Fear Of Flying
Brothers, am I then so cruel?
I say that what falls, you should also give a push!
Everything of today—falls, de-constructs; who would preserve it! But I, I wish to give it a shove! Recall the joy of rolling a stone over a precipitous edge? The men of today, look how they roll over the edge of my depths!
I am a prelude to better players, my brothers! I am the example! Do according to my example!
And those who you are unable to teach to fly, teach him instead— to fall faster!
—excerpt Thus Spake Zarathustra, Old Men and New Tables #20, p. 203 by Friedrich Nietzsche
I remember when I was a kid, a short bike ride from my house there was an abandoned rock quarry. The quarry was a place for magical adventures. By today’s parental standards it was a dangerous place to play. I remember working my way over the edge, down an inclined granite face to the floor of the pit some 20 feet below. The summer sun was warm. you could smell the pines that grew around the quarry pit. Once we found a long Black Snake.
And what kid does not delight in pushing a sizable boulder over the edge? It was bound to fall anyway, with the work of Nature, the contraction of winter frost and the expansion of summers heat. A kid’s “job” is to give the rock a shove.
Yesterday a friend emailed me He took relief, satisfaction, repose from a report of the CEO of Boeing, who gave a speech in Dallas yesterday. Miulenburg was speaking at the invitation-only audience at the second Bush Institute Leadership Forum. The CEO spoke of all of the software testing that has been done to correct the tendency of the 737 Max plane to go nose up upon take off, causing a stall. Miulenburg said that he has even flown in the plane himself.
Two observations: Dennis Miulenburg is hardly a disinterested commentator. Furthermore, hundreds of lives will hang in the balance on the truth, or absence thereof, of his statements. Two of these planes have already crashed upon takeoff with all hands lost.
Back to the Nietzsche quotation. Is it not preferable that what is to fall anyway, fall faster, more immediately? Many fewer lives will be sacrificed than by an otherwise slow, agonizing demise.
And that statement about being a prelude to better players….. China perhaps? Who can say.
