the time factor seems to be a pretty solid explanation for the difference in altruism. a faster sinking means greater chaos, and much less time to consider one’s own nobility.
it would be interesting to be able to know how many men that gave up their chance of survival for women and children ended up regretting that decision in their final moments. how many wished they could go back in time and shove that little kid into the freezing waters so that they themselves could float to safety in the life raft? and how many died in peace knowing they had given some woman or child a chance at life?
personally, there aren’t too many people in this world i’d give up my seat on the lifeboat for. fortunately i’ve never had to make such a choice.

Yeah, probably because over three hours the men were not forecasting out their own demise. I mean the ship was not actually sinking until the end. So they may not have been altruistic through reason, but rather, short-sighted.
But who really knows? What gets me about a lot these ex post facto, quasi-scientific analyses is that the conclusions are often presented as factual, when in fact they are merely speculative.

Well, as has been said, it is all speculation – but perhaps some of the difference might have to do with the Lusitania having been struck by a torpedo during wartime.
But I think the time-to-sink difference has most to do with it – it gave the men a chance to get over their initial panic and do the expected thing.

Let’s see: in 1912, the supposedly unsinkable Titanic sank. I’ll have to check with my sister who is a Titanic history buff, but I’ve always heard that one reason so many died in that tragedy was that people didn’t think the ship was going to sink, and so early on half-empty (or even 3/4ths empty) lifeboats (on a ship were there already weren’t enough lifeboats to hold everyone) were lowered into the sea.
The Lusitania sank three years later (and as an act of war, not an accident, which might possibly have affected passengers’ responses). Three years earlier, when the Titanic went down, the newspapers of the world were full of stories of the disaster and the tragic loss of life, made even more tragic by the fact that people were reluctant to board the lifeboats and waited too long aboard the ship to be saved. It is probable that many of the survivors of the sinking of the Lusitania had read and remembered those harrowing accounts of death and tragedy aboard the Titanic and that, coupled with the rapid rate of the sinking of the ship, made a scramble for survival take place.
Look at it this way: before 9/11, how many of us would have realized that the right thing to do when a skyscraper is on fire is to fight our way *down* to the ground floor, through all the smoke and flame, risking death from smoke inhalation or fire on the way? We know it now, because we know that everyone who tried to go up above the fire perished when the towers collapsed, and we also know that since fire rises it’s a terrible gamble to try to climb above it–but would we have known it then?
How many firefighters died in the Twin Towers? Should–God forbid!–a similar attack ever take place, would emergency officials still order their people into the building without any attempt to ascertain its structural stability? Should they? Would a prudent attempt to discover whether the building would hold long enough for rescue attempts to succeed be an abandoning of our moral code, or a just evaluation of the risks and likelihood of success which would be necessary to make, given what we all witnessed on 9/11?
I think we have to look at the chronology of the two events in deciding what caused the Lusitania situation to be a mad dash for survival on the parts of anyone lucky enough to be near a lifeboat. I’m sure the quick sinking also factored in, but I’d hesitate to say that we can draw huge conclusions about the link between morality and reason based on either of these two incidents.

Another factor to consider is that of ‘group think.’ As you read back over history, it’s astonishing the difference that one man can make. If perhaps one ship had a noble man set an example – group think states that the others would have likely followed suit and visa versa.
The actions we take may make a bigger difference than we would expect.

This is a very odd study.
Here’s an account of the sinking of the Lusitania:
http://timelines.com/perspectives/6d668dbf9c2d6667c221e2ae29a6db5c
and another
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania
The vast majority of the survivors of the Lusitania never even got on a lifeboat (the ship sank so fast and its listing was so extreme, only six boats were launched). They were plucked from the water by rescue ships.
The ship had more than enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew BECAUSE of changes in ship safety brought about as a direct result of the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier. 48 boats for 1959 passengers and crew… that’s 40-50/boat. Six boats were successfully launched, some with few passengers. Perhaps fewer than 200 people made it onto a lifeboat, moral quandaries or not. More than 500 jumped or fell into the water or were swept up by the sea as it engulfed the ship and were later picked up alive. Another 50 or so were picked up but later died.

I think a strong case can be made that moral action is by definition irrational and that the men on the Luisitania were much more rational than the men on the Titanic in that they realized that it made more sense to save their own skins than those of anyone else.
Women and children, being the least productive members of society, were a waste of good lifeboats in any event as both would easily replaced.
Ok, I know, I having too much fun with this.

