In the August issue of Flying magazine, senior editor Tom Benenson contributes a column on “what to do if you bend an airplane.” It’s a discussion of the differences between an accident and an incident, the terms having precise meanings under FAA regulations, and what to do if you find yourself in either one. One thing pilots who have been in an accident or incident can do is file an ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting System) report, which is used to gather statistical data. In theory, if you file that report, the FAA can’t use information in it to jeopardize your pilot’s license. The government wants to gather accurate data and knows that pilots won’t fess up if they fear losing their flying privileges. Many occurrences would go unreported if reporting them resulted in penalties.
After giving real-life examples of accidents and incidents and what problems can arise when trying to deal with the federal bureaucracy, Benenson concludes his otherwise sensible column with this advice for those who bend their airplanes: “I’d file an ASRS report too, just to be on the safe side—sort of like taking a morning-after pill.”
Thud. What was that image doing there?
No doubt Benenson thought his metaphor innocent. Let’s assume he doesn’t know that the morning-after pill is abortifacient, and let’s hope that, if he were to know, it would make a difference to him. My purpose isn’t to complain about him or his column. What bothers me is that we live in a culture in which such off-the-cuff comments raise few eyebrows.
Benenson saw nothing wrong with his remark. I presume his editor didn’t either. I wonder whether any other readers will see a problem. There used to be a time, not many decades ago, when national magazines frowned on any mention of contraceptives. If contraceptives were available at drug stores, they were hidden behind the counter and had to be asked for.
There is no such reticence nowadays. Quite the opposite. When at the drug store, looking for cold remedies, it’s hard not to find yourself confronted with a whole shelf of such stuff. You may suffer mild embarrassment and find yourself involuntarily moving aside a few feet, so no one will think you planted yourself there on purpose, but the real embarrassment should be reserved for our culture. What have things come to? It’s not just that most people have become desensitized to the public existence and mention of the morning-after pill and its relatives—it’s that they actually use them, so of course they see nothing wrong with them or with mentions of them.
We often are cautioned against people who don’t practice what they preach. The real problem is people who preach what they practice. If they practice contraception, they will preach it, directly or indirectly. Belief follows action. Engage long enough in a wrong action, and you end up believing it to be meritorious. You conform your thinking to your deeds—a fine way to minimize shame—instead of conforming your deeds to your (right) thinking.
As in so much else, our culture has things exactly backwards.