Confederation of the Polish Dunces and the Illusion of Intelligent Design

The Poles are a charming, but utterly irrational lot. The speculations and general chaos that followed the crash of the presidential airplane, that irrevocably and efficiently sent the Polish president, Kaczynski – and his doubtful entourage of ninety or so souls straight to earthly demise – and media immortality – proves as much.

One foggy morning in early April, on an ill-advised flight enroute to a grim, joyless and historically laden destination in Russia – an equally ill-advised and foolish decision was taken. That decision, along with the usual chaotic assortment of parameters led to the crash of the presidential airplane. As the plane struck the treetops, and seconds later, the ground – all onboard were killed. The fact quickly made media cover stories all over the world. As condoleances from across the planet steadily drifted into Poland, the country itself seemed to grind to a complete halt. For brief hours, the world indeed seemed to hold its breath as possible causes and victims were debated. Within the span of mere  days however, the world – being the world – quickly forgot the whole ordeal. After all, even in our overexposed, near-global society, nothing is news for long. With about the same speed as the incident lost media coverage across the globe, it gained momentum in Poland.

And to be fair, its understandable. To some extent, at least. A significant number of country officials and government highbrows managed to squeeze their inflated personalities into the same, Russian-made airborne deathtrap, Tupolev. As the Poles rushed to commemorate the grim Katyn-anniversary all caution had been abandoned. Never mind being uninvited and late for the official ceremony (said deceased president not being a great protege of the Russian government that hosted the event).

For any company, anywhere in the world, putting all of its executives into one plane (and of ill-reputed, Russian produce) is unthinkable. Obviously, putting most of the proverbial eggs in the proverbial basket – is not of proverb status in Poland (or didn’t use to be, at least). So, the Poles were faced with the tricky, but far from impossible task of replacing said deceased officials. In time that would happen. Even the Poles seem to have contingency plans for these kinds of crises. But it wouldn’t happen before blooming out into a full-blown, tragic, nationwide spectacle of irrationality.

Personal drama, random, altruistic, kindness toward strangers and grieving families aside: We’re talking about politicians. Historically – hardly an irreplacable lot. In fact, they quite often display a rather interesting Medusa-like quality, at least speaking in terms of survivability. And while certainly a tragedy on a personal level, this was hardly a loss of any thoughtful, intellectual elite (the word “elite”, being unfortunately heavily overused immediately following the crash). Not in the grand scheme of things. These were not the scientists, artists and thinkers that would save us all.

But I digress. Because who the passengers of that unlucky flight actually were is of absolutely no consequence. In any way. They could have been important, they could have been just a bunch of right-wing follies and friends of said follies that for all intents and purposes probably wouldn’t have had (politically) survived the upcoming re-election anyway. No, the nature of the problem is the intepretation that the Poles almost collectively pinned to the event. With that nationwide, disgusting habit of theirs, they immediately forgot all about rationality and attributed the accident to God’s work (or the Russians, but even the most paranoid of Poles soon discarded the idea, thankfully) – and to whatever arcane reason said God might have had. Never mind the fact that some prominent personalities of course saw the accident as a way to immortalise, nay, canonise, a mediocre, daft, impopular president. No, The Poles chose not to see the accident for what it actually is, and for what all accidents to some extent are: a case of bad luck. That, and the fact that few things, if any, had been done to stack the odds in favour of that ominous flight.

Statements made in the press by guests of the president that for some reasons couldn’t attend the ceremony, thus escaping the accident were ridiculous, not to mention outright ignorant of their own faith: “I’m guessing God had other plans for me”, said one. “I escaped the ordeal through the providence of God”, said another. Amazing, in truth. And what an affront to all of those, and families of those to whom this providence of God obviously did not extend. Now, that’s the Catholic spirit for you: “Hooray, I live, praise God, never mind that all of my brethren are dead!”. Do the Poles really not see the existentialist nightmare brewing in statements as those?

Or perhaps, might it be so that as humans, we wish to keep our views of things unaltered, unchallenged and rather than accepting facts that would make us change our view of ourselves and the outside world, we simply tune events to become what we wish them to be. And how can a whole country succumb to this sort of magical thinking?

Einstein once said that: “God does not play dice”, but that was said as an outside defence to the mounting evidence that not only does God play dice, there are irrefutable facts pointing to the fact that the dice might be the actual God. And that any intelligent design, fate, and the existence of a human, sentient race is a very minor, very interesting circumstance – amounting to nothing but luck. A shot in the dark with ongoing results, the riddle of which has baffled the world of physics for close to fifty years, ever since the human race arrived at a place where we had the actual means and knowledge to pose the question: Are we – or are we not the product of an intelligent, sentient, design (God)? Obviously, there are things we do not yet know. But we understand the universe. And we understand that it all comes down to quantum decisions, made deep inside the atoms. Not an outside God. Still, the Poles hang on to their metaphysical crutch.

To my mind, few things are worse than hanging onto dead concepts. To pray to Gods, long ago departed – who’s ears are no longer here, but who’s judgment certainly still lingers on, causing irrationality: the murky, cumbersone waters where religion breeds.

Meanwhile the current Polish, mediafuelled hysteria has reached such epic proportions that any number of foolish scenarios have become possible, doing away with the most apparent benefit of the accident: the creation of a space where new ideas and new opportunites can take hold.

And its a shame, really. Instead of intepreting things that are best left uninterpreted (no, there is no need for humans to understand tragedies – save one thing and one thing only – they happen. Frequently), the Poles could try a different approach. If, and everything seems to point that way, we’re here by an near-incredible stroke of luck, that also means that we are indeed free to try and win, or lose, at the gigantic roulette of life. You hold the cards and there is no clandestine, opaque plan for you, manipulated by some deaf, galaxy-wielding, borderline retarded God. You’re in control. And you’re responsible.

This fact alone seems to scare people into any submission available to them.

To the obvious benefit of a dominating part.

So.

Cui Bono?

EDIT: May 19th, 2010

Unfortunately, I feel obliged to add something to this piece.

Ever since the crash, the Polish authorities have been trying to lay the blame for the incident on the pilots. The official investigation as to what actually took place concludes  (hints rather) that they (the airmen) repeatedly ignored warnings from the Russian flight control centre. In so many words, it creates very convenient scapegoats. This in spite of the fact that Mr Kaczynski (or is it St. Kaczynski now?) has a troublesome record of interfering with flight regulations by way of enormous, inflated ego. In spite of the fact that he fired a previous pilot for following security procedure and not landing in a hot zone.

The Russians are doing the Poles an enormous favor in keeping the results from the flight recorder, or black box as it is also known, under wraps. Because what almost most likely happened was the fact that the Polish president once more intervened, forcing the pilot to land the plane in bad weather. This time, unlucky for all of those on board – the pilot did in fact yield to his request, with catastrophic result.

Ultimately, one shouldn’t judge the pilot even though in hindsight, he probably should have just told the willful leprechaun to sit down and get stuffed. But the leprechaun also being the president, he might have been fearful for his job. Especially since said leprechaun has a history of persecuting pilots that insist on following proper flight procedure.

In a way, I suppose blaming the pilot is necessary and has its own twisted logic: After having nothing short of canonised aforementioned leprechaun, I suppose that it would make a bad dent in his glorious halo should the world ever find out that he was an evil little, self-centred, prestige-hungry, thoughtless, imbecille bugger. The part of the world which was not privy to the fact already, that is.