Flight Tribe
Some of the philosophy-
All living things and, indeed, all things in creation seem to be in constant flight - thank you, relativity. Perhaps creation itself is. Ancient and medieval philosophers and today's particle physicists search for "the substance", the underlying foundation of all things extant - the "final theory."
Quantum theory poses a duality of particles and waves and leads further to the concept of vibrating "strings" as the constituents of electrons, quarks, leptons, and the host of invisible building blocks of all things. Strings - whatever they are - that vibrate, resonate into a more
expansive reality - that are themselves in motion - indeed in flight in however many dimensions the mathematicians posit. Sound crazy?
Consider at least the first few of definitions of flight. And then let's consider #8.
"Flight" (definitions found at freedictionary.com):
1.
a. The motion of an object in or through a medium, especially
through the earth's atmosphere or through space.
b. An instance of such motion.
c. The distance covered in such motion.
2.
a. The act or process of flying through the air by means of wings.
b. The ability to fly.
3. A swift passage or movement.
4. A scheduled airline run or trip.
5. A group, especially of birds or aircraft, flying together.
6. A number of aircraft in an Air Force forming a subdivision
of a squadron.
7. A round of competition, as in a sports tournament.
8. An exuberant or transcendent effort or display: a flight of
the imagination; flights of oratory.
9. A series of stairs rising from one landing to another.
What do you think? Certainly #4, #5, #6, #7, and #9 are familiar and rather specific to some of our human endeavers. But #8 could as easily and beautifully speak to a universe come to be from infinitesimally small strings "in motion in or through a medium..." Our universe as a "transendent display" - our reality, somehow an amplification of its underlying essential elemental constituents - one of which we could call "flight".
So, it seems reasonable to consider that all of creation, all in creation - from microscopic plants and animals to whales and fish, from asteroids, stars, galaxies to electrons, photons, and maybe even invisible strings (not only soaring eagles and the great unwashed darting about the sky inside large winged tubes) - all are in a state of flight. Flight is life. Flight is existence itself.
Animal behaviors are now sometimes categorized as "flight" behavior. A creature (look back at definition #1) initiates "...motion...in or through...space..." in order to escape a thing or situation that produces within it some sense of fear or danger. The "fight or flight" stress response has helped some species survive. Playing dead or using camoflage works too, sometimes.
What means of human flight would have come into being had there not been witnessed the insect, bird, or even an airborne plant seed in motion in the ether.