Who needs a tower when a ballistic machine can project you higher?
I refer you to the comments on my post "Come Josephine" (it's a catchy tune, isn't it? Just like all those German hymns penned by the Reformers to spread their doctrine...). I'd be very interested to know what anybody else thinks about aviation.
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the tower of Babel, and other stories of civilisations "going backwards," or forwards...the distinction is in kind not in principle. Pride seems to be the binding tenet of these stories. Man becomes inflated with his own self, his wisdom, his greatness, his empire or lineage and casts true religion aside. True to scripture ("Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall," Proverbs 16:18), he falls. For the Númenóreans, their pride and blasphemy caused the destruction of their antient home and the permanent change of the world. For the people of Babel, their tongues were confused and they were scattered. For us, under the yoke of hedonist and liberal principles, our curse seems to be in reverse of Babel. Where they were scattered, we seem bent on bringing the world to our shores into one people (the irony, of course, and something known well to the reprobate architects of our demise, is that this is impossible socially, culturally and linguistically). Where their tongues merely became confused, our language is, for a people once grounded in the Eternal Word, bastardised, sucked dry of meaning, subject to perpetual change, and usurped by obscene lobbyists thundering for equal pay, equal rights, equal marriage, levelling all distinctions, obliterating all differences. And I put it to you, dear readers, that one of the tokens of this decline from man to beast (thank you Darwin), from Christendom to Europe (thank you...gracious, there are so many) is the flying machine. Mark my words! We will have to pay for our hubris one day.
I trust you have seen my posting on Jules Verne. The thing I most hate about flying is not so much the actual flying, but entering a system of total control from check-in to getting your baggage at the destination airport. I last flew for my mother's funeral.
ReplyDeleteI did enjoy a gliding course with a school friend when I was 16. Off we went over the edge of Sutton Bank, launched by an old Leeds bus converted into a launching winch. Once over the edge, we are gliding and could use the up-draft of the wind hitting the precipice to gain height and stay up as long as we wanted.
Logically, you could say the same thing about boats and ships, especially from the era of the great ocean liners like the Great Eastern and the Titanic. I noted in my own posting that human inventive pride could become blasphemous like when the builders of the Titanic challenged God to sink her - she did on her maiden voyage! Where is the limit? I both admire and abhor the prevailing attitude of the late 19th century, and we find the best efforts of engineers and scientists going for the making of weapons of war.
This spirit, for better or worse, came from the Renaissance (Leonardo da Vinci) and from classical Greek, Roman and Egyptian times. Sometimes men excels, and sometimes he destroys art and technology to emphasise his servitude of God. Surely there must be a balance. Hard to find, but find it we must.
I share Fr. Anthony's view of flying. Once one has gone through the security check at the departure airport there is a sense of being a captive until the happy feeling of walking out of the doors of the destination airport and being free again.
ReplyDeleteCertainly flying is unatural. I can only cope with relatively short flights and like too look at the ground to notice landmarks, important rivers, lakes etc and then find those on a map when I am firmly back on the ground.