Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
DISAPPOINTMENT
IS INEVITABLE
Recently
I said farewell at Auckland International Airport to somebody who was leaving
on a long journey overseas. It was a touching moment for those of us who were
saying goodbye. But – as you will know from your own airport experiences –
there are always those awkward moments where the farewell party stand around
idly while waiting for the traveller to turn up, and then waiting for the
traveller to check in luggage.
And
it was in such an awkward, idle moment that my eyes strayed up, as they often
do when I visit this airport, to a quotation from Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall”
emblazoned on one wall. It reads thus:
For I dipt into the future, far as
human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all
the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce,
argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping
down with costly bales.
The
quotation’s relevance to an airport is obvious. Even if Tennyson probably
conceived of them as some sort of balloon or airship, here’s a vision of flying
vehicles carrying precious cargoes across the skies, which is what many
aircraft now do. Of course you can’t blame Tennyson for not seeing that most
aircraft would one day be devoted to shuttling tourists around the world, and
that this in itself would become their major form of commerce. Despite this,
the quotation can still sit there validly as an accurate prophecy of (part of)
the future.
Here’s
the problem, however. Doesn’t Tennyson’s vision, as now quoted, seem far more
romantic and idealistic than the reality of commercial aircraft? Look at the
words Tennyson uses. “Heavens” rather than “skies”. “Wonder”. “Argosies”, which
at once conjures up images of stately galleons or the like. “Magic sails”
suggesting something almost inconceivable. “Pilots of the purple twilight”, at
once sounding like heroic adventurers. “Dropping down” rather than “landing”. “Costly
bales” rather than “expensive cargoes”.
Put it all together, and it says that one day people will gasp in wonder
and amazement at these magnificent flying machines, and see them as heroic.
And
of course, we don’t. Once something is an everyday reality, it no longer amazes
us. We take it for granted. This is what I have dubbed the “law of mundanity”.
Aeroplanes landing and taking off, be they carrying costly cargoes or not? We
don’t gasp in amazement and we don’t see their pilots as daring adventurers.
The likes of Jean Batten (honoured elsewhere in the airport for her flight from
England to New Zealand) might have been seen as daring adventurers eighty or
ninety years ago. Aviation then really was a perilous adventure. But if we
thought now that simply by flying we were going on a potentially dangerous
adventure, then we wouldn’t book our flight. ‘Planes may and do sometimes
crash, but their general reliability and ordinariness is why we fly on them at
all. Do crowds gather in wonderment as they take off and land? Crowds are more
likely to complain about the noise.
Of
course there are those who say we should
feel a sense of wonder. These are those boosters of science and applied science
who often appear in TV documentaries, telling us how wonderful technology is,
how ingenious inventors were and are, how amazing are the discoveries human
beings have made. They have a point. Perhaps we should spend more time thinking
about the collective genius that has created our world. But human nature always
works against this sense of wonder. When we are used to something we are used
to it, and we do not gasp in wonderment. It’s just part of our everyday life. We
do not see the wings of aircraft as “magic sails” any more than we gather
around to gasp in wonderment at the washing machine or microwave.
This
reality always makes me a profound sceptic whenever I hear predictions of
marvels that might one day exist. Scepticism about our future is a growing mood
in current society. Even so, we still sometimes have utopias dangled before us,
offering the conquest of all diseases, the solution of all social problems and
the complete resolution of environmental issues. By all means let us work
towards these things. But let us also remember that, when and if they come to
pass, human beings will still yawn, scratch and regard the new world as mundane
reality. They will not live in a permanent state of inspired wonderment. Where
utopias are concerned, disappointment is inevitable.
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Additional comments for pedants: The above is really the totality of my sermon for
the day, but there are probably a few
people who want to point out an obvious thing about Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall”.
In its totality, it isn’t consistently
optimistic about the future – and as he aged, Tennyson lost much of such optimism
as he did have. Indeed, many years later Tennyson wrote a much more pessimistic
sequel called “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After”, which damned industrialisation
and the modern world. In itself, “Locksley Hall” is a moody young man’s poem
(Tennyson was 26 when he wrote it in 1835, but it was not published until 1842).
It begins as a self-pitying monologue – the speaker laments that a woman whom
he loved has married somebody else and, of course, as most embittered lovers
do, he tells us what a bad lot her husband is. But this leads him on to a
variety of speculations on the future. A fuller version of the section quoted
at Auckland International Airport reads thus:
For I dipt into the future, far as
human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all
the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce,
argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping
down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting,
and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling
in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the
south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples
plunging thro' the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer,
and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the
Federation of the world.
Note
that the underlined lines predict a future in which aircraft will also be used
for war, before Tennyson returns to the more optimistic view of a “world
parliament” (the UN or its like). One
could say that the partial quotation presented at the airport misrepresents
Tennyson’s vision of what future aviation would be.
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