“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
I had an unusually clean windshield from the start of our New Zealand trip until about two weeks after our return. This is not a report about a fit of the tidies on my part.
Kiwis drive on the left; all rental cars sport a sticker that says “drive left” near the steering column. Fortunately, the brake and accelerator pedals are in the same position as in a right- hand drive car. BUT the turn signal and wiper levers are reversed. So, invariably, when first driving in New Zealand, (and last spring in England), I inadvertently hit the wiper lever to signal a turn.
In such situations, one tries to remain cool, to not reveal to other drivers that you are a dufus, turning on your wipers on a hot, sunny day. Of course, no one else cares. But, you do.
Then, when you get back to the United States, after having retrained your automatic self to use the lever on the right-hand side of the steering column to signal turns, you blow it again—wipers instead of signals—until you un-train yourself from left-hand driving to what for most of your life has been an action taken completely without thought.
I have to do a lot of thinking before I act until the automaticity returns.
These wipers are a provocative metaphor, People of a Certain Age, for automatic responses about which we never think. What are the actions we take on a regular basis completely without thought, and are any of them worth thinking about from time to time?
Not one of us was born knowing on which side of the column is the lever for turn signals.
Before we moved to Hawaii, we liked watching the movie, “South Pacific.” We enjoyed seeing beach scenes filmed at Lumahai Beach where we would go to search for olivine crystals in the sand, and we chuckled at the way the movie-makers used a prominent rock outcropping near Ke’e Beach as the mysterious Bali Hai. The music is compelling, too.
Once, we invited friends to our home in Riverside, got the film from somewhere (on two reels—remember those?) and a projector from the university, popped popcorn, and spent a couple of hours with Joe, a sailor in the U.S. Navy, Bloody Mary and Ensign Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse.
In one of the most moving songs, Bloody Mary laments the difficulty Joe will face because he is in love with a native woman by singing “you’ve got to be taught to hate.” Underscoring the point are the words “carefully taught.”
Judy tells of a time in the 1960s when she was entering a store with her mother and grandmother in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. She noticed an African-American woman about her grandmother’s age approaching the store just behind. Judy held the door open for the woman who demurred with a nervous look around her, “Oh no, missy, you go first.” It was not hard for Judy to conclude that she had just learned a lesson about race relations in southeast Missouri in the 1960s.
Confusing the accelerator and brake pedals moving from right-hand to left-hand drive could produce great harm. Trying to drive a standard shift car where the gear-shift is on the left and the “H” of gear positions is reversed can amplify the potential for dangerous driving, so I always rent an automatic. Thus, in the case of the location of the pedals, there is an agreed standard and in the other, I can choose not to confuse myself further. Turning on wipers instead of signals could slow down one’s indicating intent to others, but the flapping wipers are a quick reminder to use the other hand to engage the turn signal.
Myriad political and social commentators have opined over the past several years that tribalism is on the rise, in the United States and worldwide. They mean the term as a negative. Tribalism inhibits the creation and sustaining of the common good because tribes have a hard time agreeing among each other what is good. Historically, tribal loyalties have been the primary cause of warfare as allegiances to one’s tribe outweigh allegiances to anything beyond the tribe.
In short, in tribal society, one’s response to any situation becomes automatic, dictated by the norms and beliefs of the tribe. No one is born with those norms and beliefs hard-wired into their brain.
I wonder to what tribe I belong, or if I do belong to a tribe? What are the responses of mine that are dictated by my tribe? Instinctively, I reject the idea of being a creature of a tribe, deprived of individuality by my tribal membership. What if my tribe is comprised of those who reject tribalism? Is it sometimes useful to be a member of a tribe? Has tribal membership been an essential factor in the survival of our species?
I might benefit from having an indicator about these matters and about my own automatic responses, something like the wipers wiping when the signal should be signaling, as a reminder to think.
Daniel E. White
April 2, 2018