Planes!
On miracles
Sometimes I like to imagine a conversation with a great philosopher of times gone by where I explain the miracle that is modern flight. It goes like this:
"We have these machines we call planes, great metal boats—"
"Wait, metal boats? That would never work. They'd sink, and besides we barely have enough for our knives."
"—that fly."
And then there's nothing I can do to convince them. This is clearly impossible. If it happened it must be an act of God.
Almost everyone I know hates flying. The cramped seating, the TSA, the crying kid who always manages to be in the seat next to you. I often fall victim to this mindset, too.
What I want this post to be is an invitation to look from a different perspective. For you to see what I see every time I'm on a plane that takes off. That whatever might be happening on a micro scale, on a macro scale what we — a bunch of overgrown apes — have built is nothing short of a miracle.
At takeoff of every flight I listen to the New World Symphony by Dvořák. I'm actually listening to it right now. It's obviously inspired by the New World in an American sense but after so many flights to me it's almost an anthem of modernity. This, like everything else, is a matter of perspective.
For example: you could be afraid of planes, think they're dangerous. Or you could realize that passenger planes are perhaps the safest form of transport mankind has ever invented. We have access to all of human knowledge in our pockets. We control the weather in our homes. You can tap a few buttons and someone will drive you basically anywhere. I mean even the produce aisle: I could get pineapples in Denmark! Denmark! Nothing grows there.
This is not to say things are all getting better: The TSA is worse than useless, we can't build housing, politics, algorithmic slop feeds, etc. But maybe every once in a while look from a different angle, zoom out. It would be a shame if you saw a cathedral and only focused on the part under construction. Sure it needs fixing, but you can't lose sight of the whole project, and sweet Jesus is it beautiful.
So next time you're about to fall asleep on a flight and grumbling about the lack of leg room, remember: our ancestors looked up to the stars and dreamed of such things, now we just dream in such things.