We rarely use this metaphor correctly. Which tells us a lot about what ails us.

What causes a ship to sink? Most likely a hole below the surface of the water.

Whether that hole can be stopped and the greater means of maintaining the integrity of the vessel are dependent on the manner of the hole. And the ability of people to do that work.

That’s never actually what we’re talking about, though.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the metaphor applied to anything but institutions in decline.

So what exactly is the hole in the hull? And why is it taking on water?

Usually the things we offer are vague excuses about character and loss and behavior and change and politics. In that way, pretty much anything that sticks.

Above everything else, however, the main reason offered for the ship’s sinking is the idea that people are fleeing it.

Whether a hole even exists is irrelevant to decline because the source of decline is the fleeing itself. Even when “fleeing” includes people dying.

This is wholly different than fleeing a sinking ship in every meaningful way. The Titanic hits an iceberg, tears a hole in the ship, and there is no saving it in the open ocean. The only chance for personal survival is flight. Fleeing then is virtuous.

The water, the freezing temperatures. These will kill. But for an institution in decline, people leaving is equated with both the water coming in and also with taking to the life rafts. It is both the source of good and evil.

Here’s a different image:

Declining institutions are like ships docked in the harbor, needing repair. And many of the people needed to make them seaworthy have died or gotten better gigs.

And that sense of frustration and sadness we equate with a hopeless situation, we desperately want to blame on pilot error or tumultuous storms? These are often merely the facts of life or people choosing airplanes or better boats.

Perhaps they now want the ship to be a cruise ship, not a working tall ship where everyone has a job.

We’re trying to treat fleeing like the disease and its symptom—and then, for us individually, as an inoculation from it. It is really the contagion.

There is an art, too, to this misdirection. As we are mostly hiding the truth from ourselves.