Lost Balance

Dear Reader

On Pentecost Monday, while we were at our beloved Fliegerkafi, I asked my colleagues if they had any suggestions for the editorial. It was probably meant more as a joke, and we moved on to another topic. Two or three hours later, after dinner, I checked the status of the SpaceX mission on my tablet and ended up on bluewin.ch, among other sites. I quickly skimmed the headlines from the Pentecost weekend and realized that, unfortunately, the Pentecostal “enlightenment” hadn’t quite taken hold for many of our contemporaries. Murder and manslaughter, stabbings, shootings. Attacks on police officers, bus drivers, and bystanders galore. What’s going on with our society? Aggressive behavior as a result of anonymity and overcrowding? Well, our media will surely find the right experts.

I don’t always find it easy to brush all this off, and I wonder whether all the well-intentioned concepts and attempts at solutions by our authorities are simply not enough? Whether more needs to be done. I’m thinking in particular of our educational institutions at all levels. We absolutely must invest more here—not in the accumulation of knowledge that can be downloaded from the World Wide Web anyway, but in the development of character. When, for example, speakers at our universities who do not represent the currently prevailing political agenda are shouted down, that’s not just intolerant—it’s foolish. Many of these people later end up in government offices and agencies. Of course, not all of them will be confronted with the conditions I lamented at the outset. But when, in their official capacities, they harass harmless fellow citizens and taxpayers with completely unnecessary legal harassment,

they are encouraging lawlessness and disillusionment with the state. I must unequivocally describe the model aircraft laws—crafted with great effort in the EASA legal department—as nothing more than waste paper, and at the same time ask: Do we—our government agencies and politicians—really have no other concerns and nothing better to do? It’s true that model aircraft laws cannot solve our societal problems. However, policymakers must ensure that our government agencies’ staffing plans and budgets are aligned with what is socially important and urgent, rather than being bogged down by pointless bureaucratic activity. In this way, we can achieve a long-term balance between government paternalism and the promotion of personal responsibility.

With warm model-flying regards

Emil Ch. Giezendanner