Okay, this story is the exact opposite of the last one. A planeful of passengers willing to sit on the tarmac for eight hours without water or toilet facilities, and a flight crew willing to keep them there, just because American Airlines told them to. Stanley Milgram, call your office!
To those who wonder why we advocates of “thick libertarianism” or “dialectical libertarianism” keep insisting that the triumph of liberty depends on promoting the right cultural values – look no further. People who bow, sheeplike, to the commands of American Airlines are unlikely candidates to resist the commands of a government or would-be government.
What we need to promote is a culture of disobedience: a culture in which the natural response of passengers held captive on an airplane by bureaucratic incompetence will be to calmly but firmly move to the door, or to the emergency window exits if necessary, and walk away. A culture in which the thought “oh no, I couldn’t disobey the orders of the flight crew!” will be as much the exception as today it is the rule. (And a culture in which no air marshal would dare to respond threateningly to such disobedience, knowing that the other passengers would quickly take him down.)
Such a culture may be tough to achieve, since it requires both independent individual thinking and group solidarity. But that’s the attitude we need to promote and encourage.
Finally: a cheer for the heroic pilot who finally disobeyed orders, pulled in to the gate, and released his passengers from captivity. More like him, please.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what the title of this blog post means, read Eric Frank Russell’s And Then There Were None and/or The Great Explosion.
(And great acclaim goes to the reader who figures out what the graphic is referring to ….)
The graphic’s easy: it’s Samuel Jackson (I’m guessing from Snakes on a Plane), and the quote is from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe scene in which the robotic flight crew keeps the passengers in suspended animation until the long-delayed (the producing culture has already withered away) shipment of toiletries arrives……
Great choice, of course, under the circumstances.
Congratulations! One order of Great AcclaimTM is on its way to Jonathan Dresner!
Wait! Stop! I handed out the Great AcclaimTM too quickly. There’s no such work as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe ….
I have maintained for years that no one is as docile or servile as an American. If someone who seems even vaguely official, from a government person to a maitre’d, tells an Americal to do something, he’ll do it. The blustery, angry Freeper types are usually the first in line to submit to any such indignity, which is both ironic and funny.
The reference is correctly attributed to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, part of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (five part trilogy). We apologize for the short delay.
Yes, if you’re citing the books. But I remember it best from the original radio series, which is still my favourite of all the versions. (The original radio series was followed up by a shorter and somewhat different audio series (I actually heard the latter first), a series of books, a tv show, a movie, a computer game (I think), at least one comic book, and an actual real functional Vogon Constructor Fleet which will be here any day.)
I get the larger point. However, airplanes are a good example of the way the government is really everywhere and involved in every decision you make. As far as I know, if you and I were on that plane and we decided to walk past the flight attendants, open the door, slide down the slide and walk to the gate, we would have committed a federal crime by disobeying the orders of the flight crew. Even a company giving its customers the world’s most unbelieveably crappy service has the force of the government backing it up, so people have to decide between using a clean bathroom and ending up in FBI custody.
What we need to promote is a culture of disobedience: a culture in which the natural response of passengers held captive on an airplane by bureaucratic incompetence will be to calmly but firmly move to the door, or to the emergency window exits if necessary, and walk away
I have a hunch that the creation of such a culture would involve large amounts of violent suppression from people who don’t like having their orders disobeyed….
Lisa: As far as I know, if you and I were on that plane and we decided to walk past the flight attendants, open the door, slide down the slide and walk to the gate, we would have committed a federal crime by disobeying the orders of the flight crew.
Quite possibly so. (Though of course kidnapping — which is what the airline’s actions amount to — is also a federal crime. It would all depend on what some court decided.)
But my point is that if the reaction of disobedience were the usual, normal one, it would be impossible to enforce those laws. The question is how to get there.
I’m not necessarily saying that these individual passengers ought to have chosen to disobey. One has to pick one’s battles, not suicidally disobey at every opportunity. But on the other hand, building a culture where disobedience to dumb orders is the norm (and so no longer risky) is going to have to involve a fair bit of risky disobedience at some point.
So Anonymous2‘s
have a hunch that the creation of such a culture would involve large amounts of violent suppression from people who don’t like having their orders disobeyed….
is quite right. A liberation movement will need to think strategically in order to find the medium between ineffectiveness on the one hand and pointless risk-taking on the other.
have a hunch that the creation of such a culture would involve large amounts of violent suppression from people who don’t like having their orders disobeyed….
Don’t you mean the failure to create such a culture?
The creation, on the other hand, of such a culture would involve, firstly, a redesigned school system. The US education system is modeled on the post-Versailles pre-Third Reich (well, not exactly just pre-) German system, the one that gave rise to millions of blind followers of fanaticism. It was/is a perfect space for leaders who are loved, feared, never questioned, and always deferred to. Education is the root.
Just finished reading “And Then There Were None,” and it was great to read a utopian SF story that was served up with humour. The Gands are braver than I am, I’m afraid. Got to work on that.
Raising a ruckus on an airplane anywhere doing anything is a good way to get arrested, beat up, shot, or worse.
– Josh