Hard to give a toss about most of them, they knew what they were getting into and it seems like the entire submersible community tried to warn against it, but such was ignored and disregarded as established interests stifling ‘innovation’.
But I feel really bad for Suleman Dawood. He was just a kid, and was – seemingly wiser than the rest of them – rightly terrified of this aquatic death machine. A lot of people, especially in the media, have tried to make light of their collective, violent end, suggesting it should be some consolation that it would’ve been over before they knew anything was wrong, Except according those most informed on the situation, stubborn owner aside, those onboard seemed to be entirely aware something was wrong. (Why else would they have been trying to surface?) Really sucks that a teennager got roped into this stupidity on account of his Titanic-obsessed dad.
Gallows humour is to be expected with these things, but finding out about Suleman left me utterly depressed. Perhaps it’s wrong to direct my irritation thus, but I felt particularly disgusted at someone who casted things as somehow beautiful for a father and son to die together, as though creating a deep, spiritual bond between them in the afterlife. So much media mindlessly lumping him in with his father’s motivations as though he was a fellow extreme tourism enthusiast, rather than a scared kid simply looking to his father for validation.
I do agree that they are pretty awful. I feel very little sympathy for the rich getting themselves killed doing stupid rich people stuff, but celebrating their death is still in poor taste.
Celebrate their deaths like you would the death of your skin cells. Forget about it.
Eh people like that CEO with his libertarian view of safety regulations actively hurt all of society, often to their own benefit. Them getting taken down by their own bullshit is unequivocally a boon to the masses. I can see not supporting celebrating their undoing but I don’t think we should be reprimanding those who do celebrate
For sure. Their passing is likely overall objectively good for humanity. By at least a little bit.
Ignoring the fact that some of these people were billionaires, I think all of them forfeited any respect for their lives when they chose to step into a metal tube and put several miles of water between them and the breathable atmosphere, for fun. Same as mountaineers choosing to climb into a “death zone”. If you choose to go there for fun then that’s how much YOU value your own life and your relationships. I don’t see why I should then have a huge amount of sympathy when these people inevitably die.
I cannot understand why the military was mobilised at huge cost? Surely these people should sign a much more wide ranging waiver saying they are doing this at their own risk and should not expect any rescue attempts beyond what the organisers insurance policy covers?
disgust at the vast hoarding of wealth and suffering caused by billionaires is one thing, but openly revelling in their death is gross and i wish more people would say it. it often feels like people have a streak of sadism that they want to direct at an “acceptable” target through bloody revolution, rather than being leftist because of compassion for other living beings
I reckon that people become leftists out of compassion, but the dehumanizing rhetoric seems cool and edgy; so they slide into it, thinking it’s OK.
Hate systems, not people. Don’t eat the rich, eat their money.
Systems exist because people willfully build and maintain them. Extreme wealth inequality is not the result of an accident. It is very much by design.
This is true, but also, the system is designed to make more people to make the system.
Wealthy kids grow up extremely sheltered and disconnected from the reality of most every else, and while that leads them to being assholes and making horrible decisions and etc, it’s not entirely their fault they ended up like that given their upbringing.
Schools also propagate terrible ideas, and distort history, etc, by design, but also the kids that grow up in those schools often end up parroting and reinforcing those ideas just because they don’t know any better.
Personal politics, still, is statistically ties to your family’s politics and where you grew up. People can break out of that, sure, but it’s an extra step, and one that often is personally costly because it can break social and family ties.
That obviously doesn’t mean people who were raised by asshole families and taught by assholes can’t be held accountable/responsible for then also behaving like an asshole, but they’re that way because of external factors, not because they were just born bad. The systems self-perpetuate through making more people who benefit from them and believe in their virtue, then those people raise more people to fit the system, and so on. Just taking down a few people at the top of a system doesn’t do anything to stop the machinery that will create and empower their replacements.
The system has to be fixed at a system level, or else the system will just keep churning out assholes. This is true regardless of whether the system was designed out of malice or ignorance or pure chance or all three.
To play a little bit of devil’s advocate.
People do have an ingrained instinct for in/out groups and dehumanizing and even wishing for harm to befall the out group is very much a part of human nature. That there is harm being inflicted on the in group by the out group (perceived or true) will of course reinforce this.
Having said that, most people will agree that we should be more than our base instincts and use at least logic if not compassion in our decision making.
