering into the darkness.”
“Ah, that day, I understand what you mean.”
“We carve an idol out of our fear and call it God.”
“You’re upset.”
“Death visited me this morning. We’re playing chess together. This reprieve will allow me to attend to an urgent matter.”
“What sort of matter?”
“My whole life has been nothing but futile wandering and pursuits, a great deal of talk without meaning. It’s all been in vain. I say this without bitterness or self-reproach, knowing that most men’s lives are the same. But I want to use my reprieve for one meaningful act.”
Tomorrow, January the 25th, is the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul. Let us mark a conversion in our hearts by allowing one meaningful act and by the time we should need to abandon ship our hearts will lead us to do what is right. I will see you at the bottom of the sea!
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