Most of us prefer nice people to surly pricks. And no doubt we should all try to be nicer to our world-mates. But there is such a thing as inappropriate niceness. Here are two automotive examples for your consideration.
I am following at a safe distance the motorist in front of me. Then said motorist brakes for a jaywalker, not to avoid hitting him, but to allow him to cross. The jaywalker is violating the law; why aid and abet his lawbreaking? Why be nice to someone who shows no respect for the rules of the road? Why risk causing an accident? These are among the questions the inappropriately nice should ask themselves.
I am waiting to make a left turn. A man in an oncoming vehicle, wanting to be nice and neighborly, gestures for me to make the turn despite his having the right-of-way. I make the turn but shake my head in disgust at the man's presumably unwitting and admittedly minor undermining of the rule of law.
The man was probably a liberal. Liberals are good at feeling, but not so good at thinking.
A good conservative maxim: Truth and right count for more than human feelings.
C.J. F. Williams told me a [Richard] Swinburne story. Swinburne offered to give him a lift to some philosophy conference, but warned him ‘I only drive at 30 miles an hour’. Christopher thought he meant that he strictly abided by the urban 30 mph speed limit, and accepted the lift.
It turned out that Swinburne never ever drove more than 30 mph, even on the freeway, where in the UK the limit is 70 mph. It took a while to get to there.
Slow is not safe on freeways. Swinburne is lucky to have lived long enough to be insulted by the Society of Christian Philosophers.
I have heard rumors to the effect that David Lewis was 'automotively challenged.'
My old friend Quentin Smith didn't drive at all.
One of the reasons that philosophers from Thales on have been the laughingstock of Thracian maids and other members of hoi polloi is that many of them are incompetent in practical matters.
Quentin was just hopeless in mundane matters. The tales I could tell, the telling of which loyalty forbids.
Me? I'm an excellent driver, a good cook, a pretty good shot, competent in elementary plumbing, electrical, and automotive change-outs and repairs, and well-versed in personal finance.
A life well-lived is a balanced life. You should strive to develop all sides of your personality: intellectual, spiritual, artistic, emotional, and physical.
Addenda
Here is an obituary of C. J. F. Williams by Richard Swinburne.
It came as news to me that Williams spent most of his life in a wheelchair. It testifies to the possibilities of the human spirit that great adversity for some is no impediment to achievement. I think also of Stephen Hawking, Charles Krauthammer, and FDR.
So stop whining and be grateful for what you have. You could be in a bloody wheelchair!
Your blog post "Philosophers as Bad Drivers" brought back to memory a philosophy professor that I had as an undergrad and a story he told us about himself.
Dr. Ken Ferguson (https://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/ugcat/philFaculty.cfm) told us a story one day about his time in one of the branches of the military. While serving, an officer instructed him to move a jeep. Ferguson says he objected and explained to the officer that he simply could not drive. The officer wasn't sympathetic to his excuse and doubled down on his request. Ferguson said that he attempted to follow the orders and ended up wrecking the jeep and some other equipment. He was not asked to drive again.
Ferguson said that he simply does not drive. Multiple times I remember seeing him walking down one of the main streets leading to campus in what I suspect was a distance of at least over two miles in the morning, and while always wearing a full suit at that!
Thanks for the story! Ferguson is a counterexample to the famous Stirling Moss quotation: “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.”
One of the reasons philosophy and philosophers get such bad press among the general public is because of the high number of oddballs and incompetents in philosophy. Your former professor mught have had a number of good reasons for never learning how to drive. But I would argue that there are certain things every man ought to know how to do and they include knowing how to drive cars and trucks of various sizes and operate a stick shift. Like it or not, we are material beings in a material world and knowing how to negotiate this world is important for us and those with whom we come into contact.
We should develop ourselves as fully and many-sidedly as possible so as to be worthy acolytes of our noble mistress, fair Philosophia. We represent her to the public.
Too many labor under the misapprehension that the purpose of the freeway on ramp is merely to get one to the freeway. Not so. It is also a 'safe space' for acceleration so that one can safely merge with freeway traffic.
'One' above refers to the driver-vehicle composite.
Suppose you are behind some old lady tooling along at 35 mph when she should be doing 50-60 in preparation for a smooth merge. You may be tempted to pass her to the left thereby violating the gore lane.
Don't do it. Or else a hefty fine may be in your future.
The old are too cautious. The young are too reckless. These sentences are examples of generic generalizations.
The owner's manual calls for a changeout every 30,000 miles or 3 years, whichever comes first. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. These off-road vehicles suck in a lot of dust off-road and plenty of dust on-road too in a dusty state like Arizona. And since air filters are cheap, and the installation easy, I thought I'd go ahead, invest a few dollars and minutes and change mine even though I am only about half-way to the 30,000 mile mark.
The STP filter cost me $13.89 plus tax at Auto Zone.
Well, the installation used to be easy on Jeeps: unsnap four clips with your fingers, lift up the plastic air box hood, remove old filter, insert new, reconnect clips. No tools needed.
So I unsnapped the four clips, but the hood wouldn't come off. So I got a flashlight and looked for a fifth clip. Didn't find one. Now I am sweating like a pig and cursing the recalcitrance of matter. Why is this simple job proving to be difficult?
To the Internet! One video was useless, and so was the Jeep Forum, but then I found this video in which the secret is revealed.
