Ishmael personal annotations

Man's building of civilization is like the first aeronauts...trial and error...throw the pedaling winged machine over the cliff. At first, everything is okay because we are in free fall, but soon enough we will see the destruction that is the gravitational pull bringing destruction to us. We may have seen the savages on the ground and wondered: why aren't they flying in civilization? (imperialism!)
We can see the ground coming towards us, but what do we do?

The students says, worst part is after we crash into the ground, we will probably do it all over again.