The Post-Humanist Sitting in First Class

While hiking in Japan, I came across a shrine dedicated to Okuchi-no-Makami, a deity revered for protecting travelers. Using Google to translate a placard, I learned that the deification of the wolf known as Okuchi-no-Makami occurred after a prince named Yamato Takeru was saved while lost in the woods by a white wolf that guided him to safety. Looking around the shrine grounds, I noticed others praying and making offerings to Okuchi-no-Makami. Unfamiliar with the Shinto religion, I stood back and watched. As a spectator, I found myself feeling a bit disconnected from history, nature, and myself.

Boarding

Waiting at the gate to board my flight to Japan, I find myself scrolling on autopilot through Instagram. Unlike the people in Japan that I’ll get to know, the thought of offerings and prayers doesn’t cross my mind as I prepare to travel. With a short attention span, I look up from my phone. The couple in front of me looks like digital nomads, the kind of people who probably meditate and microdose mushrooms to become better versions of themselves. I wonder if traveling is more of a spiritual experience for them or if, like mindfulness and psychedelics, it has been disenchanted by our cultural amnesia. Over the loudspeaker, a worker announces it’s time to begin boarding.

A feeling of excitement dissipates when I realize its not my groups turn to board yet. How one gets assigned to a group isn’t quite clear. This lack of clarity permeates the entire experience of flying. Mediated by a series of interfaces, the inner workings of the flight remain obscure to the passengers. Standing at the back of a mile-long line, I feel like a car stuck in traffic. Seemingly banal, the line serves as a form of order and control, shaping the experience of flying. The slow movement of the line is disrupted by an authorization checkpoint, similar to the transportation of cargo, where each passenger must be accounted for. Transformed into cargo, the passengers on a plane are lent to countries for their economic potential. In 2022, global tourism generated $7.7 trillion. As I scan my boarding pass, I realize how many forms I had to fill out to get here. A chain of forms as far as the mind can recall: the form to buy the ticket, the form to create an account on JetBlue’s website, a form to apply for the credit card I used, a form to apply to the job that pays me, a form to apply to the college that I attended, ad infinitum. As I’m handed back my boarding pass, I feel the road to paradise is through a bureaucracy.

Seating

Struck by the diversity of people on my flight, I think of the plane as an affective force capable of bringing together a heterogeneous set of people. A set of individuals with different intentions and backgrounds are simultaneously transformed into passengers. The hundreds of alarm clocks that were set, the hundreds of cabs that were taken, were all affected by the flight. The few stragglers who barely make it on time reveal the contingency of the group. The chain of events that allow or prevent someone from making the flight draws my attention to the concept of control and how central it is to our way of life.

Looking around the plane, it doesn’t seem like many people, except those in first class, are incredibly comfortable. On the plane, there’s always a sense of class consciousness that arises. One can feel themselves becoming Robespierre, staring at the decadence in first class. One day, I checked to see how much it would cost to upgrade to first class. The unbelievable amount shocked me into opting for an aisle seat in economy. In my bag is a copy of Fernand Braudel’s book The Wheels of Commerce. Braudel explains how early open-air markets that have been around for thousands of years spread over time into all areas of society. I was shocked to read that in Moscow, during winter, people organized markets on a frozen river. I wonder how shocked they would be to learn that today, we find markets miles high, traveling through the stratosphere at hundreds of miles per hour.

The Pilot

The pilot begins speaking to us over the loudspeaker. His voice is deep, and he sounds confident as he tells us about the weather as if he had control over it. His disembodied voice, emanating from above, like God or something, creates a sense of traveling as a spiritual journey. But up in the cockpit is a highly developed piece of human technology. The pilot’s body has been transformed into an instrument for a specific purpose. The plane, as an affective force, transformed the pilot into an instrument. We can imagine him as a little boy watching his mother staring googly-eyed at a captain. With an anxious attachment style, the future pilot thinks, “What does that captain have that I don’t have?” His desire for his mother’s undivided attention catapults him toward becoming a machine capable of controlling this 400,000-pound plane. Years later, after speaking to us over the loudspeaker, he dims the lights as if he were God. The purple lights that shine softly from above the overhead bins look beautiful. Staring at them like they’re a celestial lightshow, I think about our faceless father and the idea that in the beginning was the word, and the word was God.

As we get ready for takeoff, we can hear the engines running. I crack open the window cover and stare at the fan blades. I remember learning that jet engines are made of titanium and nickel alloys, which can withstand extreme temperatures, and that a single engine can produce enough thrust to lift 10-15 large semi-trucks off the ground. Mined, transported, and refined, the plane is seen as an achievement of human ingenuity; the power of science and engineering. Yet the plane was derived from nature, a force more powerful and fundamental than science. As it begins to rain, I don’t find myself praying for a safe flight; I assume our faceless God and the invisible system undergirding this experience have deemed the weather conditions probabilistically suitable. A vague faith in statistics assuages any anxiety. Secular data replaces religious narratives, leaving me in a world without meaning.

Take off

As we take off, the engines begin burning fuel. The fossil fuels reveal the symbiotic relationship that we have with an event that took place 65 million years ago. The plane’s entanglement with time makes it a strange object. An event that happened millions of years ago makes traveling at an inhuman speed possible. The plane, as an object, is one of many that constitute our inhuman world. Far from being angels, passengers take on an embryonic form. The gestation of a post-humanist subject will culminate with their birth into a new world.

Watching a movie

Stuck in my tiny, inhuman seat, surrounded by a hundred embryos on drugs and alcohol, I select a movie to watch. I start watching Napoleon starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby. When Napoleon heard his wife was cheating on him while he was in Egypt, it took him 1.5 months to return home. Today, that would be a five-hour flight. As I fall into the movie, I forget about the bureaucratic system undergirding the flight. I forget about the quasi-religious experience for the backpackers sitting by me. And I forget about the scientific limitations that are always present but only noticed when nature reveals itself untamable force. Covered up by distractions, interfaces, technology, and habits, the plane, like so many objects, is an opaque mystery that can be felt but evades understanding.

Turbulence

Suddenly, the plane begins to shake. The pilot turns on the fasten seatbelt sign. It gets worse. All of a sudden, I find myself thinking about the possibility of dying, about my family, my partner, and I realize how much I still want to live. The human as a conqueror of the world becomes much smaller at 30,000 feet. The turbulence reminds us of our fragility and the limits of our ability to control nature. While the plane can be opaque, it seems to also have the ability to make clear that which was hidden to us.

Descent

With only 30 minutes left until we land, the pilot announces we will begin our descent. The hundreds of embryos begin moving and kicking as they get ready to be born into a new world. As immigration forms are passed out, the bureaucracy that lingers underneath the surface rears its head. I talk to my neighbor for the first time when he asks to borrow my pen. The plane, as an affective force, gets every embryo to bring their seats up, close their tables, and fill out forms. As we touch down, I feel a sense of existential anxiety dissipate. It seems to exist only above ground, and I can be certain it will be there next time I fly. Without it, I begin to forget about the existential condition and fall back into a state of normalcy.

Landing

Waiting to exit the plane, we sit staring at our phones. After hours of being on airplane mode, there is a moment of reconnecting with the people in our lives back home. The plane is like a retreat in a way—a brief moment away from the network that follows us around more or less permanently. While the plane used to be able to separate us from our life back home, the cell phone has reduced the plane’s transformative power. Perhaps the phone’s presence deflates the experience of the plane as a bridge to another world.

As we walk in a single file line towards the exit, we find our faceless God in human form. People in front of me are saying thank you as they exit, but all I can do is stare at the clipboard in his hands full of forms.