or why it is so critically important to their vacation. Theoretically it takes 83,380 pounds to get that same airliner back to Los Angeles; the plane may well load 114,000 pounds for safety. There is no filling station in mid-Pacific.
“Safety,” however, as we all know, is very much a relative term, but humans have a strong tendency to think about themselves, their immediate family and possessions, and the near future—seconds, minutes, hours, or at the most days—when they consider their “safety.” In other words, safety = personal safety, here and now, not safety for the species, nor, necessarily for the nation. Thus the thought of dying in an airliner crash, especially if you’re sitting in an airliner seat six miles above the ocean, makes a serious impression on your mind, whereas the thought of collapsing agricultural economies fifty years hence, a result not of engine failure but of climate change, rarely elevates our blood pressure much, if at all.
So who’s driving the plane when and if a nation such as the United States of America slips into the late 2000s and early 2100s with absolutely no forethought about a shifting grain belt, elevated ocean levels, serious storms in unexpected places, exhausted fossil fuel supply, and a population characterized by its religious zeal, obesity levels, advanced age, military engagements, and uneducated workforce? You can bet the family farm that whoever it is will be driving an ecosystem that cannot be turned around any time soon, if at all, after his or her decision to crank the wheel, even if that decision is made. If our current condition can be likened to taxiing for takeoff, knowing we’re dangerously overloaded with baggage, that moment when economic and social collapse becomes inevitable can be likened to simultaneous engine failure or a terrorist’s bomb ripping off the tail assembly somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. The simile is appropriate; only the time frame makes it seem otherwise.
Are our evolved traits leading us down that runway? An argument could be made that the answer is “yes.” We humans have shown repeatedly that as nations, we are simply incapable of acting rationally, or even in our own vested interests. Jared Diamond makes such a case convincingly, from an ecological perspective (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), and Barbara Tuchman does it from a political one (The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam). In both these analyses, humans acting in groups are the problem; the key feature in decision-making that precludes rationality is the group, and when there are individuals seemingly responsible, they are ones that for whatever reason are capable of influencing the mob.
Historical examples of collective evil and stupidity abound, Nazi Germany being the familiar poster child for mob action run amok, for nations acting against their own long-term interests, driven primarily by words and ideas. So how did we get from Denver International Airport to a discussion of genocide and mob action, or, environmental degradation and its ultimate consequences? The answer is very simple: we spent some time in the airport, asking ourselves what was really going on around us, studying the people, listening to them talk, wondering where they came from and where they were going, and using readily available information to draw a verbal picture of what we’d learned. Then we applied that behavior, namely, the serious, multifaceted, study of what the world around us was really like, to larger problems such as that of retaining our humanity in the face of those natural forces, those unforgiving ecological forces, that we, as a species, so routinely ignore.
Is there really a simple solution to this problem of making our peace with the only planet in the universe known to support life of any kind? I don’t know the answer to that question, although I do know that there are simple solutions to a wide array of problems, including those that produce conflict, sometimes armed conflict, between different groups of human beings with different worldviews. The American culture wars demonstrate this verbal and idea-based conflict beautifully and any educated citizen can name a few words certain to polarize a discussion or disrupt a perfectly charming social event: “homosexuality,” “evolution,” “birth control” and, of course, “global warming,” come immediately to mind. In the end, Jim Starry has shown us quite a bit about Denver International Airport and similar institutions, but he’s shown us far more about ourselves and how we could, and should, be thinking about what kind of a species we really are, what kind of a relationship we actually have with our planet, and how our words and ideas dictate that relationship.
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Denver International Airport is copyright © 2013 by John Janovy, Jr. Anyone is free to use this essay, in part or whole, for non-commercial purposes, in any language and any medium throughout the world, provided that attribution is as given below. For commercial use permission, contact
[email protected]. The proper attribution is:
Denver International Airport is based on information provided by Jim Starry and is used by permission; copyright © John Janovy, Jr., 2013.
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