Mile High Logic

The prospect of death can apparently do wonders for the libido, says writer Alain de Botton.

The prospect of death can apparently do wonders for the libido. So says writer Alain de Botton, who claims he’s cracked the code of the mile-high club (the blessed folks who have sex on airplanes). De Botton, who’s written books like The Consolations of Philosophy and How Proust Can Change Your Life, says the proximity of death makes us shed our inhibitions. “Flying is like war,” he tells Open, “it brings one into contact with the idea of death at a time when we are likely to be fit. And just as people behave badly in war, so they will in the air. Flying is an encounter with death shorn of death’s pacifying, libido-dampening aspects.” Other ‘bad behaviour’ includes getting drunk, becoming violent, and trying to open a plane’s door, “aside, of course, from deliberate attempts to blow up airplanes in the name of God”.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay