Reflections on the Absurdity of Human Sentience

Once upon a time I cared. About life, about others, about the more altruistic expressions of human striving, about the noble-mindedness I felt human beings were capable of attaining, and the higher, finer reflections of ordered intelligence to which an enlightened humanity supposedly aspires. I was once touched by human suffering, dismayed at the needless cruelties, and apalled at the present disregard for others that obtains more often than not in today's America.

Not now. I no longer find myself caring about much of anything, and that, for me, is probably somewhat as close to a genuine loss of innocence as any person may come. This great loss of all illusions is a source of profound sadness, of course, but the realisation is also something of an awakening, an awareness of the fact that in the final accounting, nothing has any greater value, any higher meaning, nor any purer cachet of absolute worth than whatever fiction of valuation I may ascribe to it thereof. Interestingly, it has taken me 62 years to reach this point of devastatingly comprehensive intellectual hopelessness.

I suppose my latest reaffirmation of this stems directly from a growing disenchantment I have experienced with my local air museum, an institution I have supported with unflagging enthusiasm for the past 10 years. I was out at the museum yesterday, taking care of the museum aircraft I serve as ‘crewchief’ on and repairing corrosion on the plane’s nose radome. During the course of this activity, taking place out in the middle of the museum’s airpark, the museum’s recently installed executive director came over to discuss something with another individual who stood nearby, chatting.

The director is a woman, a 40ish custard dumpling of a female who more closely resembles a Pitbull than a person. I say Pitbull owing more to her pugnacious habit of reactively deflecting any and all creative input from others she associates with at the museum than from any overt canine resemblance (that would be dishonoring my doggie friends; something I am loathe to do out of respect for man’s best friend). She knows little about aviation in general and harbors a palpable dislike for the military, reflected in her mind-boggling conviction that military aviation has no place in the story of aeronautical history (!). I mean, how stupid can the director of an air museum be, f'crissakes?!

The museum recently hosted a former North Korean pilot named No Kum-Sok, who in 1953 defected from North Korean to the South with his Russian-built MiG-15bis aircraft. Occurring just as the Korean war truce had been signed, No’s flight had tremendous importance, both scientifically and historically, for the West had been keenly interested in obtaining and examining the Russian MiG so as to compare it directly against the US’s F-86 Sabre, ever since knowledge of the MiG’s development by the USSR had leaked out.

A bit of digressive context is necessary here, I feel, in order to fully understand the event (both No’s historic escape to freedom and his presentation at our air museum recently, some 55 years after the fact) and how important it was in terms of the greater history of the immediate post-WWII/pre-Korean war era.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Nazi Germany’s several decades of accelerated aeronautical research and development suddenly became available (simultaneous with cessation of hostilities) to the victorious Western Allies. Both the Soviet Union and the United States eagerly absorbed Germany’s advanced scientific and technological aeronautical data at about the same time, and from that vast treasure trove of information developed the jet turbine powered fighter aircraft of the future on both sides of Joseph Stalin’s ‘Iron Curtain’. In the West, North American Aviation, makers of the excellent P-51 Mustang fighter, in particular applied German findings on the benefits of supersonic swept-wing aircraft design to a straight-winged, subsonic jet engined aircraft it had been developing for the US Navy (the US Navy’s FJ-1 Fury). This resulted in the US Air Force’s subsequent F-86 Sabre, an aircraft generally acknowledged by most aeronautical historians to be the finest early post-war jet fighter in the world. In the USSR, the same captured German swept-wing research was applied to the Mikoyan-Gurevitch MiG-9, another jet-engined, straight-winged, late war Russian fighter design; from the modified straight-winged MiG-9 came the famed swept-wing MiG-15. When the Korean War began in the late 40s, both of these new generation, swept-wing jet aircraft encountered each other for the first time in the skies over Korea.

Since both of these two premier post-war jet fighters derived from the same common body of advanced German aeronautical research, there were a great many engineers in the West who were eager to compare the two fighters directly, so as to determine which was the better machine. During the Korean War of the very early 50s, Sabres and MiGs were both fierce and formidable antagonists (when flown by capably trained pilots) as both the USSR and the United States seized upon the Korean War as an opportunity to actually test their new designs in active combat operations. Owing to American observations made during that combat, many US pilots held the opinion that the MiG-15 was the slightly better aircraft, owing to its higher ceiling and appreciably faster rate of climb (this turned out to not be the case and eventually it was recognised that the Sabre was by far the superior aircraft, for a number of reasons).

Therefore, when North Korea’s Lt. No decided to flee the North for freedom in the South of Korea, the acquisition of his completely intact MiG-15bis (“bis” in Russian means ‘improved’) aircraft by the Western powers was both a technological and scientific windfall of the first order, since at last the United States would be able to perform direct, side-by-side flight evaluations of both aircraft (the West’s Sabre and the USSR’s MiG).

