By: Jim Taylor

Yahoos among us

Two young men were racing their motorcycles up and down a gravel drive, showering gravel everywhere. The man who owned the property walked out to see them. One of the riders swerved to miss him, and then sped away.

        The other screeched to a stop. “If you ever do that again,” he screamed at the property owner, “I’ll run you down and ride right over you!”

        Then he gunned his engine, and sprayed gravel at the owner’s legs as he too sped away.

        Now, I recognize that these are individuals, not necessarily typical of any group. When I’ve been hiking, or walking the dog on trails through the bush, I’ve met dirt bikers who were the soul of courtesy. They slowed down; they stayed on the far side of the trail; they waved a greeting and, occasionally, even stopped to chat.

        Still, the attitude of those two riders offends me.



Other offensive actions

A woman in a van regularly sped up the lane past our house, leaving clouds of dust swirling behind her. Perhaps she was in a hurry—I don’t know. I do know that seven children, four dogs, and a number of cats and chickens live along that lane. Sometimes they emerge unexpectedly from the shrubbery.

        One of the fathers flagged the woman down and spoke severely about her speed.

        An hour later, the woman’s husband came around, berating the father for upsetting his wife.

        Out on the lake, unmuffled “cigarette” boats roar up and down the lake. Their exhausts echo so loudly between the rocky hills on either side of the lake that, at times, the dishes rattle in our cupboards.

        They don’t have to be that loud. A simple switch would divert the exhaust underwater. But they choose not to use it. And they choose to blast by close to shore, as if deliberately thumbing their noses at local sensibilities.



Appropriate names

 I’ve tried to think of suitable terms for these kinds of people. Jerks, idiots, twits, boors—all those words have occurred to me. But in the end, I find myself going back to Jonathan Swift and Gulliver’s Travels, first published over 250 years ago.

Lemuel Gulliver traveled to four unusual locations. The best known, of course, is Lilliput, a land of tiny people ludicrously defensive of their doctrinal purity. In subsequent voyages, Swift satirized human preoccupation with physical bodies, and poked fun at popular presumptions about the wisdom of academics and the aged.

        But all this exploration of human nature made Swift increasingly pessimistic.

        And so in his fourth journey, Gulliver lived with horses, the Houyhnhnms. He admired their placid and peaceful nature, their sociability, their stamina. He despised the Yahoos—brutish, competitive, noisy, quarrelsome, untrustworthy bipeds…

        The Yahoos were, of course, his own human counterparts.

        When I think about noisy boat operators, self-centred drivers, and arrogant motorcyclists, I think Swift was right.

        There are Yahoos among us.

        Then and now, Yahoos represent the worst aspects of human nature.

        Fortunately, not all of us are Yahoos.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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