I’m sitting in the central train station in Warsaw, and I’m surrounded by literally thousands of people. It seems as if truly no one knows where they are going and what is going to happen, which calls to mind the idea of panic. Panic. How would I respond if I were to be faced with the situation and its dire consequences? What would I do?
I think all of us as men worry about this in the back of our heads. If I were ever faced with a battle like situation, God forbid, would I respond properly? Would I be brave? Well, little story. The Titanic, when it sank, it took about 2 and a half hours to sink, and there were around 1500 people who drowned.
Now most of those were men. The other passengers on the ship were saved, and they were mostly women and children. Now just a few years later in 1915, the Lusitania, about the same size, was torpedoed about 10 kilometers off the coast of Ireland, and also around 1500 people were saved, but these were mostly men. The women and children, for the most part, drowned. Why?
Why? On the one ship of relatively the same size, 1500 men drowned, and on the other ship, 1500 women drowned. Why? Well, the reason is because of time. Time.
It took the Titanic 2 and a half hours to sink. 2 and a half hours. But it took the Lusitania only 20 minutes. So studies have suggested that if we have time to reflect, we do the right thing morally. But because we are so driven by the will to life, Schopenhauer’s will to life, that we perhaps blind ourselves when we want to survive.
And I think we’ve seen this in many circumstances. Perhaps you get a crush of people together in a department store, and someone makes an error, and people push and shove, we quickly, as animals, seem to be able to lose control. My story. The other day, we were taking the high speed train from Gdansk to Warsaw, and just about 30 minutes from the main station, the train stopped. Stopped.
And we waited. Half an hour went by. No power now on this beautiful high speed rain. 1 hour goes by, no power on this high speed train. An hour and a half goes by, no reports coming forth, and people start to leave.
Now we are literally in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Warsaw. So what do you do? Well, we pondered waiting, and then a management decision was made, and we proceeded to get off the train and then walk about a kilometer and a half to another small station and catch a relatively inexpensive taxi, and we arrived at the hotel, all safe and sound with our luggage, with our money, with our humanity. And it proved to me that perhaps we shouldn’t have rushed off the train, but we should have pondered just a bit and then acted, which we did. So panic.
The next time you feel panicked, which will happen to you as it happens to me and everyone else, something dire has occurred. You failed your test, your relationship has collapsed, You’ve lost all your money on the stock market. It runs on. Sit back for a moment and reflect, and then act. But, of course, act you must, because if you don’t act, the action of inaction can be even more perilous.
And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary, especially if you feel panicked in any circumstance, and critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.