Thursday, May 31, 2018

Needing to Tinker Again With the Engine

We were push mower people throughout my childhood years, but there was one aberrant interlude when a riding mower graced our shed.  Throughout the circuits of our lawn I fantasized the turf as the asphalt of the Indianapolis Speedway.  Or at least a go-cart track.  It was, indeed, a fantasy because in reality the mower was a study in slowness.  It could go even slower if throttled down, but its top speed would lose to a casual walk. 

When the mower passed out of lawn service my Dad agreed that my brother and I could “tinker” with it.  I charitably include myself in that permission knowing full well that I am not a tinkerer — neither then nor now.  My brother, on the other hand, is another story.  Whether by exploration, hearsay, or the kind of knowledge gleaned from the quivering harmonics of the universe to which I have always been deaf, he somehow discovered and subsequently manipulated a fascinating element of that riding mower’s Briggs and Stratton engine called a “governor”.  The governor’s assigned function on the engine was to limit speed.  The engine, in other words, had all kinds of power.  It was simply being restrained by this simple mechanical device, quite probably to keep adolescent boys from racing around the neighborhood — which, having liberated the horsepower from the Governor, we promptly proceeded to do.

I was thinking about that old mower in recent days while lamenting with some friends what we described as “the coursening” of our culture.  If once upon a time there were generally accepted mores about decency and decorum — common courtesy, if you will, among acquaintances and strangers alike — those days seem to be gone.  We’ve become a profane citizenry of grunters and scoffers and name callers who mock and belittle, castigate and denigrate, always in all-caps or disregarding volume.  What once was known as courteous respect is now derided as mere “political correctness.”  We’ve become…course — rough, sharp and prickly — hellbent on, or indifferent to, inflicting as many social abrasions as possible.

Somehow we’ve lost our governor.

In an earlier time the religious community served that function, but not anymore.  Churches are routinely and cynically — and in large measure correctly — viewed as mere shills for one political party or another.  Elected representatives once contributed to that role — actually governing; demonstrating diplomacy and respectfulness in the milieu of diverse opinions— but that arena has become the most course and mean-spirited of all; “statesmanship”, alas, as elusive as unicorns; political “rising stars” from both parties routinely grounded by revelations of despicable behaviors that contradict their glossy public personae.  This, as the nation’s chief executive — who has replaced the White House organic garden with a mud wrestling pit (thus far, at least, only metaphorically) — elevates repulsiveness and repugnance to patriotic duty; who according to his own braggadocio grabs, fondles, despises, manipulates and bullies.  Meanwhile, true journalists have largely been replaced by talk show hosts and commentators whose ratings require ever more strident theatrics.  And have you seen the things we say to each other on social media?

But who is to tell us anything different?  What we need is a governor — the cultural equivalent of the level-headed spouse who can catch our eye or speak our name or touch our elbow in just that discreet way that ineffably communicates that we are perilously close to encroaching on the borderlands of decency.  Or to change the imagery, perhaps we need some new Galileo-like visionary who can help us rediscover some awareness of a “true north” of which we have completely lost touch.

I’m pretty much out of ideas, so I think I’ll call my brother.  He’s the tinkerer.  Once upon a time he figured out how to disarm the engine’s governor to give us a little more speed.  It was fun for awhile, but now I’m thinking it hasn’t gotten us very far.  It’s not that all this mess is in any way his fault — after all, we weren't trying to corrupt the world.  We were just kids hoping for a little more wind in our short cut hair.  But maybe it's time we slowed back down.  So I’m thinking that maybe with a little time and encouragement and methodical tinkering surely he can figure out how to activate it again.

The governor.

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