Air safety instructions
Please fasten your seatbelt.
Make sure your seatback is in its full upright position.
In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion can serve as a flotation device.
And, oh yes — none of this means a damn thing, as air crashes are incredibly random, destructive events that tend to kill everyone on board regardless of seatback positioning.
Frequent flyers aren't fooled. The repetitive, droning, listless strings of air safety instructions unspooled at the outset of every major commercial flight aren't worth listening to. More important things need to be done: things like reading Harry Potter books, sleeping on those insubstantial little pillows, and wishing the damn baby would shut up, already. Someone get that baby a drink!
But despite common interpretation to the contrary, air safety instructions are not reservoirs of critical, life-saving information. They are modern, secular prayers. They are invocations directed at the air safety gods, a ritual that consecrates each flight with the sincere, collective wish that the plane will touch down in one piece, with everyone aboard.
Since the dawn of recorded history, long voyages have been touched off by prayer, rituals of stylized, repetitive gesture and sound meant to align the ship, or caravan, or wagon train with the heavens. "If we pray," people thought, "we're increasing our odds. We're saying: 'hey, don't destroy us. We've got a good mindset about this, and we'd like to make it through this in one piece, and a little wealthier for the bargain, if that's possible.'"
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"Your notion is interesting as a cultural angle, but don't kid yourself..."
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In a modern society, prayer — even non-denominational prayer, whatever that is — just isn't an acceptable way to frame a whole-heartedly secular event like taking an airplane trip. But if the flight attendants/ priests weren't up there going through the same motions, and making the same solemn chant as the engines throttled up, we'd worry.
We'd know something was missing.
— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)
