Why do people rejoice in ritualised ignorance? asks Kevin Myers. Why do football coaches insist on not training their players for penalty shoot-outs on the grounds that nothing quite compares with the tension of the World Cup? It might equally be said that nothing quite compares with getting into the ring for 14 rounds with Mike Tyson. This doesn't mean that you don't prepare for it. Otherwise, the captain of Portmarnock Presbyterian Ladies' Bowls Club would be just as qualified to take on the winsome Mr Tyson as Lennox Lewis. Knock him flat, Daphne.
Perhaps we prefer to have magic in our lives, to retain certain areas of uncertainty which are governed not by reason, logic or empirical fact but by juju, over which we have no control; and in that powerlessness, we wait for the miracle to transport us to some better place. Perhaps that's why some people prefer to call a penalty shoot-out a lottery, when it's clearly an exacting test of particular skills, for which it is eminently possible to train people.
Hijacked airliner
But what about the pressure? Good question. So what about the pressure? After all, a penalty shoot-out is no more pressurised than the recapture of a hijacked airliner, for which men - very similar in attitude, intellect and physical fitness to the Irish team which lost on Sunday - prepare in every country in Europe. Has anyone suggested that the Army Rangers stay in the pub because there's no possibility of simulating the real thing in training? It's not just in sport that we opt for the unknowable voodoo of mystery and magic in preference to reality. Airliners, the very definition of modernity, exist in a world where reality is often simply excluded. Every participant in the air transport business subscribes to the same central lie about air safety, and with almost studied intent neglects inconvenient truths.
There is a myth central to the safety lecture from an in-flight attendant on take off. It's this. The plane runs into trouble over the Irish Sea, and the pilot warns the passengers to brace themselves. He skilfully crash-lands the plane on to the waves, and the passengers scramble out of the emergency exits, on to the wings, where they inflate their lifejackets. Then they slip into the waters, where they sing bracing ballads until the rescuers arrive.
It's all rubbish. A plane coming down over water loses the powerful lift generated by a thing called "ground-effect". Quite the reverse. A fully powered Nimrod flying at 1,500 feet above the ocean is hurled up and down hundreds of feet by the impact of the sea on the air beneath it.
In other words, in the million to one chance that the plane experiences the sort of incredibly considerate technical problem which enables the pilot to glide downwards, once over the sea the aircraft will drop so fast and uncontrollably that it will smash to pieces on impact. Splat.
So no, there won't be a comely air-hostess helping a child, plus wheelchair, into its lifejacket on the wing, with bubbles rising from the submerging front half of the plane, while circling passenger in the water cry, "Hurry hurry hurry, It's going down", and wimpled nuns, strumming guitars balanced on their lifejackets, warble sweetly.
Laws of aerodynamics
Do you understand? This has never happened. It can never happen. The laws of aerodynamics will ensure it never happens. Yet airlines brief us and equip us to cope with a disaster that cannot occur, and do nothing to enable us to cope with more likely calamities.
It would actually make far more sense for passengers flying over the North Pole to be issued with harpoons with which to hunt walruses, and be given envelopes containing a fish-hook, a map, a piece of paper with "I come in peace: take me to your leader" in Eskimo, and a condom, just in case the natives got really friendly. Equally, passengers flying over the Andes should be given little sachets containing piquant sauces to make one another just that tiny bit more scrumptious.
Hijacking is far more likely than a crash-landing at sea, but passengers are never given any instructions about how to cope with it. Instead of taking real measures, airport security performs voodoo cleansing rituals, confiscating eyebrow tweezers and nail files. Yet meanwhile it allows young males to troop aboard carrying bottles of cognac, which with the assistance of lighter-fuel can be turned into a Molotov cocktail, or, with a sharp rap on the metal edge of a seat, be transformed into a perfectly evil, neck-handled dagger.
Imagined threats
Airliners could outlaw bottles, or create a culture in which able-bodied men sit on aisle seats next to the cockpit. But that would be too alarming for passengers; instead, precautions are taken against imagined threats, and poor Daphne, en route for her world title fight with Mike Tyson, loses her nail scissors, lest she run amok.
For we prefer to get ready for imaginary convenient threats, rather than prepare for inconvenient ones. Football managers subconsciously decline to train for the penalty shoot-out, thereby giving themselves the escape hatch marked "bad luck". Airlines don't want to frighten passengers by telling them they might have to do something about hijackers, or to curtail alcohol sales in airports, so instead they school passengers for an eventuality which they know will never occur.
And then when the real disaster happens, those whose failure to take the necessary measures had made it possible can plead innocence. Look, we did all we could - we gave them the lifejacket drill. It is the rain-dance of modern times.