Following directions can lead you astray
My father’s cruise ended today, with the ship docking at Southampton after its fortnight at sea. I drove the 80 miles down to the docks early this morning to be there for disembarkation at 8:30am.
It was raining heavily and there was a diversion from the M23 to the A3 for part of the route.
I made the trip two weeks ago so knew the way to go more or less but the ship was docking at a different berth to where it had set sail from. So I slapped on the sat nav to give me extra peace of mind as I got closer to the part of the journey I was least confident about.
At one point, I managed to circle a roundabout three times because the sat nav and I were not in tune. Or in time. Or something.
Had the sat nav not been on, and had I trusted my eyes and instinct instead, I would have taken the correct exit from this roundabout on the first pass.
Even though this was a part of the journey new to me — thanks to the diversion — the signs were fairly clear and I have a good sense of direction. But I was lured into trying to figure out what the computer and its beguiling female voice was trying to tell me and what the arrows and diagrams on the display were trying to show me rather than simply do what I would normally do; point the car in the right direction.
Now, I don’t believe we should ignore experts and I have learned over the last decade or so that there are times I need to take instruction. However, overriding instincts simply because I have handed responsibility to something in an effort to make things easier for myself is never a sensible option.
Although the sat nav was giving me the right information, it was giving it to me in a confusing way. It was making me think too much about the format of the message rather than its content and so I was both flummoxed and misled.
Here’s the thing: this slightly irritating but hardly inconvenient event made me trust the sat nav just that little bit less. Even though it had given me the right advice. Crazy, huh? But this just points out how important it is for the form of a message to match both the expectations and the needs of its recipient.
Writing, politics, education, and just about anything else you can think of that sets up information on one hand and someone to tell on the other requires a mutual recognition of the terms and parameters before the information can be ingested.
This is one of the reasons that a single system of learning does not suit all. It’s why we sometimes need to be told the same thing via different teachers or read it in different books before it locks in.
Despite all the messages coming at us on a daily basis, we retain an inherent sense of what’s right, of the direction to take. In a moral sense, I mean, as well as logically and geographically. We need to trust that sense over the confusing or bullying sat nav messages that come our way on social media or in tabloid news or from poisonous politicians.
My dad enjoyed his cruise. More or less.
