First Earthrounder: Friedrich Karl von Koenig-Warthausen - Method to the Madness?

The next “grand achievements” and bold actions will be in private space travel and this side of the Atlantic already f***ed up every chance to be part of that race.

But, there will be a time when bold people will have a renaissance and mankind takes its chance to survive – I hope.

At least in the west I don’t see this happening for the foreseeable future. The reason is simply demographics: all western nations have smaller younger than older generations, so the number of young people that can care for their elders, both financially and physically, is limited. Politics is absolutely dominated by older people (the Brexit vote is an example). This creates a climate where
a) there are not many young people around who are traditionally bolder than their elders and
b) those who are around are heavily discouraged from doing anything risky, lest they injure or kill themselves and thus are missed as payers of taxes and pensions.

And of course the prevailing political ideology of neoliberalism wants people to slave their lives away as low-wage workers and consumers, and heavily discourages non-conformist actions.

I guess all this will ultimately change once we explore and colonize space – the Final Frontier – in earnest, or possibly earlier if another major war occurs.

He was the only one doing it though,

Rust was the only one to make it to Moskow, but he was not the only aircraft fleeing into the East.

Yes, we do celebrate a time of over-ultra-conformism and boldly go where no man has gone before – to die on the coach.
But, there will be a time when bold people will have a renaissance and mankind takes its chance to survive – I hope.

Peter wrote:

Anybody could have done that flight, in a plane with enough range, and some rudimentary maps

Yes, could have done, could with the hindsight information we now have about the state of the USSR at the time he did it. He was the only one doing it though, and one of the results was a head rolling in the Soviet armed forces like no one have seen since Stalin’s decimations. To believe you could survive, even a few NM into USSR airspace, requires a rather special state of mind. You also have to remember he was only 18 and with a fresh out of training PPL.

What he did was to prove the impossible to be possible for a whole world. The only reason no one else has done it, is because no one else would even dream of it being possible.

Peter wrote:

There may be other reasons too why people no longer get excited by “grand achievements”…

Very true, but I still think the main reason is our “patience” with nonconformist individuals is at an all time low. The pioneering spirit is not only gone, but is seen as a threat to us all, and as a symptom of madness even. Before it was seen as a bit too bald to be sound in the long run for that individual, but never as a general threat, and never as a sign of madness. Today it’s more important to come up with new ways to be “offended” while we live our ultra-conformist lives.

There may be other reasons too why people no longer get excited by “grand achievements”…

• most people don’t admire technical achievements the way they did in decades past (the last being perhaps Apollo)
• a lot of innovative/adventure stuff has already been done
• a lot of places in the world are not particularly safe to travel to (for 1st World people) whereas in say the 1920s if you looked sufficiently crazy, you were ok
• the early flying pioneers faced significant challenges with engine reliability, and navigation (these are largely gone, with good engines, GPS, satphones, ELTs, etc)
• you always needed lots of money to do these adventures (hence the elaborate PR/sponsorship stunts we see nowadays, leading sometimes to the wheels coming off the whole thing) and nowadays the people who have the money spend it where they get more visibility or whatever

One could admire Rust for what he did, but equally he could have easily got himself shot. In fact the only reason he was not shot was because the chain of command in the USSR didn’t work as it should have done. Anybody could have done that flight, in a plane with enough range, and some rudimentary maps. It was always a one-way trip, after all Not many would admire Rust for his later adventures (do a google). A couple of related threads are here and here.

Cobalt wrote:

Mathias Rust did not push any boundaries except perhaps those of sanity.

My point (well almost). No one “ordinary” will do anything out of the ordinary simply because they feel “they can”. In earlier times we had much more appreciation towards out of the ordinary stuff. We didn’t dismiss them as madness/danger/whatever as fast and as sure as we do today.

EuroFlyer wrote:

We are living in times where nonconformist actions of individuals are easily viewed as a danger for the community. Which is not what humanism teaches us. It’s a dangerous pathway.

Exactly.

We are living in times where nonconformist actions of individuals are easily viewed as a danger for the community. Which is not what humanism teaches us. It’s a dangerous pathway.

Mathias Rust did not push any boundaries except perhaps those of sanity.