Arts and Minds

Time Is Our Event Horizon

We stand at the edge of time, onlookers and participants in a swirling cosmos that we have neither understood or imagined. It is our illusion that we look ahead at tomorrow or next year. This moment is our event horizon. We cannot see beyond it. We cannot anticipate if our passage in this solar system will either continue or end. We do not know if what we view is a beginning or an ending. Because all moments mark the end of now, all moments are finite singular end points. Restricted to such a foreshortened view, what business do we have causing destruction? All we can achieve in this mode is to restrict and narrow the course of the future, essentially contributing only to entropy, not to life.

The Mind Behind The Wheel

Psychodynamics Of High-Risk Drivers

Road rage is a misleading term for pathological violence while driving. Rage is rage, anywhere. violence while driving. We enjoy our new crush-cage cars with air-bags. But they cannot protect us from ourselves. And each of us, sometimes, is a danger to ourselves and to others, especially while we are driving. Some of the danger is preventable by high-level driver training, but that training is not offered in ordinary driving schools, nor is it affordable in the defensive driving schools that do address it.

All drivers are a bit preoccupied some of the time. It is rare to see a driver totally focused who is commuting in traffic. Professional drivers like ambulance, police and fire-truck drivers responding to a call, and race-car drivers, and some accident-wise and wary motor-cycle riders tend to keep their attention more focused on the act of driving.

The rest of us, who are not professional drivers, relax, listen to music or talk shows, talk on cell-phones (rarely using speaker-phones), talk to passengers, consult the tiny print on the GPS or map. Some eat, brush hair, put on makeup, shave, and even read the newspaper. We discipline the kids in the back seat, argue with our spouse in the passenger seat, or search on the floor of the car for dropped cigarettes. Often without realizing it, we daydream.