the daydreamer award

Thanks lots to that anxious mom for this mission possible (really great question).

The Rules of Engagement
Thank the person who gave you the award.
Complete the challenge they sent you.
Select a blog or blogs that you want to give the award to. (The amount of blogs you select is unlimited!)
Tell them about it and give them a challenge.
(Please include the rules in your post.)
[You can use the image I have used for the award.]

The Mission
You can remove one thing (be as creative as you want here) from the entire existence of humanity. What is it and how would its removal impact life as we know it?

Flight.

I love a lot of things about aviation. I get literally and figuratively high from the process of take off, I’ll hop into a plane or helicopter any chance I get. When something flies overhead, I rush out to gawp at it. If it’s a fast jet, I grin like a fool and surf the feeling for a good while afterwards. Airshows make me happy; I come from two long lines of idiots who fought and died for their countries, and there’s a strong strain of airforce-ishness in it. It used to be an unstated but rather powerful bond between my grandfather, my mother, me.

The obvious question is, given my addiction to AvGas, wtf am I doing deleting flight from time?

e a s y . . .

(I do worry about the Butterfly Effect, but I’m ignoring it cos it’s too hard to forecast. It’ll be largely utopian bollocks as a result.)

No air travel would mean no whizzing from place to place without a real journey in between. If you wanted to go somewhere far, you’d have to really want to go. You’d have to work out how to drive or sail there or take trains or buses – you’d see just how far you were going, and even though there were still engines involved, you’d still see the scenery close up and get at least a little travel stained. No in-flight entertainment would cause far more interaction between you and your surroundings. Journeys would matter, they’d be taken seriously; you can’t do 6 000 miles by land or sea without some serious effort.

Third world countries wouldn’t be invaded by over privileged gap year kids with delusions of helpfulness. More travellers would be the sort of people you’d want to meet. There’d be less foreign aid to colonise and disempower places. There’d be far less loutish and disrespectful tourism. Wars would be different without planes and choppers and drones. It probably wouldn’t be any better or worse though.

Less travel and emigration would make people value their travels more highly. It would also leave most people less dissatisfied with their homes and an easier journey back if they did need to wander. Friends and family wouldn’t be as fragmented and scattered as they are now. I’d love to think that so much less movement would encourage people to work harder at taking care of their own environment and communities. I’d love to think that things would be better, but of course, they probably wouldn’t.

Afterthought
I’m not nominating etc etc, because most of my readers* have serious award allergies.

*May contain nuts.