There are many tragedies surrounding the capsizing of the Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia last Friday.  In addition to the confirmed deaths and the many people still missing, the fact that the ship’s captain left his post before the evacuation was finished has many people up in arms, rightfully so.  (His claim that he “tripped and fell into a lifeboat” only serve to add fuel to the fire.)

But now there are reports that male crew members were shoving their way past women, elderly, and screaming young children, as they raced to save themselves.

So what’s more shocking: that it was these crew members’ jobs to protect their passengers, and instead they protected themselves?  Or the fact that any semblance of chivalry, or even basic civility, was cast aside in the panic?

To me, what’s horrific about these reports has little to do with gender – it would be just as awful if female crew members were shoving their way past elderly men and young boys during the evacuations.  What’s so sad about this is that people who were in a position to help those in need of assistance chose to only help themselves.

It should be noted, of course, that there very well may be plenty of stories out there about the ship’s crew members doing an upstanding job of helping people to safety and saving lives that are simply not getting any media attention.

But after reading about “totally incompetent“  crew members, or that the crew were telling passengers to relax and have a drink, and that they had no idea how to operate the life boats, it’s hard to not be slightly outraged and what was happening as the ship was going under.

The chivalrous thing to do in that situation, the civil thing to do, the RIGHT thing to do, is to get the passengers to the life boats and make sure the evacuation proceeds smoothly and orderly.  You can make the argument that the whole “women and children first” policy is outdated and even sexist, and maybe it is.  But wanting to save the lives of small children is just common sense.  Self-preservation is a powerful instinct, and sure, nobody can really predict how they would act in such a dire situation.

But if you shoved your way past a child screaming “i don’t want to die,” to get on a life boat, you might guarantee your survival.  But how would you be able to live with yourself if you found out that the family you ran past and didn’t bother to help didn’t make it?