Of course moral action requires rational thought! As almost every moral philosopher understands it, moral action means CHOOSING the correct option in a given situation. How do you make choices without rational thought?!
The problem is that you’ve overdrawn your distinction. Moral action doesn’t require scientific knowledge. The knowledge that moral action requires is more akin to the knowledge that expert craftsmen have. They couldn’t tell you anything about the biology of a tree, but they could probably put together some elegant pieces of furniture.

Re: Charles – “Ok, I know, I having too much fun with this.”
Right. Now get back to de-winging butterflies…

Here’s another way of looking at the question. If everything you did was just a product of hard-wired instinct or unbreakable habit, would we bother to praise or blame you for anything you did? Obviously, if that were the case, praise and blame would be absurd. You wouldn’t be able to help how you behave. I’ve never heard anyone praise moral dogs, plants, or rocks. For action to be moral, there has to be some sort of deliberation involved, no matter how brief.

Drawing from personal experience, I would argue that men in combat do not contemplate risks vs rewards before jumping on the grenade. Read the stories of the Medal of Honor winners. Most simply reacted to the exigencies of the situation.
Having made this claim, I would argue that the definition of morality, as divined from the stories of these two tragedies, like combat, is more expressive of a narrow kind of morality — heroism. More generally, when we speak of morality we really mean the making of a moral choice, a decision to do right or to do wrong. In general, then, moral decision making is an explicitly rational exercise.
Now, such choices can be instantly made provided the person making the choice is not confused about his values and-or how to reconcile competing moral values.
Blessings,

Re: Women and children, being the least productive members of society, were a waste of good lifeboats in any event as both would easily replaced.
Well, from a Darwinian POV, women are more vital to the survival of the species than men, so they should be preferred over them. You can get by with a handful of men for procreative purposes, but a paucity of women is a danger to long-term survival.

I don’t think you can deconstruct humans into pure reason or emotion. For example there are powerful emotions guiding us to moral action. Empathy being a positive one, while guilt, remorse, and regret are powerful inhibitors of negative behavior. Reason also helps us see how tempering our self interest leads to non-zero outcomes for everyone.
Much of this behavior is probably instinctive because social animals display similar moral strategies. Essentially large groups working together require rules and humans are no exception.
But why aren’t humans morally perfect? As someone who’s not religious I would say that evolution builds effective but imperfect beings. There will always be a reward for cheating at the game, but if everyone cheats the game falls apart. So most of us are somewhere between Mother Teresa and Bernard Madoff.

I see the distinction between instincts and emotions as more important than reason here. If I get past my initial survival instinct without bailing on my dependents, I imagine whatever compels me to then do the right thing (even as I sit here trying to imagine it) is intensely, overwhelmingly emotional. Whatever logic I’m using is driven entirely by those emotions.

As far as the Titanic vs. Lusitania. I think time gave people a chance to rationally examine the situation and ask them how they would feel after they acted.
The thought of living with a lifetime of guilt and scorn of your fellow man is a powerful inhibitor of behavior. While a blind rush for the exits doesn’t allow time for either reason or emotion.
Oh and Michaels right, mother nature considers males less important than females and children for the survival of the species. Remember one male and ten females equals many offspring, while switching the numbers likely results in a fight.

I think back to 9/11 and the four jets that were hijacked. As we all know, the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 fought back, but only after learning the fate of the other airlines via discreet cell phone calls. In this case, time and circumstance gave the passengers a reason to choose action over compliance. But we also have to consider the importance of individual, their decisions, and their influence, in organizing a rationally planned counter-attack.

Rod,
Interesting post. I’m not sure whether or not this has anything to do with it, but it may not be unrelated to the fact that Lusitania was sunk during World War I. I had a history professor in undergrad (he was a pretty hard core Marxist, for what it’s worth) who made the argument that World War I led to the collapse of traditional, Judeo-Christian morality in the minds of many people in the West.
The feeling was that if Christian civilisation had led us to the trenches of Flanders Field, then said civilisation couldn’t have been worth that much. I like your distinction between habit and reason, but I would say that they can sometimes blend into one another. Reason yourself into doing the right thing often enough, and virtue becomes a habit (the same goes for vice).
For the record, while it’s true that females are more important than males _for the species_, evolution doesn’t care about what’s good for the species, it cares about what’s good for the individual and his/her genes. The ‘for the good of the group’ concept of evolution (called ‘group selection’) used to be popular, and is intuitively compelling, but has some major theoretical problems with it and probably isn’t true.

