| Silly but Noble |
4 August 2003
|
Austrian Flies Across Channel without Aircraft
Felix Baumgartner entered the history books last week as the first man to fly across the English Channel without an airplane. Put that way, it was quite a feat, but in actuality, he sailed from Dover to Calais as he dropped by parachute from a plane. It is yet another rather silly attempt at being the first that does show a certain charming aspect of the human species that often gets lost in its rather mundane nastiness.
Being the first at anything bestows a certain immortality upon him who achieves first-ness. In aviation, Mr. Baumgartner joins the Wrights, Lindbergh, Gagarin and Armstrong -- excellent company even if his accomplishment is of a much lesser order. His act itself is rather unimportant in the spiritual sense, but what matters is his drive. The demand that each human spirit makes to prove its significance has a young Austrian jumping out of a perfectly good airplane early on a summer's morning.
In the end, the human race does not matter on a cosmic level. This insignificant planet orbits an unremarkable star is a rather irrelevant suburb of a galaxy among billions. The three-score and ten years a human gets (with some variation) is a blink of an eye in the life of the third rock from the sun. Yet, there is something inside that forces members of this species to demand that the universe sit up and take notice.
Fame may be fleeting, and society does not make the distinction between fame and notoriety as it ought. But at the core of the human condition is the need not for fame but for achievement that will yield fame. It is that desire from which arises any hope this race may have to become noble.
He did not die for his fellows, nor did he uncover a cure for their ailments. He did not stop a war, nor did he invent a new industry that will bring ease and comfort. But one morning at the end of July, Mr. Baumgartner did something that sums up the human condition -- despite the fleeting nature of human existence, he tried to do something that said, "I am here."