Law'n'Order: Ethical Principles and Practicality

Questions to consider:

• While motoring*, have you ever tried to scrupulously observe the speed limit, anywhere in the US, any time in, say, the past 8 years? What happened? (Bonus question: Was there bloodshed?)
• When's the last time you saw a motorist make a complete stop at a stop sign when it wasn't mandated by cross traffic?
• If you live in an area where cellphone use is illegal while driving, do you see people doing it anyway?
  
• Are there stretches along your cycle commute where litter is really bad? (Bonus question: How many times in the past, say, month have you noticed complete fast food bags discarded?)

By now you're asking, "What's your point, Robert?" Fair enough. I've been thinking about how personal ethics are affected by being in a car. I'm wondering if the isolation that an automobile imposes, the sense of being "cut off", somehow enables the motorist to compromise his principles. Is a cyclist different because he's "out there" in the environment with little or no protection? Admittedly, I see plenty of cyclists (in the US at least) do lots of scofflaw behavior. And it's this behavior that I always consider "stupid", meaning dangerous, or ultimately impractical.

Ethics seems to be about finding the balance between the principle and the practicality of the situation. Consider the well-known "four-way test" of the Rotary Club International:

1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL & BETTER FRIENDSHIP?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Notice that items 1 and 2 are about adherence to principle (truth and fairness) and 3 and 4 are about practicality (goodwill, friendship, benefits). Certainly, if an action can be said to meet all 4 questions in the affirmative, it can be said to be ethical. (See this post for more ruminations on the Rotary "4WT", including examples of situations where the principled and the practical collide.)

Traffic laws (and for that matter, littering laws) are thankfully areas where the principled and the practical coincide, or at least overlap greatly. A commenter on a previous post noted that cyclists (and pedestrians) in Denmark were scrupulously observant of traffic laws, and I've noted the same on my travels to Europe, in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Sweden. (France is, well, another story.)

I'm always flummoxed when I see a bicyclist, say, commenting on a blog, defending his right to break the traffic laws. Neither principled nor practical.

*I recognize this blog is not about motoring, and it may be that many readers of this blog in fact never act as motorists. To you, I doff my helmet and bow.

Across the chasm

The renowned cult author, Robert Pirsig, wrote an article for Esquire magazine in 1977 about cruise sailing wherein he observed that people who had spent years and lots of money preparing for once-in-a-lifetime cruise sailing voyages often cut them short, disappointed and disillusioned, eager to get "back to reality" from their dream cruises that had turned into nightmares.

Here are a couple of excerpts that apply, directly or indirectly, to bicycle commuting, I think:

The house-car-job complex with its nine-to-five office routine is common only to a very small percentage of the earth's population and has only been common to this percentage for the last hundred years or so. If this is reality, have the millions of years that preceded our current century all been unreal?

An alternative - and better - definition of reality can be found by naming some of its components ...air...sunlight...wind...water...the motion of waves...the patterns of clouds before a coming storm. These elements, unlike twentieth-century office routines, have been here since before life appeared on this planet and they will continue long after office routines are gone. They are understood by everyone, not just a small segment of a highly advanced society. When considered on purely logical grounds, they are more real than the extremely transitory life-styles of the modern civilization the depressed ones want to return to.
...
Now, however, with a boat of my own and some time at sea, I begin to see the learning of virtue another way. It has something to do with the way the sea and sun and wind and sky go on and on day after day, week after week, and the boat and you have to go on with it. You must take the helm and change the sails and take sights of the stars and work out their reductions and sleep and cook and eat and repair things as they break and do most of these things in stormy weather as well as fair, depressed as well as elated, because there's no choice. You get used to it; it becomes habit-forming and produces a certain change in values.

Taking responsiblity for my own transportation is such a liberating thing, and I think it's exactly what Pirsig is talking about. What the weather's going to do, how I have to dress for that, how long it's going to take to get to the office, how my legs feel and how steep the rises are, all these things are part of my "daily chores". Every hill is an opportunity to find the perfect gear to carry me. Headwinds are an opportunity to orient my direction to the cardinal points and get a better sense of my space on the map as I go home. That squeak in the chain means that I'm going to have drop it and lube it soon. My right knee is twinging a bit, better gear down. The way those clouds are moving means that the rain will be over in no more than 5 minutes.

Those cars going by me are big and hot. And heavy, really massive. They are big metal-and-glass parlors on wheels carrying large amounts of flammable liquid. Sometimes the drivers are aware of me, sometimes not. Most of the drivers don't seem too happy; a lot of them are distracted, talking on their cellphones.

As I sit here typing this post, two (count 'em) car ads have come on late night TV touting new cars with "driver-assist" technology. You know, computer-aided steering that moves you back into the land if you wanter, or senses when you're nodding off and alerts you. All this stuff is going to put just more stuff between the drivers who buy these (very expensive) cars and reality.