First, we need to consider, the reason for the the choice being made. If the person is a Christian, By that I mean, that this person is in Christ Jesus. The Spirit of God is living in this person, They have not just accepted Christ, but has actually been born again, of the Spirit of God. One who not only walks in the Spirit but also lives in the Spirit. That person will choose the good, and shun the evil, weather it be action, or thought. Why? That is what Christ did while on earth. That is what the Spirit of God does through us while we walk with him on earth. Christ is in us the hope of glory, Jesus said, speaking of us, the church, “I in you, you in Me, and I in the father” There is no closer assocition than a person and their food, it becomes a part of you. Jesus also said, “Except you eat my flesh, and drink my blood you have no life in you” Now if that person is not in Christ Jesus, his choice will reflect that. Am I saying that a person cannot do what is right without being a Christain? No I am not! That person may do that, and may even do it for all of the right reasons, such as the thief on the cross. Jesus also said, “no greater love is there, than a person lay down their life for their friend” Isn’t it wonderful, that one who sees and knows all, is the final Judge! z77k8h

Hector, you are correct about group selection being false. Otherwise we would all be doves and not a mix of hawks and doves.
But from what I’ve read even the gene centered view of evolution accepts the concept of kin selection. So kin share 50% of their genes in the case of parent/child or siblings, 25% in grandparent or aunt/uncle, and cousins 12%. So with extended relations kin selection leads to similar outcomes to the good of the species argument. This can lead people to altruistic self sacrifice which is why people had that mistaken view of evolution.

The Samurai believed that one had to use rational thought to develop moral behavior. The idea is that we know the right choice, but must overcome our baser instincts for survival to follow through. So, by practicing moral behavior under non-stressful situations, it would become habit, and override instinct. Hence the old Samurai adage, “to know the right thing is easy. To do it is hard.” We have GOD’s law spelled out clearly in the Bible, but it is hard to follow.

there are pretty significant differences between the sinking of the Lusitania and the Titanic – Erin has noted some of those differences and of course the fact that the ship sank so quickly there wasn’t time to load the lifeboats – hence no time for the men to decide to be “noble” and allow woman and children to go first. I saw a documentary on the sinking of the Lusitania – and it seems that one of the issues as regards women – was their clothing. Consider how women dressed at that time – apparently the much higher death toll for women had to do with the weight of their clothing dragging them under – hence they had already drowned when the boats arrived to rescue. Most passengers on the Lusitania never got to the deck to even have the chance of getting on a lifeboat – the ship sank so fast.
I am not so sure one should think that the Titanic crowd was so altruistic either – the death toll among men,women, and children was much higher for steerage (the poor folks) than for the well heeled. So the altruism tended to be class based. I think that is one of the fascinating (and tragic) aspects of the Titanic sinking – the extent to which the Titanic staff were so indoctrinated with the notion that the wealthier passengers came first – that they actually denied access to the poorer passengers until the wealthy ones had been accomodated.
I think the origins of ethical behavior can change given the circumstance – there is probably a difference beween what prompts one to behave morally over something small (say finding a 20 dollar bill on the floor) versus what prompts a person to do something noble in a drastic situation( a sinking ship). And also wheither one is motivated to behave well by fear of punishment versus behaving well because “virtue” is a goal for that person. I’d think the presence of family would also influence behavior – if it is just you in such a situation all you have to think about is your own survival – but if you have loved one with you – you would probably be more inclined to give your kids space on the lifeboat even if it meant you would have to stay behind.
I wonder would people in a slowly sinking ship accept a “women and childen” first rule nowadays?

Erin seems to have come the closest to explaining this disparity, especially noting how the disbelief that the “unsinkable” Titanic could really sink, especially in light of her gradual demise compared to Lusitania’s 18 minutes. That juxtaposed with a Lusitania passenger list primed by the horror of Titanic…
I also wonder if women and children were shoved out of the way on Lusitania, or if there was simply a preponderance of men in the vicinity of the lifeboats as they were being loaded?
Rod is right. Virtue is defined as a ‘morally good operative habit’. Vice is a ‘morally bad operative habit’.
However, the disparity in time to organize at the lifeboats is simply too great.
I do love this quote from former Senator Dan Coats which has great bearing on this question:
“Character cannot be summoned at the moment of crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self-defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private.
“Habit is the daily battleground of character.”

I wonder if there is a ‘reason’ we use the word ‘rationalize?’

