Lessons in Human Nature… Most people who heard about it developed a theory of what happened. It was a terrorist attack. A hijack. The body was torn open by material weakness, pulverizing the plane. It encountered aliens. We find affirmation or refutation of our theory in the findings of big news agencies, the Malaysian press conferences and the global aviation experts who give their opinions. And so we participate in a mystery plot unfolding live, like a multimedia global reality version of the board game Cluedo. It is a tragic story that draws our attention to several traits of human nature. First of all, the story shows that we have a tremendous capacity for empathy. We get hooked to the sadness of complete strangers. Despite our ever-deepening immersion in our individual digital bubbles, we empathize with the sorrow of the victims’ families. We imagine what we would feel in their place. We can feel their horrendous desperation and frustration that officials have been clueless for so long. We place ourselves in the shoes of the 239 people on board. If our theory is that an accident happened, we imagine what it must have been like to be on that plane when fate struck. We may mix the images in our mind’s eye with memories of the fear we felt during a flight with particularly bad turbulence. If we assume a hijack, we may see flashes of blockbuster movies, like Air Force One. Second, the tragedy underlines that we are curious like crazy. We can get addicted to news updates. Some people roam all global news sites to find the latest snippets, updates, rumours and conspiracy theories. And news media diligently feed our craving for information. We are being educated on what a transponder does, how radar tracking works and are even invited to help analyse the satellite images of the suspected region of a potential crash. We are told to wonder how a plane can disappear nowadays with so much technology at our disposal. We absorb it because we have to know the solution to this baffling mystery, a final answer which has been withheld from us for so long. Third, there is the feeling of transcending political divisions for a common humanitarian cause. We read about 24 countries in the region normally locked in territorial disputes working brotherly together to trace the lost plane. We feel a sense of warmth that despite opposing political interest, all of us are also fundamentally human and can always meet each other at that level. It is an encouraging interpretation of events, even though this sugar-coating is no doubt encouraged for PR purposes by the countries in question as well. Yet, underlying all the attention is of course a deeper force, which is not readily discussed. It is the fear of our own death. The story of the Malaysian Flight is a reminder of the fragility of our existence also. Our minds tell us that it could have been us. And this fear can override the reality: that the statistical odds of expiring in a plane crash are tiny. And yet we are sensing that disaster can strike at us too. We never know when. We want to know the real story of what happened and what caused it, because we want to get a grip on the terrifying possibility of suffering a similar fate. We need to calm our own existential fears, peeked by this distant calamity. We expect officials to take new measures, to prevent this tragedy from occurring again, so that we can mentally close this episode for ourselves. Airlines offer impeccable service, great food, comfort, on time delivery, correct baggage handling, low ticket prices, etc., to help us forget that flying will, for humans, always remain a flirtation with death—even though it is statistically safe. We have big brains, which allow us to fulfil what once was an elusive dream: for man to fly like a bird. But it is not nature that has given us wings, we ourselves have. The real lessons are that whatever the causes of the Malaysian Flight tragedy will turn out to be, it held so many people in its grip because it reminded us of our own eventual demise. The Malaysian Flight kept us in that awareness without release for many days in a row. And it is a feeling that we simply cannot stand.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 18:19:04 +0000
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