Now Presenting: Human Flight!

Human flight is a marvel I still can’t quite wrap my head around. We take a machine that weighs half a million pounds, and effortlessly send it up into the sky. For hours, we control its movement to a tee, and eventually, we safely plop it back onto Earth’s surface. The same surface our species was glued to for the previous ~300,000 years. All in a day’s work. Through feats of engineering I can scarcely begin to explain, we’ve been able to do this so reliably that the humans lucky enough to literally fly are now so habituated to the idea that they can barely be bothered to pause Netflix as they defy gravity and ascend heavenward.

Now that I’m finished making public my childlike fascination with jets, I’ll get to the point of the article…

I would imagine that over the millennia, dreams of human flight were very likely influenced by our captivation at seeing birds, bugs, and bats make light work of the invisible force that kept us grounded. They let us know that it’s possible, in the same way the fish let us know that it’s possible to forgo air for respiration.

What’s strange is that we don’t really use the tactics of the birds, bugs, or bats in flight. By my understanding, the glide is the only function of a jet that resembles the flight mechanisms of our flying friends (there are exceptions, such as the aerodynamics of a peregrine falcon influencing certain supersonic models). But, generally speaking, our flight seems not to resemble the wing-flap motion used by these animals to gain elevation. Instead, our jets opt for intense thrust, burning kerosene, deafening runway acceleration, or, to quote Talladega Nights, “hot, nasty, badass speed.” A far cry from the flurry of wing-flaps needed for a butterfly to get off its legs.

It makes me wonder: would we have dreamed of flight had we no animal examples of its possibility in the first place? Without these animals’ influence, would our dreams have been delayed, until finally, a visionary discovers its possibility? Would the discovery ever happen at all?

One part of me thinks it would still happen, albeit later. Considering we don’t seem to use the same techniques, it’s not like we desperately needed to see the birds in flight to understand how to do it ourselves. There are parts we imitate, but overall, the method appears to be quite different. It inspired, but it didn’t explain.

The other part of me thinks that without the plain example of the possibility of flight, our whole understanding of gravity would be so drastically different that we might never even consider the idea of defying it. It’s hard to consider something that has no examples to spark such consideration. Without seeing the rhino use its horns, we might never realize the use for tools. Without the waves of the oceans and the currents of the rivers, we might never understand the weight and power of moving water. Luckily, we had an example to ignite the thought.

Maybe we would’ve found these things on our own… sharp tools, hydroelectric power, flight. But it’s worth considering that without a natural example, maybe we wouldn’t have.

“Hi John. You sorta just wasted my time by saying a whole lot of ‘what if’s’ without really suggesting anything. I’ll be unsubscribing now.”

My idea in bringing this up: what other possibilities are out there that we have yet to discover, purely because we don’t have a clear natural example? What crazy considerations are we failing to make that could send us into a totally different style of living?

Just keep your eyes and mind open. You might be the one to notice.