Although the West had offered a $100,000 reward to any defecting North Korean pilot who delivered a MiG intact to the US forces, Lt. No ironically had had no knowledge of this prior to his departure for South Korea; his motivation had been simply a (life-long) dream to seek freedom in America and to remove himself from the brutal oppression of North Korea’s tyrannical regime. Despite the great historical and technological significance of his flight to freedom in a MiG-15, Lt. No’s story is far greater and more compelling in its human aspects than merely an account of his escape. Beyond all of that, the information obtained as a result of his flight figured significantly in subsequent Western aeronautical research developments for years afterward, even into the hot ‘Cold War’ spanning the late 50s, 60s, and 70s decades.

For all of these reasons, the story of Lt. No Kum-Sok (who is now aged 76, but remarkably youthful still) is a universally important and inspiring one, a saga of personal courage and determination that deserved the widest possible audience in our Greater Sacramento area, given the fascinating cicumstances of his flight in 1953. As a major California location for former defense department activity (hosting 3 different important US Air Force bases--McClellan, Travis, and Mather Air Force Bases--that were critically important to US defense for more than 70 years) and with more than 33,000 retired Air Force personnel living nearby, one would think that there would be a substantial amount of keen local interest in Lt. No Kum-Sok’s flight to freedom in his Russian-built MiG. Given additionally that No’s motivation for the flight was his singular burning desire to be a free man, living eventually as a citizen of the United States, it would be logical to assume that the Sacramento area’s many flag-waving, politically right-wing, God-fearing patriots would also find his story quite compelling and illuminating. However, only a thorough and professional media relations effort to make the public aware of his visit would achieve the intent of informing the community of his visit, no matter how inherently worthwhile his presentation was.

Although the museum’s presentation by Lt. No had been a limited success, with over 100 people attending, I took the opportunity to ask our museum’s executive director why there had not been more intensive local media publicity in advance of his visit (since I had seen absolutely no media coverage informing the public of his speaking engagement at our museum prior to the event). By logical reckoning, there should have been a crowd some five to six times the number who eventually attended, given the area's size and population. Her response to my question was both predictable and extremely annoying, as our 'executive director' then launched into a stream of endless and wholly unacceptable explanations of ‘why not…’.

I won’t bother to recount any of them, since they were all so patently lame, but suffice it to say that I remain convinced she didn’t expend anywhere near an appropriate amount of effort to get the media word circulating about No’s visit beforehand. Had she put as much effort into publicizing his visit as she did into her string of dissociative excuses, I have little doubt we could have attracted quite a sizable crowd (and it was an absolutely fascinating presentation, to say the least).

Finally, after hearing far more of this emotionally reactive and defensive excuse-making than I could comfortably stomach, I rather heatedly reminded her that a very important part of our museum’s agenda was to help elevate public awareness of aerospace history. Beyond that, the basic foundation of our effort ought properly be to promote public awareness of the importance of history in general, and education specifically.  In developing my point, I pointedly referred to the need to try to reach as many of our ‘figuratively brain-dead, limited awareness, dim-bulb public’ as possible to make them more mindful about important events of history in the last 6 decades that have elapsed since the end of the Second World war. [I recognise my error in so forcefully disparaging the public with those specific words, but I admit to having an extremely LOW view of the ‘average’ person and statistics will comfortably demonstrate that ‘stupid’ outweighs ‘intelligent’ by an appreciable margin in almost any group assay, no matter whose criteria you employ for that purpose.]

This produced more shallow excuses, more pathetic defensiveness, and more of the same sort of dissociative declamations that my original question about the lack of publicity over No’s visit had produced from our museum’s Pitbull.

At that point, I simply lost patience entirely with this infuriatingly myopic person and went back to my work on our aircraft’s nosecone. Despite the sudden end of our conversation, the compelling stupidity of her arguments remained boiling over in my mind as I endlessly mulled over the possible reasons WHY she failed to understand the importance of raising the public’s consciousness on matters of broadly historical significance…events that affected all of us in the nation, in one way or another.

After a while, I felt the strong urge to strangle this vapid woman in mid-utterance subside a bit, but as quickly as the anger ebbed, it was replaced by an uncomfortable sense of futile resignation over the fact that this denial of the importance of history is simply another symptom of a national culture that is rapidly losing itself in similar vapid superficialities. A nation like ours that wallows in escapist self-gratification (that serves no greater purpose than immediate, short-term diversion from our increasingly pressing realities) can hope for no greater sense of social achievement, in my opinion.