Re: The ‘for the good of the group’ concept of evolution (called ‘group selection’) used to be popular, and is intuitively compelling, but has some major theoretical problems with it and probably isn’t true.
Hector,
I agree there are major problems with “good of the group” theories, however I am not an orthodox Darwinian, and I do think natural selection occurs at all levels of biology, from the molecular up to the planetary. With regard to human beings our individual consciousness tends to swamp and override unconscious forces, else we would be much, much better than we are, but I would not count such things out entirely.

For those of us who are Christians, isn’t there something else we need to acknowledge, something that even the best sociological studies can’t illuminate? The spiritual factor: the work of the Holy Spirit, the potential role of the demonic, etc. As much as we need to consider what the social sciences tell us, they can only go so far. They can’t show us what really was in the hearts of the people involved in these particular tragedies.

Its pretty obvious. The Titanic was mostly taking refined polite Englishmen, the Lusitania was carrying uncouth individualist yanks.

I think the idea that the people on the boat that was sinking faster acted less nobly that some on the Titanic is precisely because their lives were threatened in a more immediate way. There were heroes in both ships, and bastards on both. But I think the speed with it death was coming on the Lusitania has a lot to do with it. It does, I think, come down to the ability to think, even to think fast, but rational thought does indeed come into play.
Anyone who has been around, say, gunfire knows this. You can you go to a war memorial service see it when they shoot off the big guns. watch the crowd. Most people, even knowing the guns will be fired will flinch and duck or turn away when the guns goes off. It happens every time. Who does not flinch? Soldiers and cops. Why? Because they are trained and accustomed to it. It does not surprise them. Combat experienced soldiers can still think rationally under extreme pressure because that is what they were trained to do.
This is why fire fighters can pull people out of burning buildings, while the people in the building will often just forget everything and flee. I have covered many a story where people run from a burning building and only after they are outside do they realize that their wife or kid is still inside. Sometimes they will try to go back in and get them. They were not cowards when they fled, not really. They just had no means to over ride the natural instinct we all possess to save our own lives.
Someone with zero training and experience will likely have a natural reaction to behave like a headless chicken. The fight or flight mechanism kicks in and self preservation becomes the first priority. Unless you have trained yourself to cope with extremes rationally, you just won’t be able to do it in most cases.
So imagine, a bunch of normal people with no experience in sinking ships. The Lusitania starts sinking fast and everyone is going to die in a matter of minutes. Most people will freak out and flee. It’s just instinct. We might look at that as cowardly and ugly and ignoble. But most of us would react the same way. Whereas, as the piece Rod quotes points out, on the Titanic there is time to think and consider one’s actions.
What puzzles me about the debate about our (which I think now is obviously and clearly innate) moral sense, or the drive toward empathy or altruism, is that some people seem to want this to be perfect. This is where Father Pitcher goes wrong. He seems to think if we had an instinct to be empathic that it would kick in regardless of the circumstances. But the fact of the matter is our instincts are not prefect. Under extreme duress, like a sinking ship, some instincts (fight or flight) will over ride others (drive to be altruistic).
That one’s first reaction to an extreme life threatening condition is to flee for one’s own life (even at the expense of a child) does not mean that you don’t also have a instinct toward empathy or altruistic behaviour. It just means these things are not nice and clean and can be so easily mapped out in an equation that says “when X happens I will do Y.”
Nature is messy and precisely because were not designed, because we are the result of an evolutionary process without direction and assembles things in a rather jim crack manner, our instincts are sometimes rather slippery.
The proper response, I submit, is not to appeal to a god, as Pitcher does, or fret about demons as Bill does above, but to understand that we have these “base” reactions and the capacity to think them through and hopefully, with a little effort, we can use the one to overcome the panic of the other.

Interesting stuff. I’m inclined to agree with Boz, that to make a choice means to employ rational thought to some degree and at some level. Christians have divine guidance, but we still need to engage our minds to do the right thing – it isn’t always automatic (at least not for me!) Plenty of atheists would argue that they can reason their way to the right thing.
I think the Lusitania v. Titanic story would be much more powerful if the circumstances of the actual sinking weren’t so wildly different.
It would also be a mistake to pay scant attention to Bill’s comment as well: spiritual warfare is never far below the surface of tragedy.

