Out on the road, upon viewing the profound
beauty of the outstretched landscape, I wanted to write, take photographs, and
simply just contemplate the colors and contours of the land. As a passenger,
one is free to do so, but when driving a car, one is struck not with the
boundless freedom that is often articulated about such an activity, but a
suffocating sense of entrapment. One is trapped manning the wheel, working the
pedals, and remaining ever- vigilant towards the surrounding environment, lest
one is subverted by some roadside obstacle, or even another driver. One’s
attention is forced on the simple act of getting from one place to another, and
for safety’s sake, one is only allowed a fleeting glimpse and a contemplation
of the surrounding beauty.
Relative speed, gas levels, money, the
ongoing basic functioning of the engine, all these things occupy the driver’s
mind and interrupt chains of thought in cycles. Everything becomes worse in
populated areas. One is forced to contend with the intrusive motions of many
other drivers, often impatiently weaving lanes, tailgating, cutting off,
braking, and engaging in whatever other annoying habit they have to resort to
in order to get to their destinations a few seconds quicker. Many of these
drivers are almost completely solipsistic, betraying a shocking disregard for
our social reality. Communication is non-existent, and one starts to feel as if
one is viewed as merely an obstacle, and not another human being. Perceiving
this, others drive more defensively, aggressively closing gaps and denying even
the efforts of benevolent drivers to traverse the road.
Such a landscape mirrors the breaking
down of the individualist ideology, and offers one a glimpse of the new
emergent paradigm, at least in one’s imagination. One has to ask: how did we
get here? And where are we going? There was once this distinct American idea that
every individual should have their house, their car, their nuclear family, and
a vast array of consumables at their disposal and that a cluster of resources
like that is the key to individual freedom. Let’s leave aside the fact that
many of us have either lost such a cluster of resources or could never hope to
acquire many of the things once ostensibly guaranteed to all (or at least
guaranteed in spirit), but what about the effects of such a lifestyle on
culture and the environment?
We are left with a wasteful suburban
sprawl in which transportation distances are maximized in even populous areas.
Cities are spread far. Road congestion is high. It takes a working car and
abundant fuel (which has become quite expensive) to do anything. Fossil fuels,
upon harvest and utilization, are some of the greatest contributors to our
growing climate crisis. Not to mention polluters. And all the water wasted on
endless fields of artificially transplanted plantlife. Go down any rural
highway and behold all the run-over animals. Does wonders for one’s mood.
Culturally, man is isolated within the
walls of his suburban tinderbox and within the vessel of his car, surrounded by his
idiosyncratic music, watching his idiosyncratic entertainment, everyone
constantly walled off from one another. Consequently no one understands one
another. The art of communication is being lost.
Is this all the consequence of the car?
Or is the car the symptom? I’d argue the latter. Again I would argue it could
be traced back to ever-evolving ideologies. Cars and suburban units isolate us
sure. But what of the increasingly idiosyncratic subgenres of art and
entertainment? The increasingly fragmented and segmented subcultures, all
steeped in entirely different sets of language and aesthetics, all divided off
from one another?
Is this some nefarious
government/international power elite plot to atomize us, thus rendering us
easier targets for social control? Probably not. Social fragmentation makes
control easier sure, but even the government and the largest corporations show
signs of fragmentation: disintegrating bodies whose deteriorating contours are
traversed by the most inertiatic, ambitious, and egotistical individuals, all
on a purely instrumental level, a mere game of who makes it to the top of the
power symbol pile without anyone really understanding the true nature of things.
All of the abstractions and lies built
upon lies are merely covering over the fact that no one truly understands
what’s going to happen. Those with the most resources only appear to be in
control, since they do still retain certain elements of material control, but
do they know in their minds what they are doing? Where their own society is
going? Probably not, though there could be some cynical instrumentalists in the
bunch, pushing the buttons that they know work while pretending to be something
else.
What is the answer to this grim, mocking
game, this system of manipulation that claims to be a natural state of life? Well,
we stand here left with a fraying social fabric, torn asunder by egos that
believe themselves to be free and unaccountable without noticing the many
connections they are a part of, and are currently severing. The answer is to
reconstitute that fabric. But in which way?
Fascists would choose violence.
Reconstitute the order by reassembling by force some mythical past state of
order. Revolutionaries would reconstitute the order by generating an entire new
framework; some wish to do this with violence, some with peaceful means. A new framework would be in order, yes, and there is no shortage for
model frameworks dreamed up to solve our problems. But the real trick is
transitioning to such a framework while maintaining stability, without total
societal collapse or cascading cycles of violence.
One way to re-imagine society, instead of
designating everyone you don’t like an enemy to be cleansed, is to re-emphasize
the social body. Such is one of the architectural/transportation antidotes
becoming quite popular among progressive ecological thinkers: tightly clustered
urban centers connected by generous lines of mass transit. I would prefer the
mass transit to be either suspended or buried, so as to preserve as much of the
surrounding wilderness as possible. The city centers themselves would be free
of ugly, dangerous, and divisive parking lots, parking structures, streets,
highways, freeways, etc. They would be
engineered to harmonize with environments, minimizing and rationalizing
resource use and maximizing greenery surfaces. Buildings would live and
breathe. Communities would have various places to actually congregate and
interact, hopefully rendering extinct the solipsistic man.
Encouraging ideas to say the least. Such
bright visions of society (though perhaps unrealistic in the near future) help
one trudge on through the increasingly cold and grey contemporary one. I think
of sitting on a high speed train and reading, writing, and surveying the
surrounding, unspoiled landscape while I am sitting in a car, mind going numb
staring at an endless road or a sea of red brake-lights. One shouldn’t feel
trapped in a steel box, or a wooden one, all their lives.
