Some letter writers to the Duluth News Tribune have recently been calling for God in our lives to solve many of our problems. Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisitor, believed in God, and he had thousands murdered because they didn’t believe as he did. The Puritans believed in God, and they had dozens murdered because the innocent victims would not admit to being witches. Plantation owners believed in God, and they kept slaves who they would whip for whatever cause.
The problem with a belief in God is that too many “believers” are very selective in what they believe. Too many ignore a central tenet of monotheistic and other religions.
“Do not unto your neighbor what you would not have him do unto you; this is the whole Law; the rest is commentary.” – Hillel, a Jewish teacher in the first century, B.C.E.
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” – Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:12
“...and you should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” _ Qur’an (Surah 24, “The Light”, v. 22)
"What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others." – Confucius
“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him." – Plato’s Socrates (Crito, 49c)
You can find many more variations and sources of the “Golden Rule” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule.
What these religious and ethical variations call for is for us to be part of communities. These communities are at neighborhood, city, national, and world levels. They are as informal as holding a door for a stranger at a public building or as formal as churches and civic associations.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t act as if we are in some of these communities. We walk out of our houses to our car on the street or in the garage and drive somewhere else without even seeing a neighbor. We don’t bother to shovel our sidewalks because we don’t use them, completely ignoring all the footprints in the snow. As we drive we are focused on thoughts elsewhere, whether in our heads, on our radios, or even on our cell phones. We drive over crosswalks without even looking for pedestrians. We drive through red lights ignoring any traffic or pedestrians waiting at the cross streets. We race through parking garages without headlights and without watching for vehicles backing out.
Our first try at building communities should be to consider doing unto others what we appreciate others doing unto us. Do we want to walk on clear sidewalks? Do we want other drivers to be attentive to vehicles around them? Do we want drivers to be attentive to us as we cross a street? Do we want other drivers to wait for us to back out of a blind spot?
If we start with these small changes, maybe we can look at how we treat others in a larger context. Do we talk about public employees as “they” or do we consider them our neighbors. Did “they” make a patch on our street, or did a city crew make the patch? Did “they” plow our street, or did an overworked city plow driver make our street more drivable?
Remember that the Good Samaritan of the Book of Luke was an “other”. To build communities, we need to be open to including the “other” as our neighbors.
Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Monday, April 18, 2011
There oughta be a law?
This blog entry was triggered by the latest "Ask a Trooper" in the Duluth News Tribune, "Common sense, not law, rules against 'short cuts'", 2011-04-17.
A reader wrote about people who cut through gas stations and parking lots to avoid waiting at controlled intersections. The reader could not find any law or statute prohibiting it.
Minnesota State Patrol Sgt. Mark Baker, who writes the column, could not find any either. He wrote that reckless and careless driving laws could apply and that he too found this behavior irritating.
I found his conclusion irritating though: "we all know that this is not the proper way to maneuver vehicles on our roadways and through our cities. Do we really need a law to tell us this is not proper?"
His question can be taken one step further; do we really need any law to tell us what is not proper? The answer is that it depends.
My thought is that we have laws for three reasons.
First, laws guide us in getting along with each other. We have lines painted on roads to guide us. We have laws to remind us that it is improper to cross solid yellow lines. Many people can't be bothered by these laws. Just look at the faded yellow lines on curves that hundreds of drivers have crossed.
Second, laws guide law enforcement people in stopping offenders as a deterrent for others. Unfortunately, many offenders blame law enforcement rather than themselves.
Third, laws help establishment responsibility in crashes. The driver who crossed a solid yellow line may bear more responsibility for a crash than someone going five miles per hour over the limit.
Sgt. Baker, the writer, you, and I know that we do not "need a law to tell us this is not proper", but we certainly need laws to be enforced to remind all the drivers who speed, tailgate, text, talk on cell phones, and otherwise engage in other anti-social and unsafe behaviors that their behavior has an effect on the rest of us.
A reader wrote about people who cut through gas stations and parking lots to avoid waiting at controlled intersections. The reader could not find any law or statute prohibiting it.