I opine that morality is precisely a rational construct. It is a set of rational decisions based upon available data (past experience) that are intended to govern future decisions. The rest, as the old chestnut goes, commentary.
Moral behavior, then, can be analysed by the exigencies of the moment. The man who sacrifices his life for his fellow soldiers (see especially the story of Rodger Young, a favorite of Heinlein’s and a basis for his novel “Starship Troopers”) is acting from several motivations concurrently: esprit de corps, a conscious decision that personal sacrifice is called for (what I’d suggest be called a response to “moral conditioning”), and a personal self-awareness and confidence under which we can find the label “heroism”.
It is a valid exercise to examine incidents like Titanic and Lusitania, because they provide data. It becomes problematic when hindsight is used to justify current thought, or when current thought requires a restricted set of conclusions about the past. In short, beware of circular reasoning, eh?

Good post Franklin.
I think that perhaps the two sinking ships is not the best measure of general moral behavior because it is such an extreme circumstance. I mean, a totally moral and ethical person might otherwise run screaming if the are about to die, right? It is an interesting case study, perhaps, about how we respond to extreme duress and where the limits of our moral and ethical action are in the face of danger.

Thanks, Grant. Your comment inspires a further thougth…
Part of the problem with talking about morality is that it too often ignores or assumes how that morality is learned. Most often, the mechanism is generational, parents teaching their children, sometimes ancients informing the present via their writing (or oral tradition) or the writing or stories about them.
Sometimes, too, moral behavior can be “learned” in the moment. All it takes is one example to evoke the same behavior in others in the immediate vicinity, despite those others either not having been conditioned like the example was, or just never being exposed to it in quite that way before.
This further supports the criticism that much of our hindsight (as in this thread’s use of the sinking ships) is based upon or used in speculation that is not necessarily valid.

I think it might be somewhat more interesting to compare the sinking of the Titanic with that of the Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956. The much greater rate of survival of the crew and passengers (out of 1660 passengers and crew, 46 people died, many of them as a result of the collision with the Stockholm) was not due to more lifeboats (as the nature of the collision left half of the ship’s lifeboats unusable). Better radio communications and the close proximity of other ships, most notably the Ile de France whose captain made the decision to turn back from his course to assist the survivors, were major factors in the survival rate. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Andrea_Doria
Interestingly, several accounts I’ve looked at say that one thing which did happen was that a large number of the Andrea Doria’s crew abandoned ship in the immediate aftermath of the collision, leaving the passengers to their fates. However, great acts of kindness and charity were recorded among the passengers and among those on the rescuing ships.
To me, this is confirmation that the swiftness of the Lusitania event and, perhaps, the great fear of dying if any hesitation occurred (in passengers’ minds because of the recent and heavily-covered Titanic tragedy) were to blame for the chaos of the Lusitania aftermath. In other words, given sufficient time for reflection, the vast majority of human beings are capable of great charity and altruism, and even self-sacrifice, in the wake of a tragedy.

How is one going to act in a moment of crisis? That’s the rub, isn’t it and that’s what makes Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” such a great story.

In my book at http://www.suprarational.org I wrote a chapter about morality and conscience, called “Duel of the Dual.” Morality may be rational and/or suprarational. Here is an excerpt:
“Conscience” is a misused and misunderstood word. “Have you no conscience?,” ask people of a person who does something which seems to them to be so obviously wrong. Each person has a dual conscience and, occasionally, these two sides do engage in a duel.
The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology defines conscience as “a reasonably coherent set of internalized moral principals that provides evaluations of right and wrong with regard to acts either performed or contemplated. Historically, theistic views aligned conscience with the voice of God and hence regarded it as innate. The contemporary view is that the prohibitions and obligations of conscience are learned…” Individual moral development is based on both.
Socrates said that conscience was the inner warning voice of God. Among Stoics it was a divine spark in man. Throughout the Middle Ages, conscience, synderesis in Greek, was universally binding rules of conduct. Religious interpretations later changed in psychiatry.
Sigmund Freud had coined a new term for conscience; he called it “superego.” This was self-imposed standards of behavior we learned from parents and our community, rather than from a divine source. People who transgressed those rules felt guilt. Carl Jung, Freud’s famous contemporary, said that conscience was an archetype of a “collective unconscious”; content from society is learned later. Most religions still view conscience as the foundation of morality.
Sri Aurobindo said “…true original Conscience in us [is] deeper than constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us.” Perhaps conscience can be viewed as a double-pane window, with the self in between. On one side, it looks toward ego and free will to obey
community’s laws. On the other side, it is toward the soul and divine will to follow universal law. They often converge to dictate the same, or a similar, course of conduct…and sometimes not.