Women and Children First

Remember chivalry?

Charlotte Hays does in Paying Tribute to the Brave Men of the Titanic

Come Sunday it will be ninety-five years since that great ship the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. A stunning statistic from the calamity reveals the ethos of the day: While seventy-four percent of the female passengers survived, eighty percent of the men aboard the tragic luxury liner perished. The rule for the lifeboats: women and children first.

Women and children first are indicative of a belief and hope in the future.  It's keeping young life and the possibility of more life alive.

Women and children first bespeaks a higher consciousness, one nurtured by the great legacy of western civilization, itself a product of Judeo-Christian religious thought evolved over centuries.

It seems to me we are in danger of losing what was so hard-won,  the chivalry about which John Stuart Mill said

“Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race, as a remarkable instance of a concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of its social condition and institutions; so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely inefficacious, and which has left a most sensible, and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times.

We are losing the sense of women and children first in the interests of "gender equality".   

Chivalry was once the foundation of the male code of ethics.  What is a man is supposed to be these days?  How do you transform testosterone and male strength into something other than violent aggression and sexual aggression,  in its milder forms, bullying,  meanness and contempt for women except as sexual objects?

G. Tracy Mehan looks at what happens when when Groping for God and Country ----and School becomes expected, even required.

Maybe we need Chivalry now.  Dean Jacques thinks so.  He writes about Modern Chivalry and sees Chivalry Now as a way for men to reclaim their souls.  Think of Chivalry-Now is a  the counterpoint to the feminism movement.
a  philosophical partner that heals the wounds of the male gender, just as feminism heals the wounds of women.
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Chivalry-Now provides a voice that speaks to the inner needs of men to help them comply with a world that has changed significantly in the last hundred years. It gives them a place of value in society, because it focuses on truth and courage, honor and compassion, along with healthy, more courteous relationships with women, and with men for that matter.

I like what he had to say about this Age of Distraction

We don't need another distraction from doing what we have to do. As a society, it's time we grow up. We have to take away the glamour of doing what is wrong. We have to stop rewarding anti-social behavior. We have to develop a culture that is more humane. We have to start with the choices we make every day, and not allow ourselves to be distracted from the truth.  We need the moral integrity to withdraw our support, no matter how passive, of what is wrong.

So many men and boys are yearning for something more, something that validates their very maleness.  Seems to me, nothing tops chivalry and the bravery of women and children first.