Minnesota State Patrol Sgt. Mark Baker, who writes the column, could not find any either. He wrote that reckless and careless driving laws could apply and that he too found this behavior irritating.
I found his conclusion irritating though: "we all know that this is not the proper way to maneuver vehicles on our roadways and through our cities. Do we really need a law to tell us this is not proper?"
His question can be taken one step further; do we really need any law to tell us what is not proper? The answer is that it depends.
My thought is that we have laws for three reasons.
First, laws guide us in getting along with each other. We have lines painted on roads to guide us. We have laws to remind us that it is improper to cross solid yellow lines. Many people can't be bothered by these laws. Just look at the faded yellow lines on curves that hundreds of drivers have crossed.
Second, laws guide law enforcement people in stopping offenders as a deterrent for others. Unfortunately, many offenders blame law enforcement rather than themselves.
Third, laws help establishment responsibility in crashes. The driver who crossed a solid yellow line may bear more responsibility for a crash than someone going five miles per hour over the limit.
Sgt. Baker, the writer, you, and I know that we do not "need a law to tell us this is not proper", but we certainly need laws to be enforced to remind all the drivers who speed, tailgate, text, talk on cell phones, and otherwise engage in other anti-social and unsafe behaviors that their behavior has an effect on the rest of us.
Monday, July 05, 2010
2904 miles and I can't stop driving
Yesterday we returned from a 12-day trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake ON, West Chester PA, and Silver Spring MD with overnight stops at Sault Ste. Marie MI, Richmond IN, and Madison WI. That's almost like driving coast-to-coast. The purpose was a reunion of my wife's sisters and cousins to celebrate our 50th anniversary and that of one of her cousins.
We drank and talked and ate and talked and we walked and we went on a jet boat ride and drank and talked and ate and talked. We took many pictures and movies and we gave impromptu speeches. As part of my speech I sang some song fragments with two duets with my wife. The best part was when my wife's youngest sister, who had had opera training, complimented me on my singing.
We stopped in West Chester to visit a high school and Scout friend and his wife. Although we took a walk in town and went out to a restaurant, we mostly sat in their gazebo, talked, read, and watched TV. It was also a bit of a nostalgia trip in that we haven't been in the area since we lived there in 1974-1977. It is something to drive twisty roads where the trees are right next to the road.
We stopped in Silver Spring to visit a possible third cousin of mine. Her ancestors were from Baltimore and my great-grandfather gave his father's birthplace as Maryland. Since John C. Magree was a ship's master born in Baltimore and dismissed from the U.S. Navy in 1862, I suspect he is our common ancestor. Now to find the right records. For him they are very sparse: I have found only one transcribed record of his bringing a ship of immigrants from Liverpool to New York. That was in December 1851. Since my great-grandfather was born in Brooklyn in December 1850, could John C. Magree have had two families, one in each U.S. port?
It was something to go from the hills of Appalachia to the Great Plains. In the morning we were going up and down and around and in the afternoon we were driving into the horizon. I took a picture of one gap and the valley behind us, but I never noted what the rest stop was. I suppose I could figure it out with the camera time stamp and a map. As we drove through West Virginia, we certainly understood the feeling of the song, "Country Roads".
I also understood the psychology of "keeping up with traffic". I've divided drivers into lone wolves, the wolf pack, and law-abiding individuals.
The lone wolves are the drivers who drive fifteen or more miles-per-hour over the speed limit. They are also the drivers who will weave in and out of traffic to get to an exit one minute before other drivers. They also arrive in the left lane at about the time another driver is ready to pass a vehicle in the right lane. That driver has the choice of being tailgated by the lone wolf or slowing down to avoid a collision with the slower vehicle in the right lane.
