Thursday, February 1, 2001

Erm, I think I just might have overstepped last time (to put it mildly), and I'm sorry. Who the heck am I to tell people what to do in their own dining rooms? I've subsequently been sedated. At any rate, that should be the last anyone has to hear from me on that subject for a while.

In recompense (and as long as I'm preaching), I thought I'd share the Parable of the Mexican Fishing Village. Aside from being one of my favorite stories, it is almost certainly the parable most in need of repeated telling here in Silicon Valley. (Thanks to Jeremy, for originally telling it to me.)

     So, there's a man who lives near a little Mexican fishing village on the Gulf Coast. Each day, he goes out in his little boat, and fishes for two or three hours. With his catch for the day, his family makes their meals—and has a little left over to trade in the market, for a little money, to pay their sundry expenses. With the rest of his day, the fisherman plays with his children, and works around the house, and lies in his hammock on the beach.
     One day, a group of American businessman come through the village, on a package tour, and they come across the man as he's setting out in his boat for his day's fishing. They say to him, 'What are you doing there?' And he replies, 'I'm going out to fish for two or three hours. I do this every day; it's how I make my living.' And the businessmen reply, 'Well . . . if you can catch enough fish to get by in that time, these waters must be brimming! You know what you should do . . .' and at this point the businessmen get all animated and start finishing each others' sentences . . . 'is start fishing eight or ten hours a day—by that means, soon you'd have enough money to buy yourself a much bigger fishing boat, with trawling nets, and lines—and it would be so productive you could hire a crew, to help you with the boat. Then, with the profits from that, you start building a whole fleet of fishing boats. Then you could hire a business manager to run the operation, and you could retire from the whole thing!'
     The Mexican fisherman nods, and looks very thoughtful, and he asks, 'Well, how long would all this take?' and the businessmen reply, 'Well, maybe fifteen or twenty years.' And the Mexican fisherman nods, and asks, 'Well, after I did all this, and retired . . . what would I do then?' And the businessmen answer, 'Well—you could do anything you wanted! You could . . . retire to a little Mexican fishing village . . . and just go fishing for a couple of hours every day . . . and play with your kids, and work around the house, and lie in a hammock on the beach . . .'

Hope you like that one.

But, now, come to think about it, as long as I'm venting all my various extremist postions, perhaps I'll rant for a few lines on the subject of my other favorite bete noir, automobiles. Click here if you'd like to be subject to some more very preachy ranting on the subject of cars as well as my presumptuous prescriptions about what you should be doing to drive more safely (but all of this only because I worry about you).

As a general matter, I am no fan of cars, and motoring. In large part, I think this comes from living outside of them (I haven't owned a car in four years). From the inside, cars are okay. They're comfy, and they have climate control and sounds sytems, and they whisk you quickly from place to place, and they seem safe. From the outside, though, as a pedestrian or cyclist, cars are, in the main, very loud, intimidating, dangerous, and they spew poison gas. (If you don't think it's poison gas coming out the back, try sharing an enclosed space with a running car. Actually, please don't.) Cars also result in the paving of large swatches of the world into roads and parking lots, and (arguably) disintegration of the social space of communities and the isolation and decay of the inner cities. (The mobility provided by cars has allowed all the rich people (generally rich, white people) to flee the urban centers to their manicured suburbs, and commute back to work. But don't even get me started on suburbs, or commuting.)

But, it's not the general problems of cars and the motoring habit (as perceived by me) that I want to talk about. It's their particular capacity for killing and injuring. To date, we have killed about two million people with cars. That's like a major war—except no one is paying attention. An additional 40,000 Americans are taken from their families and loved ones, every year, on the roads. Just stupid, senseless, awful tragedy. Another huge number are injured, many terribly and irreparably. But we seem extremely good at compartmentalizing this fact, that is, putting the killed and maimed people into a mental space that does not hold us. My main evidence for this assertion is my observation of the way people drive. They drive drinking their lattes. They drive talking on the phone, they drive fiddling around with the radios. They drive with one hand resting lazily on the bottom of the wheel (and then gesture with that one hand, as part of conversation). They don't signal for turns and lane changes. They tailgate. They maneuver as if their one and only priority is shaving seconds from their drive time.

This is not the behavior of people aware that they are involved in a dangerous activity, involving hundreds of tons of steel flying around at sixty miles an hour. These are not people at all cognizant that their devil-may-care attitude toward driving could easily—easily—result in them locomoting themselves around by blowing into a tube for the next forty years. Or in their spouses becoming widows, their children orphans, etc. Or, much worse, they could easily inflict such a catastrophe on someone else. And it's not that this could happen. It does happen. Every single day.

Just not to us.

Right?

I have to confess, I don't write this out of a generalized concern for the American motoring population. I write it because I have a large number of loved ones who spend a great deal of time driving in cars—and I'm really starting to dislike the odds. And, moreover, I'm afraid I've observed more than one of you driving as per the descriptions above. Respectfully, I do not think that you are driving carefully enough. At any rate, not nearly carefully enough for my taste. (I.e. the taste of someone is deeply attached to the notion of having you around, fully functional, for the next forty years.)

Please take driving seriously. Please remember the incalculable value of the human cargo you take with you. Please put both hands on the steering wheel, and hang up the phone. Think ahead, imagining what it would be like if something awful happened; then think back from there, and imagine what you would do to have avoided it (pretty much anything). Then do that—in advance of the awful thing happening. So that it never does. There's only ONE goal worth talking about, on every single car trip: that all the people emerge from the car alive and unhurt. Detour through Poughkeepsie, if it even marginally contributes to that goal.

One last tip, particularly for younger readers. Do not get in cars with bozos. Especially bozos who've had even one drink. It's just not worth it. If you find yourself in a car with a bozo, politely ask to be dropped at the curb, and call a cab. I'll pay for it, just let me know what it cost. I know (from experience) that it's socially extremely difficult to do this. But the stakes don't get any higher; it's your body totally in this driver's hands. If you're not comfortable with the way s/he's safeguarding it, get out. Frankly, you owe it to your loved ones, if nothing else.

Protectively,
Michael

P.S. Apologies to those of you who are already meticulously safe drivers. And thanks to you!