Update Your Assumptions
The norms of my childhood are long gone.
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It is difficult to keep your software updated.
By “software” I don’t mean the stuff in your computer, but the stuff in your head. By “your” I mean “our,” which is to say that, like you (I bet), I too find it hard to stay current with the way the world really is, rather than seeing it as it used to be. My coding is messed up. I keep running old programs and getting bewildered and annoyed when they conflict with new ones.
Here’s an example: Once upon a time in America, the customer was always right. Businesses tried to please the people who bought their wares, and if there was a problem a friendly agent got on the line to help you sort things out. Now the customer is an irritant to be thwarted or ignored or stalled long enough by the circular reasonings of AI chatbots that he or she gives up trying to reach a competent human being and just pays the stupid recurring monthly fee.
Drivers used to look askance at jerks who used the highway slow lane as the fast lane and passed on the right, or who barged at junctions instead of alternating. Now the one who waits politely for his turn can stay at the junction all day, for all anyone cares. He who passes solely on the left shows himself to be as quaint in his manners as a dinner guest who peels his orange with a knife and fork.
It used to be that public schools practiced viewpoint neutrality with the mission of producing citizens who could read and write and do basic arithmetic. Now schools emblazon their walls with pride flags, reduce American history to slavery, land grabs and the civil rights movement, and graduate great swathes of young people who know nothing about anything. Kids are leaving high school so grossly unprepared that colleges are having to teach the rudiments.
Every day, there’s another glitch, as the expectations of the past collide with the facts of the present. That gal is leading in the polls? That guy thinks he looks like a dame? A science magazine endorses that cockamamie theory? Scoundrels have always gravitated toward politics, but there was a time when having a Nazi tattoo or a drunk-driving conviction would doom a guy’s chances. Now both are alleged to be cool markers of working-class credibility. Also, it wasn’t so very long ago that voters had a good idea of who won an election by the time they went to bed.
Having your perception lag your reality is no doubt part of the human condition. A contractor once told me that when he does a renovation, his customers are usually building for the family configuration they used to have rather than the one they currently have, let alone the one that they will have in the future. That makes sense, given the difficulty in ridding one’s operating system of practices and notions that used to apply but that apply no longer. The great George Orwell, praised by the great Kyle Smith here yesterday for his perspicacity, put it this way: “To see what’s in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
Amen to that, brother.
Mrs. Gurdon is a Free Expression columnist at WSJ Opinion.
I sometimes pass on the right, and I occasionally feel like I am committing a social sin when I do so. But then, I am reminded that the "don't pass on the right" principle only works in conjunction with its partner: "left lane for passing only" (or, better: "slower traffic keep right"). If a driver sits in the left lane and slows down the traffic behind him/her, then a right-lane pass seems both warranted and justified.
We need to return to the olden days. Bring back smoking at your desk and making cigs 50 cents a pack. Make men the primary breadwinner and woman in charge of the household again. Reinstitute the 2-martini lunch. Drop that gym membership!