The headlines scream of heroism, of ordinary Britons rushing to the aid of strangers as a mangled jet smokes and hisses on a rain-slicked runway. Cue the stirring music, the tributes to the Blitz spirit. The aviation safety model, we are told, is being hailed as a triumph of British engineering and regulation.
One must pause, however, before uncorking the champagne. Is this not the same system that allowed a plane to fall out of the sky in the first place? We celebrate the quick thinking of bystanders, and rightly so.
But let us not confuse valour in the moment with systemic virtue. The Victorians were masters of muddling through, yet their industrial age was littered with infernal machines that killed with impunity. We have not improved so much as we have papered over the cracks.
The real lesson here is not about British pluck, but about the terrifying randomness of existence. The Fall of Rome was not reversed by a single act of heroism at the gates. It was a slow, grinding decay of competence.
Today, we cheer the firefighters while the architects of the system quietly slip away. Next time, the bystanders might not be so quick. Next time, the model might fail entirely.
And then what? Then we shall have no one to hail but ourselves.
