Stockton Rush: Hero or Villian OR What may Aristotle say?

Stockton rush. Is he a hero or is he a villain or is there a third option?  

There are some that consider Stockton rush as a hero. There are some that say that captain Stockton is a pioneer because he was trying to figure out a way to take multiple people on a tour together to the deeper depths of the ocean. Because the current models do not allow more than two people to go together at the same time. So in that sense, is he an Explorer that is that is trying to push the boundaries and figure out innovative ways of doing things. In that sense, is he a hero?

There are some consider who consider him a villain. He knew that he was doing something very experimental. There are multiple people that said that using carbon fiber to build a hull, in that kind of a submersible craft is a flawed model. That it wouldn't work. It would put people's life at risk. Yet he willingly took people with him, knowing that it was a huge risk on a very untested model.  

So what is it? Is he a hero or is he a villain? I think there is a third option. There is another way of looking at him. To understand that I think we need to go back to the original heroic, ideal. So our understanding of heroes in many ways comes from the Greek culture of the heroic virtue. And in the Greek culture, we see multiple heroes   📍 in different epics in Homer. Agamemnon, Ajax. Hector. And what we see in all of these heroes is that. They all are

tragic heroes. They are not heroes in the modern sense in the sense that they just go do different things and succeed. Like some of the superheroes that we see today. Rather, they took heroic action. But the process of that, they also ended up dying.

Aristotle calls them tragic heroes. What is unique about the tragic heroes is that they have kind of two sides to their personality. One is this side that wants to go out, take action and conquer things. And the other is aside where they have some fatal character flaw. And it is that flaw that brings them down.

For example, in Homer, Again, Memnon is a great warrior who goes to war against Troy. But his flaw is that he is too ambitious because he's ambitious in order to achieve his goals in the war. He's willing to sacrifice his own daughter. So that's his character flaw that ultimately becomes is ruined. And then you see Ajax who again is a great warrior.

Fighting in Troy. But his flaw is that he is too proud. When Achilles dies, he wants to inherit Achilles's armor, but that's not given to him. Agamemnon takes it for himself. And he gets angry becomes so frustrated because his pride, his hurt and he kills himself!

So his character flaw is the sense of pride. Aristotle uses the word "Hamartia". To talk about this character flaw. Incidentally in the Bible. The word that is used for sin again is. This is this word, hamartia. That we all have this heroic ideal in us, but there is also a character flaw

that can derail us from the ideal and the purposes that we want to live into. So in the case of Stockton rush, what was his flaw? Within this Greek view his flaw is what is called hubris. It is. Too much pride in oneself and an unwillingness to listen to any kind of counsel.

Multiple people told Stockton, good engineers from the certification advisory commission, told him, " do not use carbon fiber model to build a submersible." but he would not listen to them. Why? Because he wanted to conquer. He wanted to do it his own way.

He wanted to break the rules. Within this Greek ideal, it's called the flaw of hubris. We see this clearly in the mythology of Icarus. So Icarus and his dad are escaping from this prison.

His dad is a wonderful engineer who builds this wings for them to fly. They use the wings to fly out of the prison that they are at. The problem is the wings are made with bird feathers, held together with a wax. So when you fly out, you can only fly so much. His father did Dydalus flies out and escapes and he tells the son, "okay, we've escaped from the prison, now let's fly back to land."

But Icarus because he is so confident in himself thinks, "Hey, I've flown this much. I can fly from here to the sun," so to speak, and his father says "no, if you try to fly too close to the sun the wax will melt and you will fall to your grave!" what did Icarus do? He thought. He knew better than his father.

He was going to try it out. He was going to go up and prove his father wrong. And he goes up and what happens? He gets too close to the sun, the wax melts and he falls to his death. And in some ways, That's what we see Stockton doing here. He is unwilling to listen to counsel.

Ironically the captain of the Titanic ship that sunk in 1912 edward Smith committed the same blunder of hubris. On the night that the ship sunk there were multiple telegrams sent to him by other ships saying there are too many icebergs in this area and there is no Moonlight goes slowly.

But the captain wanted to get the record for the fastest transit from England to America. So he did not slow down. He kept going fast. The Titanic hit the iceberg and sunk.

Both the ship Titanic in 1912 and the submersible Titan in 2023 committed the same blunder of hubris. And that is what makes it tragic! In Proverbs 15:22 says, "plans come to ruin for lack of good counsel." Even when we look at Genesis in the first few chapters, there is the council. In heavens where God himself in Trinity, the father, son, and the spirit are speaking to one another. To say, how can we create the world?, "Let us create man in our image. "So there is that sense of council

even within kind of Godhead, so to speak. Because there was a value. In listening, there is value in community. There is value in conversations. Even with people that disagree with us so that we can know maybe where are we wrong? Where are, where did we miss the mark? So to speak?  

The lack of this willingness to listen to counsel is hubris. And with captain Stockton, unfortunately his hubris and in his unwillingness to listen to good counsel led to a loss of life. Which is extremely tragic for some of these families. That trusted

in Stockton. And decided to go on this adventure with him. And what Aristotle says is with every tragedy there is always something that all of us can learn.

If we are willing to be humbled because we all have character flaws. This is not about looking at captain Stockton and saying, "oh, look at him. He did something bad." The point is to look at ourselves and see. Where may we have the same flaw of hubris? Of not wanting to listen to wisdom of not wanting to listen to other people and figure out where may we be wrong and how can we change? That's the lesson that this episode teach us that hubris is not the way to wisdom.

Conversation connection and community is perhaps the way wisdom. And Stockton is heroic. Because he took the risk himself. He put his money where his mouth is so to speak. He went along with them and died with them. There is something heroic about it he is someone that kept pushing the boundaries and wanted to create new experiences for people. At the same time he is a tragic hero. His own flaw is hubris and it is because of his hubris that this tragedy occurred.  

It is not time for us to look down on his hubris, rather it is time for us to look within and to see where may we become committing the same error of hubris? And how can we maybe connect and communicate be in conversation with a community around us in order to find the way of wisdom!