One-hundred-seven years ago this April 15th, the RMS Titanic sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg. Over fifteen hundred people lost their lives that evening. While life has changed dramatically since 1912, I believe there are still important lessons to be learned from this terrible tragedy, one that shook the world and broke a collective confidence in mankind.
We should never accept the arrogance of the Gilded Age to come back and blind us again. We should continue to depend on scientific analysis and fact-based thinking in all that we do. We should never divide ourselves by classes, treating people differently because of the color of their skin, the size of their bank account or their nation of origin. And we should never put profits over safety.
It is also important to mark how far we have come since April 1912. Women are now allowed to vote in the United States, the European nations have united to overcome the bloody struggles that plagued them throughout history, including the first half of the 20th century. Safety standards among sea-going vessels have dramatically improved, and travel itself has evolved to the point where flights across oceans are as routine as horse-pulled carriages used to be.
There will always be room for improvement and it is my hope that we here in the US continue to strive for a more perfect union, and that throughout the globe, to quote General Douglas MacArthur, “a better world will finally emerge from the blood and carnage of the past… a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice.”
I hope that the people who are able to reflect on the Titanic’s 200th anniversary will be able to say that these wishes have been fulfilled and that the world they live in has progressed even further than we here in 2019 had hoped.
