Howled be Thy Name

When I was a little kid, I understood the importance of the Lord’s Prayer, and said it dutifully every night. But what never made sense to me was the “howled be thy name” part. Pious wolves in the forest?

It was part of the mystery, along with “Howl Ween”, mysteries that I’d try to solve as I grew older. “Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear” and “God save our gray shoes Queen, long liver no-bull Queen” were part of the repertoire of childhood songs which were sung dutifully, but with less than full comprehension.

It doesn’t change, does it? The stuff we say and do without really “getting it”. We take political and religious positions because, well, because, well, because that’s what we’ve always done. Do they make sense, or are they justifiable? Well, no, but that’s just the way we’ve always done it…

We’re full of prejudgments (also known as prejudices), views we hold because, well, because we hold them…..

Let me be frank and open about one of my personal prejudices: the Toyota motor vehicle.

Toyotas are well-built vehicles, perhaps among the most reliable in the world. The Taliban and various other terrorist use their trucks. If you study industrial engineering, you’ll certainly study Toyota as the proponent of the TPS, a methodology of perpetual and incremental improvement.

But because Toyota produces solid, reliable, and predictable vehicles, they are purchased perhaps disproportionately by solid, reliable consumers, passionate about reliability and safety and predictability. And probably stodginess.

The upshot of all this is that there is a real probability that the drivers of Toyotas are going to be solid, reliable, safety-conscious, and predictable. In other words, they’re going to stop at a green light ten seconds before it turns amber, just to be safe. They’re going to leave five car lengths in traffic, just because it’s safer than two. If the speed limit is safe, ten under is safer.

In other words, they’re going to drive me nuts. Frantic. Frothing at the mouth.

I’m a somewhat OCD driver, eager to get to where I want to go. So I have this phobia about Toyotas on the road. I’ll take a ten minute detour to avoid being stuck behind a Toyota which is going to slow me down by nine minutes.

And then my daughter goes and buys a Toyota. Why? Because it’s solid, and reliable, and economical, and safe, and…. How do you argue with that? It makes perfect sense. Besides, it’s shiny and black, and rather smart looking.

And when I drove it, well, it went like a bat out of hell.

So it turns out that yet another one of my long-held preconceptions was just smoke and mirrors. Poof! Silliness.

So I have to ask myself, seven decades after “Howled be Thy Name”, how much have I actually figured out? Maybe there are some mysteries left, and maybe I don’t know it all.

And what are your prejudgments?
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