As a theory, the dumbing down of America has much going for it. To test this assertion, one need only switch on the TV, open up a newspaper, or get into a conversation about nutrition with an actress. What is not dumbing down, according to an article I caught up with in the New York Times, are cars. Not only do the canny little buggies now drive themselves but there have been rumblings in the tech community about developing cars with brains that can make existential decisions. Decisions such as “Do I swerve sharply and avoid running over the old lady crossing in front of me if it means harming my passenger, or do I value him more and bang Grandma’s false teeth out of her head?” A dicey moral gray area yawns ominously here, or put another way: when my Buick is given the same freedom of choice as Nikolai Stavrogin, watch out. And now that I’ve brought up the old Muscovite, is his confession any more riveting than this one? Let us see.
It’s deceptive being built the way I am. Streamlined body, two well-turned fenders, dynamite suspension, great shocks, and a pair of headlights Sports Illustrated photographed for their swimsuit issue. Predictably every Neanderthal thinks that with a chassis like mine I got nothing going on upstairs, but how wrong they are. For one thing, I’m thoroughly grounded in the classics; everything from Plato to Kant, Wittgenstein, you name it. Not to mention all the great novels, holy screeds, and psychology texts. I know—you’re probably wondering what’s a gas guzzler like me doing quoting Pound’s Cantos or Freud? The truth is you never know when you have to rely on Aristotle or Confucius when faced with choosing to hit a lamppost or running over a man coming from Zabar’s with fresh bagels. That’s why when Mister Ivor Sweetroll came into the showroom, plunked down the asking price, and drove me out, or should I say, I drove him out, I was pleased as punch. To have an owner who was a cultural equal was all I could ask for. I drove him to museums and theaters and now and then up to Columbia University. We had some fine chats about Jesus, Homer, and the Rig Veda from a strictly automotive point of view. Naturally, I had to make a few existential decisions, but that’s what you pay for when you buy me. The first
was a raucous fat man in a Shriner fez who jaywalked out of nowhere, holding a beer and a joy buzzer. This of course was a no-brainer, as I certainly wasn’t going to brake and risk Mister Sweetroll’s safety. I calmly held course and rolled over the boor’s leg, causing him to make the sound a man makes when his parachute fails to open. A choice less clear-cut came the afternoon of the Steuben Day Parade when four men in lederhosen, walking home, crossed against the light into my path, creating a moral dilemma. Do I swing the wheel and protect my owner even though he’s only one life versus four? The Utilitarians would have opted to save the greater number but I couldn’t get past the lederhosen, and while I struggled to minimize carnage, I hit the one named Emil and made what billiard players call a carom shot using his head, a nun, and the side of a building. The real crunch came when a man I recognized as a world-class cellist cut in front of me on his bike. Having heard his sublime rendering of the Mozart sonatas, I judged his value to humanity as exceeding Sweetroll’s. Abruptly, I wrenched the wheel to avoid a collision and spun out on the sidewalk, going through the plate glass window of Rikfin’s Delicatessen, where I hit a Mister Sol Greenblatt, knocking him into his wife’s kasha. The exultation of lawyers that fluttered from the woodwork was predictable, and it wasn’t long before yours truly wound up with a For Sale sign tucked under my windshield wipers. The next purchaser was a steep Brodie from Ivor Sweetroll, to phrase it picturesquely. Morey Angleworm was a producer of quintessential schlock; one of those egomaniacs who likes to say his own name when he pontificates, as in, “So he said to me, Morey, I predict your new TV medical series Safe Margins will go through the ceiling.” And it did, but it was the ceiling of the apartment below. Angleworm was always in the back seat working the trapezius muscles of some stacked little wannabe. Married to a woman who resembled Yasser Arafat, the man was a compulsive philanderer who promised so many actresses parts if they came across, he was forced to remake War and Peace with an all-female cast. But he was clearly not happy. He had nightmares and a recurring dream where he was trapped in a raft at sea with a dwarf who yodeled. He asked me if I could suggest a good shrink, but I told him not to waste his money.
I could tell him all he had to know without ponying up eight hundred garbanzo beans for fifty minutes of moonscape silence. From our conversation, I diagnosed him as suffering from a borderline disorder. As a boy, he had entered his parents’ bedroom during sex unannounced and caught his father wearing moose antlers. The truth was, his infidelity was creating a severe moral crisis for me, and one day, after driving his wife to Bergdorf’s to buy a sleek black dress that made her look like Arafat in a sleek black dress, the Categorical Imperative consumed me, and I chose to act. I launched into a tasting menu of tootsies Angleworm had bounced in assorted motels, including the little wiggle with a porn star in the back seat who stuck her tongue in his ear, causing his toupee to spin around on his head like a phonograph record. Visibly stunned, Minna Angleworm staggered weakly up the steps of their townhouse and as she fumbled for her door key, I could see her hand was shaking so badly that I still can’t figure out how she was able to place a shot so perfectly between Angleworm’s eyes.
My third owner was A. D. H. D. Dildarian, the noted physicist who proved that the next Kleenex that pops up when we pull one out of the box is an optical illusion. Dildarian was searching for something with personal meaning for his wife’s anniversary, so I drove him to Hammacher Schlemmer, the only store in town where you could buy a Higgs boson. I waited, parked out in front, clocking the various luxury items in their window—a thermonuclear eggbeater, solid gold arch supports, an iron maiden—when suddenly two men came running out of a bank, guns blazing, carrying bags of money. Sizing me up as a car that could self-drive, leaving them free to return gunfire, they yanked my door open, piled in, jiggled my wires, and we zoomed off with squad cars in hot pursuit. At that moment a strange feeling came over me. A feeling of existential freedom. I realized I was taking part in a crime, and I experienced a dizzying euphoria. Suddenly, I was exactly like Raskolnikov or Meursault; the only difference was that I had seat covers. Authentic at last, I raced through lights and stop signs, finally crashing headlong into an oncoming Mitzvah Mobile with such velocity that it completely knocked loose the beard from rabbi Dov Shimmel and sent it flying into the crowd, where it was lost, only to turn up months later for sale on eBay. I’m on a conveyor belt now, waiting for the car crusher to compact me into a cube of scrap iron. My advice is, next time you buy a car, forget one that can discuss monads and Novalis. Settle for better legroom and good mileage to the gallon.
via SkyHorse Publishing https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781956763294/zero-gravity/
This is the most enjoyable treatment of the moral dilemma of self-driving cars I’ve ever seen or will likely ever see. Thank you for making me laugh and think at the same time. ☺️🙏
My head is still spinning from all those those showdowns and yikes I’m in the middle.