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Titanic and the Lusitania disasters reveal difference in survival instincts
Mark Henderson, The Times
Almost 100 years after the Titanic and the Lusitania sank in the North Atlantic, the contrasting fates of their passengers have helped to explain how altruism can take over from the selfish instinct to save oneself.
A scientific comparison of the two maritime disasters, which together claimed more than 2,700 lives just three years apart, has suggested that self-preservation can be trumped by social pressure to stand back while others are rescued, but only when people have sufficient time to think.
When the Titanic hit an iceberg four days into her maiden voyage to New York, on April 14, 1912, the maritime maxim of “women and children first” was famously obeyed. Young men aged between 16 and 35 were the least likely to be among the 706 survivors, while women and children were the most likely to be saved.
A different story played out, however, when the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Ireland on May 7, 1915. Then, the majority of the survivors were young men and women — fit people in their prime who could fight their way on to the lifeboats.
…The findings shed important light on the contest between survival instincts and social conventions, according to the research team, led by Bruno Frey, of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
The swiftness with which the Lusitania sank meant that individuals’ survival instincts kicked in quickly, favouring those who were fittest and best able to escape to the lifeboats before they filled up, the team said.
As the Titanic sank more slowly, there was time to put pressure on men and lower-class passengers to give way to women, children and the upper classes, and even the opportunity for the crew to enforce this physically. Details of the research are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
(2 March 2010)
The orginal article is behind a paywall. -KS
Finding a cure for the insidious cancers of “hope” and “faith”
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
…So now we come down to the crux of the issue: What is the definition of “hope”? For an answer to this question, I’m reminded of James Howard Kunstler’s incessant vitriol about hope. After he has thoroughly bashed the notion of hope, he usually moderates a bit and defines it as something that comes from within the person, rather than from the exterior. Similarly, in Jensen’s interview of Osheroff, the latter notes the capacity of humans to be decent, kind, and compassionate. I’ve noted this as well in my 2009 review of Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster in which the author emphasizes that in crisis situations, humans more often tend to cooperate rather than resort to violent or destructive behavior.
…And then there’s “faith” which is a cousin to hope and also a cousin to religion. Faith is usually about violating one’s rational mind in order to feel better or to appease the gods or some tyrannical human authority figure. It is erroneously used synonymously with “trust”-erroneous because trust is about relationship whereas faith is about obedience. Therefore, I must agree with Bageant that it is indeed infantilizing.
So what is the cure for hope and faith?
…Above all, you need to spend a significant chunk of time every day-I suggest a half hour twice a day-in contemplation. If you have a meditation practice, wonderful. If not, develop one. It should be a time of stillness and restoration. It should be a time of listening to the inner wisdom of the soul/psyche-a time when thoughts and feelings are not censored but simply allowed and witnessed-and perhaps later, journaled about. While it is true that no one can navigate collapse alone, it is also true that while navigating it, the relationship with oneself may be the most crucial of all.
Civilization has robbed us of an inner life to such an extent that most people in this culture are terrified of or perplexed by the notion of one. Yet no matter how many gorgeous organic gardens we can grow, no matter how much food and water we can store, no matter how much we re-skill ourselves, no matter how many dialog circles we sit in, no matter how well we raise our chickens, if we don’t have an inner life, then we are perilously at risk of emotional and mental breakdown when the daunting stress of collapse is in our faces, and we won’t be able to answer the most important question as we navigate it: Who am I and who do I want to be during this incredibly challenging time?…
The first aspect of the cure, quite simply, is total honesty. The statements by Hedges, Jensen, Osheroff, and Bageant, are replete with white-hot honesty. And whenever we get brutally honest, we are confronted with emotions-most of which are unpleasant. That said, let’s start with the most basic reality of all: Industrial civilization is in the process of collapsing which means that as a result, there is absolutely no return to normal, and our lives are also in the process of being permanently altered.
(2 March 2010)
Depression’s Upside
Jonah Lehreh, New York Times
The Victorians had many names for depression, and Charles Darwin used them all. There were his “fits” brought on by “excitements,” “flurries” leading to an “uncomfortable palpitation of the heart” and “air fatigues” that triggered his “head symptoms.” In one particularly pitiful letter, written to a specialist in “psychological medicine,” he confessed to “extreme spasmodic daily and nightly flatulence” and “hysterical crying” whenever Emma, his devoted wife, left him alone.
While there has been endless speculation about Darwin’s mysterious ailment — his symptoms have been attributed to everything from lactose intolerance to Chagas disease — Darwin himself was most troubled by his recurring mental problems. His depression left him “not able to do anything one day out of three,” choking on his “bitter mortification.” He despaired of the weakness of mind that ran in his family. “The ‘race is for the strong,’ ” Darwin wrote. “I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in Science.”
Darwin, of course, was wrong; his recurring fits didn’t prevent him from succeeding in science. Instead, the pain may actually have accelerated the pace of his research, allowing him to withdraw from the world and concentrate entirely on his work. His letters are filled with references to the salvation of study, which allowed him to temporarily escape his gloomy moods. “Work is the only thing which makes life endurable to me,” Darwin wrote and later remarked that it was his “sole enjoyment in life.”
…The mystery of depression is not that it exists — the mind, like the flesh, is prone to malfunction. Instead, the paradox of depression has long been its prevalence. While most mental illnesses are extremely rare — schizophrenia, for example, is seen in less than 1 percent of the population — depression is everywhere, as inescapable as the common cold. Every year, approximately 7 percent of us will be afflicted to some degree by the awful mental state that William Styron described as a “gray drizzle of horror . . . a storm of murk.” Obsessed with our pain, we will retreat from everything. We will stop eating, unless we start eating too much. Sex will lose its appeal; sleep will become a frustrating pursuit. We will always be tired, even though we will do less and less. We will think a lot about death.
…The alternative, of course, is that depression has a secret purpose and our medical interventions are making a bad situation even worse. Like a fever that helps the immune system fight off infection — increased body temperature sends white blood cells into overdrive — depression might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction. Maybe Darwin was right. We suffer — we suffer terribly — but we don’t suffer in vain.
…Several studies found an increase in brain activity (as measured indirectly by blood flow) in the VLPFC of depressed patients. Most recently, a paper to be published next month by neuroscientists in China found a spike in “functional connectivity” between the lateral prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain in depressed patients, with more severe depressions leading to more prefrontal activity. One explanation for this finding is that the hyperactive VLPFC underlies rumination, allowing people to stay focused on their problem. (Andrews and Thomson argue that this relentless fixation also explains the cognitive deficits of depressed subjects, as they are too busy thinking about their real-life problems to bother with an artificial lab exercise; their VLPFC can’t be bothered to care.) Human attention is a scarce resource — the neural effects of depression make sure the resource is efficiently allocated…
Jonah Lehrer is the author of “How We Decide” and of the blog The Frontal Cortex. This is his first article for the magazine.
(25 February 2010)
Very very long article on the possible evolutionary uses of depression. Find out more about Jonahs’ book.-KS
