The Rich; Hubris or Boredom?

Some of you know that I used to be rich. Ok, I wasn’t rich, but both H1 and H2 (husbands one and two) were and are still rich. I want to start out by saying that they are not the type of people to whom I am referring in this post. Both of my exes spend their time and money on service and giving back—as do their offspring, and as do I. As for me, the money I have today is money I made myself, and while I haven’t had the success that they’ve had, I do alright for myself—but I do not relate in any way to the lifestyle that I want to comment on today. Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let’s get on with it.

We were all riveted to our screens last week after the submarine (or mini-sub, or whatever the hell it was) went missing and international search crews raced against the clock as the oxygen available to the men on board dwindled. Would they be found before Thursday morning, when their air was expected to run out? Would they be found at all? Riveted.

Who was on board this machine? Five souls—four of whom were hugely rich. One had already flown in outer space. One was the vice-chair of one of the biggest companies in Pakistan, and was obsessed with the Titanic; his son was reportedly terrified of accompanying him on the expedition, but did it for Father’s Day because he was a good son. Seats on the voyage cost up to $250,000 per person; that is to say, this was the price they paid for the privilege of being locked inside a small capsule, made out of untested carbon fiber, steered by (no joke) a $50 video game controller.

This was a way high risk situation. Way high risk. On the first page of the paperwork required for taking this excursion, death is mentioned three times; even so, these men paid to play—and lost their lives.

Now, let’s look at Mt. Everest. Big problems on Mt. Everest, people. If you can believe it, there has been an increase in deaths on Everest over the last two years because (wait for it)—the line to get to the top is so long that people are dying waiting. Yep, and if they aren’t dying while waiting, they’re dying because they’re not in good enough shape to withstand the grueling pressure that climbing the highest mountain on Earth puts on the body. What’s the price tag for this experience? On average, around $50,000, with the cost of “luxury” climbs rising to nearly $200,000. That’s right—tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of losing real brain cells for each and every minute one is up there.

If all that isn’t enough, now people are lining up to travel to space. Currently a fifteen minute “suborbital” trip (when was “suborbital” made into a word?) costs anywhere between $250,000 and $500,000. Fifteen minutes. That’s about $17,000 to $34,000 a minute. And the waiver you sign for that trip? Just reading it takes longer than the ride itself. Fortunately space tourism hasn’t had a disaster yet, but mark my words, there?will?be an accident at some point.

What is the risk/reward factor for these experiences? Is it possible that those who have climbed the ladder of success, and have accumulated so much money, need to seek out such extremes once they find that the size of their bank accounts and the scope of their achievements leaves them bored—or, worse, without purpose?

Two of the men on the sub were genuinely dedicated to underwater exploration. I get why they did it. And in the days of old, when just a few people climbed Everest, they were truly dedicated mountaineers, spending their lives climbing in preparation for that attempt. As for astronauts sent up by NASA and other space organizations, most of them have dreamed of space travel since they first learned what it was, and have devoted themselves to acquiring the skills and qualifications necessary to go to space.

Now consider this.

While everyone was fascinated with the five men in the capsule and the intense efforts to find them, there was something else happening in the world. An almost undetectable trickle of reports began to show up on my feed describing the loss of more than 500 precious, precious souls, when the fishing boat they were traveling in sank off the coast of Greece—five days prior to the day the submarine went missing.

Ylva Johansson, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, said the tragic sinking of the vessel might be “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea. You might have missed it because essentially all global media outlets and social media platforms were saturated with coverage of the disappearance of the Titan sub. This begs the question: Did the lives of the Pakistani, Afghani, Egyptian, Syrian, and Palestinian people on that ship matter? And how about the lives of the hundreds of millions of people living on the margins across the globe?

The fates of these two lost vessels are inextricably tied to the identities of those on board. The submarine was lost in large part because of the hubris of the wealthy designer of the vessel; the overcrowded fishing boat was lost in large part due to the desperate circumstances that provoked its passengers to take such a risky voyage, and due to the interference of the Greek Coast Guard. The five submarine passengers were ultra-wealthy elites, and thus their tragic loss resulted in wall-to-wall media coverage; the more than six hundred “undocumented” passengers of the fishing boat commanded no such notoriety, and, as such, were deemed not only unworthy of significant media coverage, but of significant rescue efforts as well.

Ironically, the Mediterranean shipwreck has begun to receive more coverage now, in the aftermath of the Titan disaster, as mass media has been criticized for the disproportionate attention it paid to the two events. As this has occurred, it’s emerged that the Greek Coast Guard’s account of the shipwreck is in complete contradiction to what most of the recent investigative reporting has uncovered.

Namely, the coastal authorities initially claimed that they did not inadvertently cause the tragedy, nor were they even close to the fishing boat when it sank. It has since been revealed that, not only did the authorities possibly cause the vessel to capsize when they tried to remove it from their waters in order to avoid the legal responsibility to rescue those onboard, they also failed to take immediate life-saving action when the boat did begin to sink, as well as failing to report the incident in a timely manner.

Greek authorities also initially claimed that, although there were cameras onboard the responding Coast Guard vessel, they were not recording during the incident. Shortly after they made this claim, we learned that the cameras?were?on, and that the entire incident?had been?recorded. A Coast Guardsman described what he allegedly saw on a video of the incident as follows: the Greek Coast Guard vessel attempted to give the stranded boat a tow to get it out of its coastal waters, and that is what directly caused it to capsize.

Let the comparison between these two events fester, as it has with me for most of the week.

Lastly, here are two images of what Everest base camps now look like. With all the money to taunt death by hubris, you can’t pay a little extra to clean up after your wealthy selves? Seriously? It breaks my heart, and fills me with rage.

So, while I’d rather write pithy, sometimes poignant, pieces about my often ridiculous, fun, interesting, frivolous thoughts and experiences, every now and then it’s time to take stock of some larger issues. Now, back to my regularly scheduled programming.