Tuesday 19th November
I have pondered this much.
I have come to believe your behaviour and emotions when driving are the ultimate litmus test of your character.
Tom Gleeson is one of two stand up comedians I've heard make the joke that they hate driving because it turns them into hypocrites.
And I read an article called Inside the MonkeySphere looking at how humans make an instinctive distinction between personal and impersonal.
I had already been thinking about it.
I think that the lack of personal connection with our fellow human beings in the other cars is compounded by the fact that our sense of face becomes the salient issue.
It is a very similar situation to e-mail lists, where civilised and gracious people end up "digging in" to a point of view and defending it viciously while attacking the other civilised and gracious person. This results in flame wars, which provide a fascinating insight into human psychology and behaviour. I've found myself caught up in minor flame wars in two separate occasions, and one quite recently. In both cases I felt my public self was at stake. Fortunately for my public self I can say I did not behave appallingly, merely with stubborn pigheadedness.
So I resent the guy who zooms up the left lane and then pushes in. I am self-righteous when the driver behind me tailgates. And woe betide the inordinately slow driver, or the driver who can't stay in his lane properly, or the driver who fails to indicate, or who for some inpenetrable reason swerves right before turning left, as if driving a bus, raising my heart rate in the process. In these cases I have the awful habit of glancing at them when overtaking. This is, I explain to my wife, to confirm my suspicion that the driver is either female, old, young, or of Asian background, since all these categories of people can't driver properly.
It is of some comfort to me that four times out of five my suspicions are confirmed. My wife is yet to appear impressed.
The problem isn't that I am a hypocrite. I don't do any of the stuff that I can't stand other drivers doing.
The problem is that, by sheer coincidence, I set my own behaviour as the standard by which the other strangers around me must be judged.
That's not gracious. My indignity is perversely satisfying as I am diurnally transgressed.
A friend of mine was making faces at the stupid driver who had cut in on him. He realised several moments later that it was a friend of his (and mine). The resentment dissolved.
I can be gracious with friends and enemies that I have some kind of face to face relationship with. It's much harder with strangers.
When Christ was asked "who is my neighbor?", his reply illustrated a stranger.
That's why I think our behaviour and emotions when we drive are the ultimate litmus test of our character.