I suppose part of my angst stems from a life-long belief in the value of education, in consciousness raising, and in the importance of elevating higher awareness, as basic but vital tools with which to understand and improve upon our common life experience. My mother was a teacher and on brief reflection of this fact, I probably acquired part of that ‘evangelical’ fervor for promoting learning from her influence. On a more objective level, however, I truly believe that improved understanding comes principally from cultivating broader (as well as specific) life awareness. Thus, education is really the critical key (perhaps the ONLY key) that dispels human ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness, and that unlocks all of the behavioral fetters of our culturally ‘acquired stupidity’ (that is, raw ignorance replaced with the sort of meaningless, commercially purpose-directed 'product related awareness' that is the main result of a consumer culture whose terms of understanding are dictated almost exclusively by commercial advertising priorities).

When I gaze about and see nothing but short-sighted, reactive ignorance on the part of others everywhere I look, my first and truest reaction is to feel sn urgent need to help counteract all these alarming symptoms of cultural decline by stimulating interest in the importance of learning as an important means of helping others rise above the great swamp of mediocrity that today so perfectly characterises mainstream American culture. But now, shortly after that first surge of cultural evangelism hits, it is quickly replaced (more often than not) by a stronger feeling of utter disinterest in the whole subject, accompanied by a strong sense of the utter futility in even attempting to change the status quo. This total lack of care and concern is probably the not altogether surprising (perhaps even highly predictable) product of a lifetime of formerly optimistic idealism. It is generally recognised by behavioral psychologists, after all, that the most egregiously cynically jaded individuals among us began life as the extreme opposite, that today’s incinerated hulk of bitterly burned-out despair was originally a passionate torch of flaming idealistic hope that has been relentlessly and progressively quenched by the waters of obdurate reality.

As I enter my 6^th decade of life, I find that I have finally been forced to accept the fact of humanity’s mass senselessness as a given, that the human race will likely continue to repeat the same egregious mistakes and utterly futile errors of judgment until science and technology have finally reached the point where enough power to destroy the entire planet is concentrated directly under the fore-digit of one powerful person, who with a single figurative press of a button can terminate the evolved vacuity of human ‘intelligence’ on this planet. It is a depressing thought to say the least, but often the only valid one that remains from the many collected together during that first brightly altruistic half of life, when the final stage of life descends in its last half.

As long as no one is interested in learning from our past, from our endless mistakes, or from our collective experiences (which is, after all, what ‘history’ is all about), there is no hope for uniformly reaching a higher understanding of what life (or at least human consciousness) is all about. All we can do, if one accepts that logic as compelling, is continue to grovel about in the slime of our conventional, abject mediocrity until we are taken (involuntarily) from life once and for all. Or, following Hunter S. Thompson's and Ernest Hemingway’s example, perhaps remove ourselves from it voluntarily, by our own hand.

I say all of this as a person who does not allow himself to be misled by the false promises and baseless hopes offered by a belief in some higher transcendent power (deity) who ‘cares’ about individual human life. Is this admission mentally depressing, spiritually repulsive, and utterly loathsome to contemplate seriously? Of course it is. The reality of it, however, and once all the fanciful fairy tale promises have been identified, culled out, and cast aside, is irrepressibly factual: there really is nothing in life that mandates true care and concern. Everything is relative. Everything is only as real or as false as we believe it to be and there are no infinite absolutes at all to concern ourselves with when it comes to the human condition, or human spiritual or moral behavior. Sentience is seen therefore to actually be a curse, instead of a blessing.

If nothing matters in that greater, higher, and transcendent sense, it makes little sense to prolong the grand human experiment any further. If that magic button that would instantly destroy all sentient life on the planet were situated directly under my finger, I can unequivocally say I would not hesitate to push it.

That isn’t to say I would not experience some fleeting moments of regret just before initiating that act of universal extermination of all human sentience, for I would indeed experience some highly personal reservations, but it would not serve to deter me, however, since the senselessness of all human life remains as an objective reality all unto itself. Not to worry unduly, however, as I harbor no strong compulsions to become a mass murderer or an utterly inhuman, brutal tyrant (like a Slobodan Milošević, or a Radovan Karadžić, for example). No 'Uni-Bomber' here, no foaming-at-the mouth radical terrorist. Just an amateur philosopher who is really, REALLY tired of the whole human mess.

It’s simply that…..once upon a time I cared. About life, about others, about the more altruistic expressions of human striving, about the noble-mindedness I felt human beings were capable of attaining, and the higher, finer reflections of ordered intelligence to which humanity supposedly aspires.  I was once profoundly touched by human suffering, dismayed by the needless cruelties, and apalled at the callous disregard for others that obtains more often than not in today's America.

I am happy to state that I no longer care: I am finally…empty.

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For an excellent background on former North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok's remarkable escape to freedom in his MiG-15bis (and the attendent circumstances), please dial up:  http://www.psywarrior.com/Moolah.html .

No Kum-Sok wrote a wonderful book about his experience titled 'A Mig-15 To Freedom', published by McFarland. ISBN 978-7864-3106-9. You may find it at Amazon Books. It remains an epic of determination to live peacefully, with human dignity and individual freedom.