Fooling with fate: June 07, 1999 issue of New Thinking

June 07, 1999 New Thinking:
Fooling with fate

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June 07, 1999

Fooling with fate

By Gerry McGovern

I do hate early mornings! Yesterday, I sat on the plane from Dublin to Amsterdam in a half-there mode. Suddenly, there were raised voices from the cabin staff. The word “smoke” pierced the air. There was a smell of something burning.

Luckily, we were on the ground. The staff urged us to leave the plane immediately. “Leave your baggage!” Some passengers still tried to open the overhead bins. Other passengers became agitated. A “Leave your baggage” chorus rose up.

We hurried off the plane. As I hurried I didn’t really feel fear. I commanded myself not to over-react, to be calm in my pace. I have what is perhaps an unusual character. I can panic over the simplest of things and yet when the situation becomes very grave I remain calm. As I passed by the wing of the plane I remembered how it was full of fuel. I felt a slight twitch but perversely wondered what it would be like to die in a gulf of flames.

The fault turned out to be minor – a leak from a hydraulic pump whose oil fell on warm ground and turned into a smoky steam. We all boarded a new plane an hour later, pretty much as if nothing had happened.

This morning, at breakfast, I read about a plane crash in the United States. Landing at Little Rock National Airport in a sudden storm, the plane skidded off the rain-drenched runway, cracking in two as it hit a barrier.

I sit on a plane on the way home to Dublin as I write this. I can feel the very sensation as the tires vainly try to grip the ground. I can hear the crack and almost see the outside rushing in with rain, wind, pain and death, as the plane splits in two.

Yet, my hands are not shaking. I look out my window. There is blue sky and little wind. And even if the weather was up, I’d still risk flying. It is human nature to fool with fate and dice with death. “A lot of people criticize Formula One as an unnecessary risk,” Nike Lauda states in an ad in the paper I’m reading. “But what would life be like if we only did what’s necessary?”

Indeed. We are what we are, we will always probe and test and we will never accept the impossible. So, as we speed towards a new millennium, where are our inquisitive and unstoppable minds taking us? Computers and the Internet are growing like grass around us. But other things we make with our minds are growing too.

Genetic engineering is where we finally take control of the wheel of Nature. Genetically modified foods and pesticides flow through our supermarkets and are spread on our fields.

Our hand is on a wheel that up until now was turned as a result of millions of years of evolutionary trial and error processes. We can only see a short distance ahead. We literally have no clue how our genetic modifications will affect the larger ecosystem or the long-term future.

I have no problem with taking risks, once I have some idea what I am getting myself in for. However, this genetic plane is taking off without proper safety procedures, flown upwards by a blind belief in science. I, for one, would rather know more before I take this trip.

Gerry McGovern

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“A lot of people criticize Formula One as an unnecessary risk. But what would life be like if we only did what’s necessary?”