More than half a century ago, I had a friend in junior high school I could never figure out or drum much common sense into. He was quite the dreamer. He loved science fiction. His nickname was “Angus” — derived from the fact that he was rather rotund, and our school was surrounded by farm fields. When we grazed at the same lunch table, he would speculate endlessly about what life on other planets might be like. He was very earnest, and very entertaining.
One day I suggested facetiously that Angus stop speculating and go find out for himself. “Build a spaceship someday and fly to the planet of your choice,” I recommended. To my surprise, he took me seriously.
Some days later, Angus excitedly told me he had it all worked out. He had designed the spaceship and even brought the plans to show me. Then he unfolded a large sheet of brown wrapping paper. There it was — the entire cockpit control panel of the craft that would take Angus to the cosmos. There was a button for everything.
“This is not a plan!” I declared with a laugh. “It’s just a bunch of buttons with labels on them.”
“But it’s all here,” Angus insisted. “I’ve thought of everything — Start, Stop, Land, Take-off, Dodge Asteroids, you name it, everything you need to know.” He even had an all-purpose button to take care of anything unexpected, which he thought was a genius innovation.
What I remember most vividly about this experience was not the fine detail of my friend’s sketch. It was my frustrating inability to convince him he was delusional, that his plan was no plan at all, that as a 14-year-old he wasn’t yet ready for a senior position at NASA. He was what philosopher Eric Hoffer might call a “true believer” — convinced beyond any hope of convincing otherwise that his plan was thorough, perfect, and sure to work.
I lost track of Angus after graduation, but I am quite certain his spaceship never left the ground.
Lawrence W. Reed, “The Dark Side of Paradise: A Brief History of America’s Utopian Experiments in Communal Living”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2021-06-13.
September 16, 2021
QotD: The youthful Utopian
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