Louise Hose
Well Known Member
I currently work for the National Park Service. Anyone who has visited one of our parks knows that there are plenty of restrictions for safety, environmental/heritage protection, and bureaucratic reasons. Despite my personal misgivings and frustration with some rules and their limitations on my personal freedoms, I do not claim a right to violate those regs and rules while on vacation at a park. If I were to throw stones off the Rim of the Grand Canyon, potentially endangering hikers below, I would hope someone would report me?..even if it threatened my livelihood. I?m potentially endangering people. (I have been the person cowering under a boulder as some twit threw rocks from an overlook, sure that no one was below!) If I carved my honey?s name into a tree bark on a weekend visit, I would expect to be reported. I sure can?t imagine trying to bully or intimidate people who wanted to stop my behavior. (I might add that as a scientist, I have never felt the compulsion to ignore the proper scientific methodology and procedures when I write a scientific paper on my own time and dime. And, I?d fully expect to be called on it if I did!)
So, why do some paid (or even unpaid) pilots in our community think they have a right to flagrantly violate the rules and regs without consequences? How many professions have practitioners that think they don?t have to behave legally when off the clock? The immaturity of this attitude is mind-boggling to me. And, snitching? I don?t think I?ve ever heard adults use that term outside of the aviation world and television (usually a Mythbuster parodying a convict). I occasionally think I?m back in a junior high school classroom when reading some forum discussions like the one on Doug?s personal rules.
In my humble opinion, if you want to violate laws, regulations, and rules, you have three reasonable choices:
1. Work to change the rules (and just whining doesn?t count);
2. Go be a ?cowboy? in a manner and place that it doesn?t impact anyone else. Go express your freedom away from airports and inhabited areas (and, please, away from national parks!). If no one sees you do it, no one is going to report you; and
3. If you chose to violate laws, regs, and rules, don't advertise/publicize your misdeeds. It impacts others if you put them in the uncomfortable position of trying to decide if they should report your activities. It also reflects poorly on the maturity of our community. If you want to make a statement of protest by ?civil? disobedience, a tradition considered by most in the U.S. to be fair tactic as long as no one else is endangered, please ensure no one outside yourself is at risk and go ahead. But, be prepared to take the consequences like any ?professional? protestor would do.
I will now step off the soapbox?.
So, why do some paid (or even unpaid) pilots in our community think they have a right to flagrantly violate the rules and regs without consequences? How many professions have practitioners that think they don?t have to behave legally when off the clock? The immaturity of this attitude is mind-boggling to me. And, snitching? I don?t think I?ve ever heard adults use that term outside of the aviation world and television (usually a Mythbuster parodying a convict). I occasionally think I?m back in a junior high school classroom when reading some forum discussions like the one on Doug?s personal rules.
In my humble opinion, if you want to violate laws, regulations, and rules, you have three reasonable choices:
1. Work to change the rules (and just whining doesn?t count);
2. Go be a ?cowboy? in a manner and place that it doesn?t impact anyone else. Go express your freedom away from airports and inhabited areas (and, please, away from national parks!). If no one sees you do it, no one is going to report you; and
3. If you chose to violate laws, regs, and rules, don't advertise/publicize your misdeeds. It impacts others if you put them in the uncomfortable position of trying to decide if they should report your activities. It also reflects poorly on the maturity of our community. If you want to make a statement of protest by ?civil? disobedience, a tradition considered by most in the U.S. to be fair tactic as long as no one else is endangered, please ensure no one outside yourself is at risk and go ahead. But, be prepared to take the consequences like any ?professional? protestor would do.
I will now step off the soapbox?.