The 3-Legged Dog & the Self-Driving Car

Leftover Reflections from a Thanksgiving Day Full of Contrasts

Dec 04, 2024

a german shepherd with his tongue hanging out — Photo by Gabriel Novakovski Nunes on Unsplash

A friend from Church invited me to Thanksgiving dinner with his family. He told me he’d swing by and give me a ride over to their house. I waited outside, expecting his pickup truck, but he cruised to the curb outside my apartment building in an electric car.

More specifically, an electric car equipped with self-driving capabilities!

He doesn’t live far from me, and there were almost no other drivers on the roads in the early evening, but the car’s ability to navigate the few miles of roadway was impressive nonetheless.

The self-driving car pulled into his driveway, relenting to his human, analog skills only to back in to a parking space near his garage.

His family’s house — like the Thanksgiving dinner inside — is homemade. Even the kids helped with the construction, and likely got priceless lessons from the process; they’d literally have to live in and with their results.

Contrast No. 1 … A self-driving, software-dependent, engineering marvel of an autonomous mobile robot … And a homemade house whose electrical outlets were hand-wired by an 8-year-old.

Intelligence failure

My friend’s home is designed to be large enough to welcome back all the adult children, their spouses, and grandchildren for holidays.

With all the news stories about this being an antagonistic holiday season due to the results of the presidential race, there wasn’t a whiff of such controversy at my friend’s house. It’s as if well-adjusted people have better things to talk about. Or maybe they all had the same favored overlord in the election, so it wasn’t a point of contention. Or maybe they disfavored all the potential overlords (like me!).

The parodies of the pop-culture pathological reactions almost write themselves. I say “almost” because the high-level satire still needs a skilled creator’s touch. Here are two examples:

This skit is from comedian (and Substacker!) Lou Perez. Watch the embedded video below, or at YouTube or right here on Substack:

This article is from satirist (and Substacker!) Kyle Kissinger:

Click image or caption for full article.

Mainstream-media ethics seem more out of touch than ever. Are there people who read the New York Times, watch “the news,” listen to NPR, etc., and think what they’re consuming is real? Probably, sadly.

Contrast No. 2 … The distance between The Mainstream Intelligencia and actual intelligence seems to be growing.

Relatable differences

I once wrote a song lyric, “I travel alone; I make friends when I get there.” It’s somewhat autobiographical.

Contrast No. 3 is obvious … My friend has a large, growing family … And then there’s me, single as can be.

I’m not anti-social; on the contrary, though not an extrovert, me and my good-neighbor mindset make quite an affable party guest (references available upon request 😅). I simply don’t have a family. No big deal; at least, not to me.

My friend and I got to talking over dinner and eventually dessert, regarding how any of us know whether we’re on the right track in life, especially with regards to big-picture pursuits and spiritual matters. How do we know whether, in Christian language, we’re seeking and finding God’s will rather than our own selfish will that we pretend is godly?

Our relationships provide clues and feedback for answering that question, but there isn’t one uniform set of circumstances that signals success for every person.

In the Gospels of the Bible, for instance, Jesus teaches people to cherish their spouses and children, but also that true discipleship requires one to look beyond biological relations. This is such an important aspect of a deep and maturing faith, I addressed it in my first Sunday Buffet podcast.

Pursuing human dignity as Jesus modeled means you will both gain and lose social connections. Jesus offers that such a journey will ultimately be worth all the tumult; I believe Him.

grayscale photography of human hands — Photo by Gert Stockmans on Unsplash

Legging the question

Another surprise at my friend’s house was meeting the family dog, a German shepherd. She had developed a tumor on her right front leg, and one option was to euthanize the beloved pet, which was already 10 years old.

They opted to try amputating the leg instead. The dog made it through the operation, but was understandably depressed for about a month. Imagine going to sleep, waking up with a limb missing, and having no idea what happened or why.

The dog gradually recovered and is now back to her mischievous ways, getting scolded for standing on her hind legs — both of which are very healthy! — to get her snout way too close to the food on the kitchen counter.

Earlier that day, I read about “assisted suicide” proposals making their way through governments — which, I like to remind people, are inherently, intrinsically evil institutions — in the latest sign that human life is getting cheaper and more disposable in so-called “progressive” societies.

Contrast No. 4 … My friend and his family deciding to try to save their dog and be patient with her as she recuperated psychologically and physically, is a more humane gesture than many humans get from their politicized systems.

Add one last contrast to the visit: A few hours after arriving in a future-is-now, meticulously calibrated, but coolly lifeless, four-wheeled robot — I waved goodbye to a past-her-prime, tragically unbalanced, but stubbornly vibrant, much-beloved pet.

For three-legged dogs, self-driving cars, and all in between, there are opportunities to assert the challengingly truthful and genuinely good, in the midst of societal pressures to lesser ethics. In this meta-contrast between neighbor and citizen, may you strive to embody good neighborliness, even when it makes you a bad citizen.