DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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If you spend any time on planes, you’ve probably noticed the surge of animals. There have been pigs, monkeys, turkeys, snakes and oh-so-many dogs, often sprawled across crowded cabins. Delta alone flies about 250,000 animals a year — not even counting those tucked inside carry-on bags or checked in cargo holds — more than double how many it flew in 2015.

The number of problems is rising, too. A large part-Labrador mauled a man on a flight to San Diego last summer. A recent Delta news relsease included some words that don’t normally appear in a corporate news release: “urination/defecation” and “barking, growling, lunging and biting.” According to a labor union for flight attendants, more passengers are suffering allergy attacks, and more are arguing, or worse, over animals.

I’m not going to claim that flying pets are one of the country’s biggest problems right now. That’s a high bar, after all. But I do find this situation to be a fascinating case study of how mass cheating can become acceptable — and how decent people can make decisions that are more selfish than they realize. It is one of the downsides of a modern culture that too often fetishizes individual preference and expression over communal well-being.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2018 at 17:31 and is filed under Dystopia Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.