Pirsig is right. Dealing with reality, if made into a habit (and taken in manageable doses) is value-forming and -enhancing. Motorists have their "reality". In their world, what I do is crazy, dangerous, and even childish. (They wonder when I'll "grow up and get a car"!) In my world, what I do is entirely safe, fun, life-enhancing and (especially) real.

I do drive sometimes, when the situation demands it. (I will have to tomorrow.) So it's easier for me to understand the perspective of a motorist. But 99% of all motorists will not have my cycling experience. It's like we are on the opposite rims of a canyon.

Proof of God's Love and Sense of Humor

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
—Benjamin Franklin

"Bacon is proof that God loves us... well, a whole lot more than He loves pigs."
—Robert Anderson

This past Tuesday morning I also got proof that God has a great sense of ironic humor. I was approaching what is consistently the most dangerous intersection on my morning commute, and it was approached by the most dangerous kind of driver, in the most dangerous kind of vehicle, doing the most dangerous activity, and...

The distracted housewife in the SUV with a cellphone clamped to the side of her head at the four-yield traffic circle stopped, made eye contact, and (just for good measure) waved me through.

It took me a half a block to grasp the kind of joke God was playing on me, upending all my stereotypes in one fell swoop. I appreciated it so that I laughed out loud. As a religious person, I would generally consider myself more of a Diest than a Theist, even though I am pretty faithful Lutheran (but that's mainly because I love to sing in the choir). The rest of religion—all the stories, all the doctrine—are just stuff that people have made up in a vain attempt to explain the unexplainable. (Not that there aren't some good stories.) And there are some things (like the "resurrection of the body" that wraps up the Christian Credo) that, I'm sorry, just haven't been thought through. (I mean, will I have to have dental floss and toilet paper in Heaven? Gimme a break.)

Cosmological physicists tell us that we can perceive only about four percent of the universe. Everything we can perceive of the universe, all the Earth, the Solar System, the galaxies, everything.. is just four percent of all that is. We as humans just don't have the senses to perceive the rest. Scientists have made up something called "dark matter" (I like to think of it as "the fudge factor of the universe") so that their equations will match what is observed. How is it, then, that some scientists have such faith in their miserable perceptions to loudly disavow the existence of God?

Another scientist (well, mathematician) of (ahem) note, Blaise Pascal, put it this way, (about "betting" on whether God exists) in his work Penseés:

But you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

Difficult to put it better than that.

Later on in that morning ride, just for good measure, I got to bike on the rarest thing: a freshly-swept road. I mean so fresh that the little water dribble-marks from the street-sweeper were still visible on the asphalt. It was awesome. So clean and smooth.

Every once in a while, Theism tempts me away from my cooler Deistic beliefs.

Cycling and Meditation

As I've gotten older, I've mellowed a lot about spirituality. Spirituality of all flavors. I've gotten more into church, especially through singing. (I also pray a lot more these days.) On an irregular basis, I attend meditation sessions with my wife, where we do sitting and walking meditation. Meditation is about being totally present in your life, where you focus on breathing and try and quiet the internal monologue that goes on in your brain. I really enjoy meditating.

When you're cycling in traffic, and really paying attention, it's a form of meditation, too. Think about it -- to be safe, you'd better be 100% in the present. You better know what the traffic around you is doing, you'd better know what the road conditions are likely to be in the next quarter mile, you better know how the traffic signals are sequenced, and you better be watching for pedestrians to boot. (Hey, "pedestrians to boot" -- get it? Never mind.) There is really no room for having your mind wander, not if you want to be safe.

There's really no room to indulge in anger or reverse road rage, either. The only time all last year when I came close to having an accident was when I was agitated when I was signaling for a lane change and a rude driver came right around me, ignoring my signal. I got all bent out of shape, and yelled at the jerk. Within a minute, and while I was still agitated, I came within a hairs-breadth of turning left into oncoming traffic. I must have had a guardian angel give me a dope-slap to pull me out of my agitation and save me. I was really shaken by this incident and by my inattentiveness caused by my not letting go of the anger.

Seeing the danger in "reverse road rage", I resolved to mend my ways. When drivers act stupid, aggressive, or (as is usually the case) heedless, I still shout at them, but then I let it drop, and be over. It's the only way to be really safe. Hanging on to your anger and agitation is just purely dangerous.

Peace, sisters and brothers.

A non-bicycling day, a non-bicycling post...

So, today (or more properly last night, although it's still coming down at 10:30 am) the Nor'Easter of 2009 arrived to us here in Maryland. Where I live, it amounts to about 9" of light, powdery snow, easy enough to clear off the driveway, but deep and slippery enough to merit a day to work from home.

I gave my wife (for Christmas a few years ago) a nice bird feeder, a Droll Yankee, and we hung it right outside the breakfast-nook window. It has proved to be a great investment in entertainment. We see cardinals, wrens, titmice, chicadees, finches of all kinds, and occasional other varieties. When it snows, the bird sometimes get a little, well, desperate and crazy. The movie is a brief example of the "bird wars" that sometimes ensue.