Deep (well, sort of) thoughts about Tesla Full Self-Driving and Netflix Kevin Hart Roast

In my never-ending — except after I die — quest to suck gobs of philosophical profundity out of the marrow of everyday life, I want to share what struck me about the meaning of our one and only existence on this crazy planet we call Earth after some seemingly mundane experiences.

Yesterday I was able to ride in and then drive a Tesla for the first time. Wrote about this momentous occasion on my HinesSight blog in “Driving a Tesla around Salem with Full Self-Driving, I was super impressed.” Never shy about quoting myself, I will.

Touching the steering wheel isn’t advised with FSD as turning the wheel disengages it, as does pressing on the brake pedal. While I’d watched several videos of FSD in action, experiencing it was way cooler. At first I was sort of nervous as the car headed down Mission Street in fairly heavy traffic. But it didn’t take long before I realized that the Model Y was driving safely and competently, more so than a lot of human drivers, for sure.

FSD can be set for different driving styles. “Sloth,” not surprisingly, has the car going below the speed limit. “Mad Max” speaks for itself on the other end of the driving style spectrum. Rylan said our car was set to “Chill,” I believe, which is close to the speed limit.

It’s just amazing to watch the Model Y steer, signal, change lanes, stop at red lights, make turns, and park itself when it found an available spot a block away from Pacific Martial Arts. Rylan then entered a Salem Hospital parking garage into Navigation that he likes to use to demonstrate FSD capability. Our car pulled into a narrow street on the hospital campus, drove through some surface lots, then entered a multilevel parking garage and found a space there.

…All in all, I felt pleasantly relaxed using FSD. It was great to turn over the chore of driving to the Model Y, like having an AI chauffeur. If I were more familiar with the Tesla, I would have feel even more relaxed, of course.

After my visit to the Tesla dealership, I got to thinking about how Full Self-Driving, or FSD, reminds me of the Taoist, or maybe Zen, story of the man out in a rowboat on a foggy day. Feeling and hearing an unexpected crunch, he was irate at the idiot in another boat that appeared out of the fog and rammed his boat. Then he noticed that no one was in the other boat. It had simply been drifting. His anger dissipated.

When I’m driving my current car, a Subaru Crosstrek, I have the same feeling I’ve had since I began driving: other drivers are dangerous incompetents; I’m a far superior driver compared to those fools. They’re aways doing stuff that irritates me. Driving too fast. Driving too slow. Not signaling a lane change. Leaving their signal on after a lane change. Following too close. Following too far away.

Of course, in my saner moments (few and far between), I realize that other drivers look at how I’m driving, find my style deeply lacking, and think, There goes an idiot in his Subaru. The only time I reliably relax and don’t view other people or myself as driving idiots is when I’m on a freeway using my car’s adaptive cruise control, which maintains a safe following distance between my Crosstrek and the vehicle I’m behind.

Then I don’t worry about whether I’m following too closely or too far away, because my car’s computer is determining the following distance. Other drivers probably think I’m in charge of that, but I know that I’ve handed that job over to Subaru’s adaptive cruise control system.

Tesla Full Self-Driving takes this to a whole other level. Yesterday, when I took the Model Y out on my own after a demo ride with the dealership’s general manager, I was doing next to nothing driving-wise. I was literally just along for the ride — except when I had to intervene when the  Tesla was going 30 mph in a school zone with flashing lights indicating a 20 mph limit, and when the Tesla started to exit the freeway in a construction zone that confused the FSD.

For me FSD is a reminder that we humans don’t possess the unfettered free will most of us believe we have.

In truth, I’m convinced that we’re all just along for the ride — in this case, the ride being our entire life from birth until death. Knowing that Tesla’s FSD software/hardware was capable of driving the Model Y in a highly competent manner, albeit with a few glitches, allowed me to sit back and enjoy the passing scenery. Just wish I could do this all the time as I ride along in my overall life.

I also want to briefly mention how much I’m enjoying the Kevin Hart Roast on Netflix. Hart, if you’re not familiar with him, is a short (5′ 2′) Black comedian. I enjoy roasts, which basically are friends and acquaintances of a celebrity getting together to make jokes about him or her, often or usually while consuming alcohol or some other inebriating substance.

“Jokes” is a mild term for what is said in a roast. Profane hilarious no-limits humor is better. I rarely laugh out loud. But in the first 15 minutes of the Kevin Hart Roast, I did so several times. And I felt really good the rest of the morning. For me that comes with the territory of people making fun of others, along with themselves. The roastee is expected to show both outrage and amusement at what is said about him or her.

I’m not good at remembering jokes, but this one sticks in my mind, and I think I have it pretty close to the original: “Kevin Hart’s African ancestors came to this country on a slave ship… in a bottle.” A good dig at Hart’s shortness. A comedian even made jokes about how the husband of one of the people roasting Hart had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. He said something like, “People told me you can’t make jokes about her husband’s suicide, so naturally  that’s what I’m going to do — tell jokes about her husband jumping off a bridge.”

The wife was laughing. Not a lot. But laughing. Good comedians are skilled at puncturing our pretentiousness. How we take ourselves so seriously, while making fun of all those other idiots out there. Who, of course, are looking at us as one of the idiots. A Roast reminds me that there’s a lot of humor in who I am, what I’ve done, how I see myself.

Today at a natural food store, after buying some cherry tomatoes, I absentmindedly tried to hand my credit card to the clerk rather than me using the credit card machine like I’ve done thousands of times. He said, “You can do that yourself.” I told him, “Oops, was living in the past when I used to hand a clerk my credit card; shows how old I am.”

Walking out of the store, I thought, More material for a roast of me. I smiled as I walked to my Subaru. Until I drove off and started getting upset at all of those idiots on the road.