“In modern life, people are less and less in charge of important decisions that count. On many fronts, society is trying to prevent you from hurting yourself. This is not done out of concern for the person, it is done to preserve their role in the greater system. The method they choose is most often taking away the ability for an individual to choose risk.
Flying, and homebuilding in particular, is the polar opposite of this. It takes a really negative view of individuals to buy into a system that tries to prevent people from having the means to hurt themselves. It is part of seeing people not as individuals, with their own goals, but as cogs in a grater machine with their value defined by how they serve the group.
…The queen and the hive dictate to the worker bee his limited task, and when he has fulfilled it, he is no longer of any common good, and he is expected to die quietly because the hive programmed him to do so…
In my book, humans are individuals, not insects. Any person who chooses do something simply because he wants to is affirming this. Any person who picks up a tool and sets out on a journey to create something of his choosing, a goal that does not serve the hive of society, can expect both the disdain of the hive and the warm welcome of other individuals. -ww.”
.
——————————————–
.
In the above photo from Corvair College #21 stand the four pilots who have their names engraved on the Cherry Grove Trophy. Left to right are Joe Horton, 2010, Dan Weseman, 2009, P.F. Beck, 2011, and Mark Langford, 2008.