One of the news at today's BBC website was an article about why more British passengers died in the 1912 Titanic crash. It says the "more polite" Britons suffered higher mortality than the Americans, because they were "gentlemanly" while Americans were "individualist".
Obviously, there have been various reactions to this claim.
This blogger at wordpress goes so far as to say that "the idea of lining up for something is completely alien to the Americans" (and Russians, sic).
Some serious reading at news.com.au and softpedia.com suggests that this survival of Americans is curious, given the fact they were not well versed with survival techniques at sea, especially compared to the passengers from water-locked Britain.
Ironically, this same fact could have served to the Americans' advantage because they tended to rush to the lifeboats while the Britons realized that by panicking and running around desperately they would only delay the overall rescue effort.
The conclusion seems to be that given the circumstances and the participants, the Darwinism theory of "survival of the fittest" did not really matter; social norms and altruism prevailed.
IMHO, this is incorrect; the fittest did survive! The altruist Briton perished, didn't he?
On a lighter note, as with all news this one was also toyed with, as is evident by this conversation at forums.somethingawful.com
Obviously, there have been various reactions to this claim.
This blogger at wordpress goes so far as to say that "the idea of lining up for something is completely alien to the Americans" (and Russians, sic).
Some serious reading at news.com.au and softpedia.com suggests that this survival of Americans is curious, given the fact they were not well versed with survival techniques at sea, especially compared to the passengers from water-locked Britain.
Ironically, this same fact could have served to the Americans' advantage because they tended to rush to the lifeboats while the Britons realized that by panicking and running around desperately they would only delay the overall rescue effort.
The conclusion seems to be that given the circumstances and the participants, the Darwinism theory of "survival of the fittest" did not really matter; social norms and altruism prevailed.
IMHO, this is incorrect; the fittest did survive! The altruist Briton perished, didn't he?
On a lighter note, as with all news this one was also toyed with, as is evident by this conversation at forums.somethingawful.com
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