Titanic and the Fall of Civilizations

Just published on Amazon: "Titanic and the Fall of Civilizations," an essay on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, exploring the concept of "situational awareness" and the parallels for civilization as we know it.

The concept of situational awareness is one introduced by the military, particularly the US Army, during the past fifteen years as an invaluable tool for tactical planning and analysis. Situational awareness refers to having a true picture in one's mind which corresponds to the actual reality of the enemy situation, the terrain situation, and the capability of the friendly forces. Due to factors of human organizations and human psychology which famous military tactician Carl von Clausewitz called "the fog of war," the mental picture can diverge quite drastically from reality in all three of these areas, leading to lack of situational awareness and often to disaster.

This relatively new military term is invaluable for the analysis of the Titanic disaster, because it is quite clear that loss of situational awareness -- and the failure to correct the mental picture in spite of six wireless messages received on the fateful day of April 14, 1912 -- led to the collision with the iceberg and the grievous loss of life (over 1,500 lives lost, with only 700 survivors).

After an analysis of the use of situational awareness as a tool for examining the Titanic catastrophe, the essay explores evidence that we may have formed a similar incorrect mental model of our own civilization's history, one which has led to a mistaken belief that forward progress is our natural birthright, and which ignores salient evidence (or pushes it to the margins) that could help us avoid a catastrophe of similar magnitude.

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This is an essay, not a full book. It contains about 5,000 words. Hope you find it valuable -- if so, please consider telling others with a short review.

ASIN: B007RAQ7TY

Note: for my most recent thoughts on the Titanic tragedy, see "Titanic conspiracy, due diligence, natural law and mind control," 04/13/2014.