I can’t remember when or where I heard the following, and haven’t managed to find a reference to it even ‘by the power of Google’, but I seem to recall the Titanic Principle being…

‘The scale of the failure is in inverse proportion to the belief that it cannot fail’

Well we are certainly seeing that principle playing out in our financial systems at the moment but are we likely to see it with regard to our world and mankind as a whole?

The points I’ve covered in posts so far bring to mind not just this ‘principle’ but also James Cameron’s film Titanic.

You may remember the leisurely build up and scene setting to the iceberg encounter, then the hitting of the iceberg itself – which apart from some shuddering in the handrails above deck seems pretty non-eventful. You may remember people on deck playing football with chunks of ice and continuing on as normal.

Of course, cut to the lower decks and all hell is breaking loose as compartment after compartment starts to flood and people die.

You get a sense from the film though that things are continuing pretty much as normal for quite some period of time on the upper decks while the ship is slowly sinking and heading for an inevitable demise.

When realisation starts to sink in (excuse the pun) they even try to keep the poorer, lower class people off of the upper decks as they start to fill the lifeboats. But as panic starts to set-in and people are determined to save themselves, they break through the barriers and crowd the upper decks.

It’s at this point in the film that the desperation becomes really apparent as it’s clear there aren’t enough lifeboats. Some become resigned to their fate and face it with dignity – others will try and do all they can to survive. But the ship doesn’t just disappear gracefully under the calm sea and the remaining passengers slip quietly into the freezing waters – as it goes down by the bow, the passengers move to higher ground which gets ever more precarious. Then the ship breaks in two, with the stern crashing back to a horizontal position before upending to the vertical and finally plunging beneath the surface. All pretty tumultuous to those still on board and, one imagines, those watching from the relative safety of their lifeboats.

The more I read observations and predictions for this century, the more I think of this Titanic analogy. We hit the iceberg a while back, the party feels like it’s over on a number of levels and the freak weather events and loss of life we have seen with increasing regularity in recent years (hurricanes Katrina etc, wildfires, the 2003 heatwave, extreme flooding) are those scenes below decks as individuals get picked off one by one.

So where will be in 2020? I think perhaps the scenes where those on the lower decks are trying to make their way up top (read those whose livelihoods and survival have been impacted by more heatwaves, droughts, fires, famine making their way to the upper latitudes) and us already in those latitudes trying to safeguard our position and considering finding a lifeboat of some sort and jumping ship if necessary.