Opinion Editorial July, 2025: Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies
Before his death last month, Brian Wilson experienced many rapid unscheduled disassemblies of his mind throughout his whole adult life. Many of them were caused, or contributed to, by his excessive drug abuse.
Perhaps that drug abuse enhanced his obvious musical genius; we will likely never know for certain. Then again, we will likely never know for certain how many still-living "geniuses" had their minds experience a rapid unscheduled disassembly due to drug abuse last month.
One thing we do know is that the world saw multiple rapid unscheduled disassemblies last month. Air India Flight AI171's rapid unscheduled disassembly was a rare and unexpected event. Yet the SpaceX Starship 36 rapid unscheduled disassembly was more predictable. In fact, rapid unscheduled disassemblies of SpaceX Starships are practically becoming a monthly event these days.
The entire African country of Sudan came even closer to a rapid unscheduled disassembly last month. So did Iran. Just a few days ago, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed a peace deal which, if it holds, will allow them both to avoid a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
The term 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' has been popularized only recently by the aerospace industry. It was originally a military term. It applied to events such as those depicted in this month's photo. At the Vietnam Military History Museum in Hanoi, this sculpture is made from the wreckage of downed and crashed American military aircraft such as B-52 bombers.
The American war in Vietnam took place during the height of the Cold War. Recent events might well lead us to conclude that the world has regressed since that era. Perhaps it has. Then again, perhaps that era (and many before it) had already regressed from a simpler time when the world was populated only by indigenous societies.
That's an oversimplistic view, of course. Ancient indigenous societies and their individual members would have certainly experienced their own rapid unscheduled disassemblies. Some of those may well have been drug-induced; some may have even led to moments of genius. But the consequences were nowhere close to those of the rapid unscheduled disassemblies such as we saw last month. For the most part, those consequences were limited to the local population — its politics, economics and survival.
There is a glimmer of hope that we could return to that era. In a major victory for decolonization, Canada's Heiltsuk's First Nations people recently had their constitution restored. That came after decades of European colonists trying to usurp it and destroy their rights and their way of life.
Until we can return globally to that era, then to paraphrase a line from one of Brian Wilson's greatest musical arrangements (he didn't write the song): This is the worst trip we've ever been on.
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