OceanGate: Two Things Can Be Sad at the Same Time

I've been absolutely sick with worry all week for the five souls aboard OceanGate, trying to distract myself from the horrifying thoughts of what must have unfolded in that doomed tube. It is said that two of the passengers knew exactly how much oxygen was left and would have definitely thought about rationing it between just themselves. Let your imagination deduce what that would have meant. Meanwhile, the teenager on board was terrified of the ocean and tiny spaces, but on the insistence of his Titanic-obsessed father, agreed to go along.

The outside of that craft may have been as big as a minivan, but the inside was incredibly cramped. People were knee to knee and practically atop one another. You could not stand. You could not kneel. There was only one porthole to look out of. The ride down would have been in pitch darkness, to save energy, with only the light of a single glow stick illuminating the metal sides and floor. It would have been just above freezing. The entire vessel was controlled with a $26 game controller you can buy from Walmart.

I prayed on my knees and cried myself to sleep, and then scrolled maniacally on social media, hoping to watch mindless puppy and kitten videos, because I physically could not breathe thinking about those passengers, and would feel panic arising whenever I did. But instead of seeing cute videos, I was instead met with the dregs of society, who were either ambivalent about the passengers or who rejoiced in their death, because these passengers came from wealthy backgrounds. The main argument being that they should have funded their own rescue, or that our taxpayer dollars would have been better served helping the migrants of the capsized boat in Greece, instead of some "privileged a**holes."

They typed these comments knowing exactly what I mentioned in the first two paragraphs.

Two distinct things such as the implosion of the OceanGate with billionaires aboard and the capsizing of a migrant boat can be tragic at the same time. Not one person aboard OceanGate would have hesitated to give away their last cent to be saved. In that moment, they were the poorest, unluckiest souls on earth.

I thought I'd feel a small letup of anxiety upon finding out that the OceanGate passengers were dead (at last, closure), but my fears turned into a bottomless pit of despair. Just twenty years ago, Americans would have come together, riveted to their TVs over a missing submersible. We are, historically, the most generous people on earth and wouldn't have cared where our taxpayer money went if it meant saving lives. If lives were saved, we would have cheered loudly, as one people. Glasses would have clinked in bars, and people, regardless of political affiliation, would have hugged and spread the news.

But the antagonists we read about as kids, in the canon of dystopian high school English literature -- from the 1984s and the Brave New Worlds to the Animal Farms, is not the government. It's not some New World Order or deep state or the Illuminati or celebrities or the military industrial complex or any of these tin foil theories we fob our discontent and personal responsibility off to.

It's us. It's us. We've become a by-standing, schadenfreude-swilling, Black Mirror-mirroring, sadistic mass, content with 24-hour news cycles. Terrifying accounts of frantic people dying inside tiny, sinking, imploding tubes does nothing to us. We are frightening.

The passengers on OceanGate were so thrilled to be making an incredible journey they put so much thought, resources, dreams, and calculated risk into. They did not even get to see the Titanic. My heart goes out to their family members, who also would have given everything they owned to bring their loved ones to safety.

The next time you feel like typing a comment about how "privileged" people don't earn our sympathy, imagine losing someone you love in the exact same way. Imagine what their last thoughts would be. It would be of seeing you again.