Opinion: I'll rather have a smug pilot

The NewYorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank

Catching up on The Week

By coincidence, I was on a flight back from Frankfurt when I encountered the above cartoon in an outdated copy of my subscription to The Week magazine. I am probably 6 to 8 weeks behind and I doubt if I’ll eventually catch up with the issues I have missed.

The Week is both an aggregator of the best news stories globally with sections that offer contemporary analysis issues and events, social, political, economic, scientific and about life in general. I will sometimes have The Week lead me to do more research on topics I have been introduced to. The Week has become my preferred magazine subscription.

The point the cartoon makes is succinct and deep; when taken in the context of the political earthquakes of rejected orthodoxy in #Brexit, referendums in Columbia, Italy and Hungary, the election of Donald Trump in the United States of America, it can only be concluded that we live in fearfully interesting times.

Chuck the pilot for a tyro

Now, to imagine that someone rather than a competent, well-trained pilot with the necessary qualifications, essential sobriety, and the presence of mind was at the controls of the flight I took from Frankfurt to Manchester is at best scary and with the knowledge, bordering on the suicidal.

Then to think, in having an unqualified pilot volunteer to take the controls just as all the other passengers' vote to jettison the qualified one just because they feel they have been ignored, disrespected, thought little of or just out of unfounded dislike. No, it does not bear thinking of.

Yet, that is what we did in 2016, the situation exemplified in the statement of Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary when he said, “People in this country have had enough of experts.”

The function of the expert

Now, experts are supposed to have the full knowledge and experience in their areas of expertise. However, being an expert does not make you perfect, even with all the data to hand, there might be variables completely outside the control of the expert to be able to give a definitive statement that represents the outcome that eventually is experienced.

However, the expert is not only necessary, they are also important to the decision-making process especially when met with a crisis that would call on experience to resolve. An expert as a pilot knowing how to land a plane if an engine is lost or the landing gear does not deploy. The expert as a consultant that told me that they knew how to treat my cancer, but the variable outside their control was my physiology, that alone could determine if I survived or died within 5 weeks.

The experts that were thought little of by Michael Gove were the economists who thought post-Brexit Britain would be disastrous. Whilst things have not turned out so bad, things are less than perfect, in fact, everything is in flux with the pound scraping the bottom of the barrel in the foreign exchange markets. Once Brexit is triggered the uncertainty might lead to other unintended shocks to the economy, no one can say, but the experts are there at least to give some guidance.

Taking offence at smug pilots

The other narrative of the ‘smug pilot’ is an aversion to fact, truth, knowledge, and expertise. The tendency not to need to verify anything before it is accepted and relayed as the truth it is not. There was a lot of that during the referendum campaign in the UK and quite a good deal of that in this cycle of the US presidential campaign.

Basically, Donald Trump got away with murder literally and Hillary Clinton could not get away with a mere email scandal, the end result would be an interesting 2017 where a man who has never ever held elective office, whose antecedents in business leaves much to be desired, with such thin skin, given to slights and vituperation, lacking in decorum and class would now assume the mantle of the leader of the free world.

Democracy’s suicide pact

Like the man in the cartoon says, “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?” A man with no verifiable experience apart from the willingness to take a risk that could lead to the loss of souls along with the plane has just been voted in to fly the plane. You wonder if everyone who raised their hands in that plane thought of the possible consequences of their collective votes.

Maybe, they were on a suicide mission just because they have taken umbrage at ‘smug pilots that have lost touch with regular passengers like them’, that is where we are with the democracy we have played in 2016, if we do not crash land with the loss of all souls in a major air disaster, we might just count ourselves lucky.

I’ll rather have a smug pilot at the helm of the plane than someone who makes me feel special, but knows nothing about how to fly a plane.

Decade Blogs - Mister Mobility - Not all those who wander are lost

Decade Blogs

Mister Mobility is a pseudonym and the preferred public identity of a man I have known from the blogging world many years ago when he was a no-nonsense exponent of biblical hermeneutics. I agreed with many of his views and some were compelling enough to force me to comment on some of his blogs.

At the same time he was what I would call a mobile phone propeller head, having owned over 100 devices, he is a compendium of knowledge on mobile device usage and usability.

Then again, he has one of the most grounded heads of my social media interactions, smart, wise and reasonable, he is definitely someone I would love to meet.

I am highly honoured to have Mister Mobility write for my #YourBlogOnMyBlog Series commemorating my Decade of Blogging.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

Simplicity, fun and humour belie a seriousness in the messages and witticisms he shares on social media tweeting with the Twitter handle @Mister_Mobility and blogging at Mobility.ng.

In this article, takes the ordinary and gives it deeper significance, our version of the truth might not be the truth. There is much to learn from this.

Not all those who wander are lost

“There is no-one that I cannot speak the truth to!” Those were the words of my number one mentor some weeks ago when we sat down to discuss certain issues. As I sat there, I reflected on several situations in which he had supposedly spoken the truth to people, and how he had been off the mark to certain degrees, and how his biases had shown through each situation. There is no question about his being a bold, straightforward man. No, his boldness was not the question. Where the question mark lay was what he considered the truth.

I am only in mid-life, but I have seen and heard enough in life to now be amused whenever an individual arrogates sole possession of the truth to himself. More often than not, what he holds to so tightly is his version of what he believes to be the truth. And usually, that version is soiled in some way. That version may largely contain truth, but his outlook and upbringing are likely to have tainted the picture in some way, such that he is missing a key element. And this excludes no-one.

For example, even historical truth is largely a question of who you are reading or listening to. Consider also for a minute, a married couple who have had an altercation, and when each party tells recounts to a third party or counsellor, their two versions do not line up. Yet, neither set out to lie about anything. They have spoken “the truth” to the best capacity of their faculties. Frail, faulty human faculties. They have only recounted the episode as their mortal minds perceived that it happened.

Two pastors might pick up the same Bible, and even though they belong to the same denomination, and perhaps were taught by the same theologian, they still differ to varying degrees on certain subjects. Yet, each believes that he speaks the truth.

Oh, but I am a believer in truth. I believe that there is always a truth to every situation and to every subject. It just seems that God has designed the world and life to mock us each time that we get as smug as to think that we have become authorities on to what is and what is not in every situation. Perhaps He sits and laughs at the frailty of the human mind and our sense of capacity. I have long resigned to that. Perhaps He designed things to make sure that no-one knows it all, has it all, or has it all together. But then, my position might just be off the mark too.

Now, I live at peace with myself, secured in the comfort that I do not have to know it all or have it all together. I remain a learner and keep seeking truth at every point, exploring this huge universe, sometimes threading where others fear, sometimes hitting a wall and then retracing my steps. Life is certainly adventurous that way, though sometimes it hits had. But then, life hits us all hard at some point in time or the other. What do I have to lose? Life as an ongoing adventure works much better for me than life locked up in a mansion, no matter how magnificent and well equipped.

I stumbled upon a phrase some years back, and fell in love with it instantly. It has become one of my rallying cries, a slogan to live by. It is a line penned by J. R. R. Tolkien from the hugely successful The Lord of the Rings. Here is what it says:

"Not all those who wander are lost."

This is the summary of who I have become, the person that I have embraced and the life that I hope to live till my last breath. Perhaps there is another angle to Mister Mobility beyond the field of mobile phones. This is life on the go.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

From the poem, All that is gold does not glitter in Chapter 10 of the Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.

My congratulations to my egbon on his 10 years of blogging.