It was a beautiful Florida day.
Blue skies stretched as far as the eye could see, dotted with puffy white clouds. Sunshine and warmth abounded. The slightest breeze kept things from getting insufferable.
But on this day, I wasn’t on the beach or dining under a palm-lined restaurant patio. Instead, I was behind the wheel of my old Saturn, trekking up the Florida Turnpike from Miami to Orlando.
The route was boring and monotonous. An endless stream of trees and swamps that were occasionally interrupted by suburban neighborhoods.
But as I passed the Fort Pierce interchange, my heart started beating faster.
For I knew what came next. A 40 mile trek across a remote corner of the Everglades.
Between Fort Pierce and Yeehaw Junction, there were almost no distractions. There were hardly any trees. There were few onramps, offramps or curves in the road. And, most importantly, there were no sheriff’s deputies with radar guns looking to make their speeding ticket quota.
I could go as fast as I wanted. So, I pushed the pedal to the floor.
The Saturn accelerated as it roared down a long straightaway bracketed by sawgrass and swamps.
I watched the speedometer gauge on my dashboard move ever more to the right. 85 miles an hour. 90. 95. 100. 105.
But when it hit 107 miles per hour, I felt a jolt. Suddenly, I was traveling at 80 miles an hour again.
The governor had kicked in on my engine. I had hit top speed.
Not the 120 mile per hour clip my speedometer advertised. But not far from it either.
Either way, the experience was truly terrifying.
In the moments after my need-for-speed encounter, my mind was still racing.
Suddenly, the potential consequences of what I had done were clear to me. I recognized that by flooring the gas pedal, I had actually ceded control. My actions had increased the risk of the car rolling over, veering off course or going up in flames.
The governor saved me from all that. And I was truly grateful for it.
In all the years since this incident, I have never tested top-speed in any vehicle I’ve driven. And even as I’ve moved on to vehicles with more powerful engines, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve cracked the 100 mile per hour mark.
The guardrail is there for a reason. Better not to use it as a crutch.
Governors don’t just exist in car engines. (Or as positions in regional politics, for that matter.)
They play a sweeping, yet pivotal role in our society.
Governors are the voices of reason that call to our conscience. They keep us from veering into anarchy.
For many years, a web of institutions has served as our society’s governor. These institutions have included civic bodies, religious establishments and the media.
Each institution has approached rationality in a different way. Civic bodies — such as police and the courts — have spoken to the rule of law. Religious establishments have spoken to the question of morality. And the media have spoken to the obsession with legacy.
No matter how reckless and swashbuckling we got, these institutions have continually provided a line in the sand. Cross it and become an outcast from society. A pariah. A wearer of the Scarlet Letter.
No one wants this outcome. And because of that, the societal governor has been quite effective at putting a lid on extremism.
But recently, that lid has been sent skyward.
Ever wondered what life would look like with no limits?
Look around you. It’s happening now.
Yes, we are in the midst of contentious times. Divisiveness is as high as it’s ever been. Trust in institutions is as low as it’s ever been. And more and more, there is a sense that the guardrails we’ve long heeded need not apply anymore.
Thanks to the growth of the Internet — social networking in particular — we can shroud ourselves in filter bubbles. We can rally behind ever more radical worldviews, casting stones at anyone who dares think differently from us. And we can count on a network of like-minded thinkers to rally around us, fortifying our views.
But what of the old establishment? We can cast stones at them too. We can call the civic bodies corrupt. We can call religious establishments hypocritical. We can call the media “fake news”.
We can, and we do.
Certainly, there is an element of truth to these accusations. Our key societal institutions are far from infallible.
But by painting them with such a broad brush — by undermining them in this fashion — we remove the governor entirely.
We allow chaos to ensue. And with chaos comes absurdity.
Absurdity like a leading evangelical Christian magazine being branded as offensive for calling the President of the United States immoral.
Sure, the magazine took a controversial stand in an opinion column, calling for the president to be removed from office. But the rebuke of being branded as offensive hardly seems to fit the circumstances. As these words are being written, the president is facing an impeachment trial, and people on both sides of the political spectrum are questioning his morality.
In labeling the president’s actions as immoral, the evangelical magazine was trying to restore reason. To demonstrate where the lines in the sand for acceptable behavior are.
This is well within the scope of expertise for an organization that is built on the issue of morality. It’s within bounds for an entity that focuses upon morality as our one true measuring stick.
Yet, in a world where we’ve lost the governor, even measuring sticks get attacked.
There is seemingly no limit to what we can do or say without getting called to account for our behavior.
And that’s more frightening than feeling the engine lock up on a Florida highway.
It’s time for this madness to stop.
It’s time to bring the governor back into the equation.
We, and we alone, have the power to do this. For we are the ones who defanged the old system in the first place.
Getting this done will take us stepping out of our comfort zone. It will take us shunning our filter bubble and voluntarily putting restraints on ourselves.
This is a big ask. But for the future of society, it’s a worthwhile one. And a necessary one.
We built this monster. The time has come to slay it.