The wolf pack consists of those who drive five to ten miles over the limit. It is amusing to watch them drive. They are in a group of five to ten cars in both lanes. As they come to a slower vehicle they merge into the left lane, getting closer and closer to each other, sometimes less than a car length apart. When they get through the "choke point", the first driver will pull right in front of the lead car in the right lane, often at a distance closer than the following car was in the left lane. Then the second car pulls in front of the first, the third in front of the second, and so on, with a lone wolf bringing up the rear.
The law-abiding drivers are driving within five miles per hour of the posted limit. They rarely see each other because they are spaced some distance apart. This gives them the illusion that they are all alone in driving at the speed limit.
When one of these drivers passes a similar driver, the lone wolves and the wolf packs accuse them of holding up traffic. Isn't it the other way around? The lone wolves and the wolf packs are pushing traffic.
I think I've had enough of driving for a while. The one hour to our cabin is enough, and we may be passed only twice, if at all.
Besides, we have to pay all our credit card bills. Other than all the good visits, the next best thing was that our 2002 Prius got 48.0 miles per gallon in that 2904 miles.
We drank and talked and ate and talked and we walked and we went on a jet boat ride and drank and talked and ate and talked. We took many pictures and movies and we gave impromptu speeches. As part of my speech I sang some song fragments with two duets with my wife. The best part was when my wife's youngest sister, who had had opera training, complimented me on my singing.
We stopped in West Chester to visit a high school and Scout friend and his wife. Although we took a walk in town and went out to a restaurant, we mostly sat in their gazebo, talked, read, and watched TV. It was also a bit of a nostalgia trip in that we haven't been in the area since we lived there in 1974-1977. It is something to drive twisty roads where the trees are right next to the road.
We stopped in Silver Spring to visit a possible third cousin of mine. Her ancestors were from Baltimore and my great-grandfather gave his father's birthplace as Maryland. Since John C. Magree was a ship's master born in Baltimore and dismissed from the U.S. Navy in 1862, I suspect he is our common ancestor. Now to find the right records. For him they are very sparse: I have found only one transcribed record of his bringing a ship of immigrants from Liverpool to New York. That was in December 1851. Since my great-grandfather was born in Brooklyn in December 1850, could John C. Magree have had two families, one in each U.S. port?
It was something to go from the hills of Appalachia to the Great Plains. In the morning we were going up and down and around and in the afternoon we were driving into the horizon. I took a picture of one gap and the valley behind us, but I never noted what the rest stop was. I suppose I could figure it out with the camera time stamp and a map. As we drove through West Virginia, we certainly understood the feeling of the song, "Country Roads".
I also understood the psychology of "keeping up with traffic". I've divided drivers into lone wolves, the wolf pack, and law-abiding individuals.
The lone wolves are the drivers who drive fifteen or more miles-per-hour over the speed limit. They are also the drivers who will weave in and out of traffic to get to an exit one minute before other drivers. They also arrive in the left lane at about the time another driver is ready to pass a vehicle in the right lane. That driver has the choice of being tailgated by the lone wolf or slowing down to avoid a collision with the slower vehicle in the right lane.
The wolf pack consists of those who drive five to ten miles over the limit. It is amusing to watch them drive. They are in a group of five to ten cars in both lanes. As they come to a slower vehicle they merge into the left lane, getting closer and closer to each other, sometimes less than a car length apart. When they get through the "choke point", the first driver will pull right in front of the lead car in the right lane, often at a distance closer than the following car was in the left lane. Then the second car pulls in front of the first, the third in front of the second, and so on, with a lone wolf bringing up the rear.
The law-abiding drivers are driving within five miles per hour of the posted limit. They rarely see each other because they are spaced some distance apart. This gives them the illusion that they are all alone in driving at the speed limit.
When one of these drivers passes a similar driver, the lone wolves and the wolf packs accuse them of holding up traffic. Isn't it the other way around? The lone wolves and the wolf packs are pushing traffic.
I think I've had enough of driving for a while. The one hour to our cabin is enough, and we may be passed only twice, if at all.
Besides, we have to pay all our credit card bills. Other than all the good visits, the next best thing was that our 2002 Prius got 48.0 miles per gallon in that 2904 miles.
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