Much of the news was this week was dominated by the lost submersible Titan, which went down near the site where the Titanic rests on the bottom of the sea. Its remains were found on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet / 488 m) from the bow of the Titanic.

Were this a US Navy submarine, the name Titan would never be used again, with it and its crew considered on eternal patrol. The private sector doesn’t have to follow suit, but it would be nice if it did.

People being people, much has been said, and will be, about the Titan. Headlines are the original clickbait, and rampant speculation is always the filler when new information is lacking. Such things are like a Rorschach Test, revealing more about people and society than the event itself. Some bemoan that the wealthy could afford to ride a submersible. Had the Titan been a salvage vessel, they would have sniffed that the poor risked their lives for the rich. There are those who question vessels going to the wreck of the Titanic, though the site is protected from salvage by international treaty and all that can be done is to take photos and maybe sampling for scientific purposes. “It’s like a graveyard,” some have said and they have a point. Yet people tour graveyards and battlefields and sites of horrendous events, and this is essentially the same thing. Far more people visit places like Truk Lagoon than they do the Titanic.

There will be an inquiry, as is common for such things. So many of our safety regulations are written in blood, when bad things happen and efforts were made to prevent them from happening again. Unlike most of what we hear on the news, an inquiry will delve into facts, some that seem technical or mundane, but such things can mean the difference between the routine and catastrophe. The only ones who really know what happened were aboard the Titan, and if the end came swiftly, even they might not have known. The one thing I hope doesn’t come out of it is curtailing such exploration permanently. Unfortunately, that is very likely. We are no longer a society that tolerates risk.

My own Rorschach Test is public reaction rather than the loss of the Titan itself. The thing with Rorschach events is they tend to be shoehorned into whatever ideology the commenter holds. Mine is that our culture has grown risk adverse. It is admirable to make things as safe as possible, but the keywords here are as possible. There will always be risks; the frozen bodies on Mount Everest that attest to that. We no longer seem to realize that some things worth doing can have the potential for disaster, whether it’s rocketing into space or descending to the bottom of the sea. People can argue that things like descending to the wreck of the Titanic are too dangerous, and I’m sure they’d never take a seat in a submersible even if it was free. It doesn’t change that there are those who know the risks and accept them, and they are the ones who advance frontiers, be it knowledge or literal. Nothing significant is accomplished by those who cower in their homes.

As a coward, that’s something I’m painfully aware of. Mainly it’s trying to be inoffensive lest I drive away potential readers. The correct response to that is what readers, but be that as it may, when you go political, you alienate half your potential customers, and these days everything is political. Yet it’s still cowardice, pure and simple. Nor is it the only example. When I write about cowardice, all I have to do is look at personal experience. Cowardice has consequences. Not taking chances means you don’t fail, but you also don’t accomplish anything. Those willing to risk their lives in an endeavor, successful or not, do far more than those who would never face the danger. The crew of the Titan may be gone, but theirs were lives well lived, and that’s more than many of us can say.

At one time we looked as those who took such risks as heroes precisely because they did what we ourselves were not willing to do. Judging by some comments made about the Titan, that doesn’t seem to be the case now. Maybe the scornful are so far in whatever ideology they hold that they can’t see beyond it. I don’t know. I only know that once we were a nation who took pride in those willing to go to the moon or to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and now we question whether such things should be done at all. I don’t know why. Cowards can admire the deeds of the brave; to demand all be cowards is something else. Maybe some are uncomfortable with the idea of exceptional people doing exceptional things. I don’t know.

I do know we live in an age that seems hostile to the exceptional. There will be those who will try to use the Titan disaster to end all private efforts of sea exploration by US citizens, and, unfortunately, they may succeed.

The most fitting memorial for those who died aboard the Titan is to continue sea exploration. Learn from the disaster, yes. Shy away from the danger, no. The worst thing we could do is to prevent private citizens from pushing the envelope, even though the envelope sometimes pushes back.