kingofthewoods

I was flying to Zurich, where the Alpine winter has descended like... a slap to the face with a wet haddock. There's lots of snow, but sadly it's all in liquid form. As the climate changes, ski resorts are going to need to rebrand themselves - I think the great old English traditional sport of cheese rolling would be ideal - all that cheese and all those wet, steep slopes.

But this wasn't quite the point I wanted to make. The in-flight magazine had an article about Zeppelin, the airship manufacturer, which is still going strong, building small, helium-filled craft which are used for tourist excursions around Germany - I've seen them in Berlin. When the first Zeppelins were demonstrated, among the intrepid passengers was Hermann Hesse, great author of "The Glass Bead Game", winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote of his impressions in an essay "Spaziergang in der Luft", or "A Walk in the Air". And what insights did the great man reveal to us? 'Suddenly, the ship rose up, and the crowd of people became small and comical.'

OK, that's a slightly out-of-context quote; it's a light, airy essay, and his observations are vivid enough. But what's this 'comical' about? Why do we burst out laughing at something that just looks new? This reminded me of the response of people in 18th century London when they first saw black people - they roared with laughter, and paid enormous sums to watch these hilarious creatures box, dance and perform public copulation.

I also remember going on a date with a Czech girl in Prague. We went to a Chinese restaurant, and she seemed to be enjoying herself greatly. Eventually she revealed to me the depths of her passion: 'I like Chinese people, because they look funny and they talk funny.' Well, marvellous, that's another giant leap in inter-cultural understanding. I'm sure they find you hysterical too.

I suppose such reactions are part of a human process of adaptability to new circumstances. But I can't help feeling that it's starting off on the wrong foot. My Czech student wasn't going to win any Nobel prizes, but Hesse, chortling at the sight of people seeming to get smaller because they're a long way away, sounds like a fool he certainly was not. Yet this foolishness is a first tiny, apparently innocent wrong step which, unless people think carefully - which they don't - leads not to understanding through comedy, but to comedy's much commoner consequences: derision, disrespect, the lynch mob.

Less tittering, more thinking, people.