Someday we’ll be judged for cars like we can laugh at the 1920s stupids irradiating themselves for pep. The box that poisons me is my most expensive possession and the single fail point for my entire life. I must tie my sense of personal freedom and masculinity to my poison box. If I poison myself more, it’s very loud like a bird’s mating call and all my neighbours know I am the big man. I’m willing to sacrifice all of my neighbours to the box that poisons me, including myself if it means they can buy a louder and more masculine car that they park next to mine.
it’s true. for 20 years i have made personal/professional sacrifices to move toward less dependence on a car. this seemed to me the most logical and clever choice by far, and it has generally been treated as an amusing eccentricity. also bizarrely unmasculine by the really indoctrinated.
paying more for a shittier place, moving across country for the lower paying job in the medium COL area where the shittier, but convenient places aren’t all snapped up. it’s been a whole set of major life decisions that run counter to the prevailing ideology of bigger, bolder, and better.
along the way i meet people of the same mind as me. older, committed bike commuters and all-in pedestrians, but they are maybe 10-15% at most. many are still “i love my car, my commute is my relaxation”, which is so wild to me.
or, more understandable (but completely fragile), people who wanted something nicer with more space to have a family and all they could afford was something that only works with a personal conveyance to carry them to work / material needs on a daily basis.
i am rapidly closing in on a permanent situation where i can get to everything i need (except like a twice yearly appointment) with a little baby electric scooter/e-bike in less than 10 minutes. its just barely in my affordability range, it is going to require some major investment of money and my own sweat to get right. but I’m here for it, and i feel like im just barely making it in time since ill be reliant on shipping to get the various building and household infrastructure materials to make it right (safe/potable water, electrification, serious kitchen garden, etc). so really im like a few years yet from some kind of resiliency. i have been talking to my family about this for over a decade, and it never seems to pierce the veil.
i don’t know what to say to people who are behaving like oil/fossil energy shocks weren’t on the menu for the foreseeable future. i know many people are actively lied to by the media apparatus in the US, and many have never seen how other people, outside the US, live without cars. hell, shitloads of people can’t even afford to live anywhere and are stuck living wherever they can find shelter.
but i just don’t get how so many people of means haven’t noticed that this is always where things were going to take us… expensive fuel is just the beginning.
maybe if fossil capital wasn’t such a powerful political project, we could have transitioned more calmly into a transitional arrangement like electric cars and electric freight. but the decision makers have foreclosed on that and locked us all into possibly the most difficult and uncertain future.
or, more understandable (but completely fragile), people who wanted something nicer with more space to have a family and all they could afford was something that only works with a personal conveyance to carry them to work / material needs on a daily basis.
This is a pet peeve of mine here in germany where many people claim they were forced to buy a home out in the boonies (well, what qualifies as that here anyways) due to prices but if you add up the car costs on the mortgage they totally could’ve
I’m in the same boat of taking jobs I can safely bike to and only considering moves to cities I can’t afford with better bike infrastructure. Once I saw what micromobility represented as a liberatory technology, my ebike became the thing that defines me living in the 21st century. That bike infrastructure is collapse insurance and the literal road to degrowth that rehumanises people toward our value system. I can’t think of another individual consumer technology that acts as a reeducation camp for American brainworms.
I’m beholden to the petroleum industry for the stuff that powers my car. I’m beholden to the company that insures my car. I’m beholden to the bank that gave me a loan for my car. I’m beholden to people in the trades that can repair my car. My car chains me to so many people who genuinely do not give a rat’s ass about freedom.
I was lucky enough to have been born with two feet and a heartbeat. Those come with almost zero operations and maintenance cost. Far less expensive than a car. And there are places I can go on foot that I could never go with a car. They represent freedom only on the surface.
I’m really glad that I didn’t start driving until my mid-20s. Before I found Debord and knew the word for it, walking everywhere was a constant dérive for me. I’m only an urbanist because walking and public transit turned cities into slow-motion exploration of whatever stood out to me until I saw the relationships behind it. The psychogeography stood out so much more than I could safely observe while driving. I love micromobility because it takes that same feeling, makes it much more accessible with better infrastructure, and increases the speed/carrying capacity just enough to make it on par with urban driving. Now every grocery run is a chance to explore something new in parks and wilderness areas, with a much broader spectrum of my neighbours safely maintaining their independence with whatever kind of vehicle works best for their body.
A friend (who told me about Fifthworldproblems, IIRC) and I used to do dérives all the time. We called it Shambling. It wasn’t until much later that I learned about the dérive and psychogeography and how it intertwines with ideas about magick.
This year I want to start organising formal ones between municipal greenspace workers having a union drive, the local DSA’s environmental justice committee, and regulars in the parks who have a daily personal connection to those landscapes. It seems like a really powerful tool for achieving something like Pedagogy of the Oppressed’s model and normalising holistic radical conversations.
Someday we’ll be judged for cars like we can laugh at the 1920s stupids irradiating themselves for pep. The box that poisons me is my most expensive possession and the single fail point for my entire life. I must tie my sense of personal freedom and masculinity to my poison box. If I poison myself more, it’s very loud like a bird’s mating call and all my neighbours know I am the big man. I’m willing to sacrifice all of my neighbours to the box that poisons me, including myself if it means they can buy a louder and more masculine car that they park next to mine.
it’s true. for 20 years i have made personal/professional sacrifices to move toward less dependence on a car. this seemed to me the most logical and clever choice by far, and it has generally been treated as an amusing eccentricity. also bizarrely unmasculine by the really indoctrinated.
paying more for a shittier place, moving across country for the lower paying job in the medium COL area where the shittier, but convenient places aren’t all snapped up. it’s been a whole set of major life decisions that run counter to the prevailing ideology of bigger, bolder, and better.
along the way i meet people of the same mind as me. older, committed bike commuters and all-in pedestrians, but they are maybe 10-15% at most. many are still “i love my car, my commute is my relaxation”, which is so wild to me.
or, more understandable (but completely fragile), people who wanted something nicer with more space to have a family and all they could afford was something that only works with a personal conveyance to carry them to work / material needs on a daily basis.
i am rapidly closing in on a permanent situation where i can get to everything i need (except like a twice yearly appointment) with a little baby electric scooter/e-bike in less than 10 minutes. its just barely in my affordability range, it is going to require some major investment of money and my own sweat to get right. but I’m here for it, and i feel like im just barely making it in time since ill be reliant on shipping to get the various building and household infrastructure materials to make it right (safe/potable water, electrification, serious kitchen garden, etc). so really im like a few years yet from some kind of resiliency. i have been talking to my family about this for over a decade, and it never seems to pierce the veil.
i don’t know what to say to people who are behaving like oil/fossil energy shocks weren’t on the menu for the foreseeable future. i know many people are actively lied to by the media apparatus in the US, and many have never seen how other people, outside the US, live without cars. hell, shitloads of people can’t even afford to live anywhere and are stuck living wherever they can find shelter.
but i just don’t get how so many people of means haven’t noticed that this is always where things were going to take us… expensive fuel is just the beginning.
maybe if fossil capital wasn’t such a powerful political project, we could have transitioned more calmly into a transitional arrangement like electric cars and electric freight. but the decision makers have foreclosed on that and locked us all into possibly the most difficult and uncertain future.
This is a pet peeve of mine here in germany where many people claim they were forced to buy a home out in the boonies (well, what qualifies as that here anyways) due to prices but if you add up the car costs on the mortgage they totally could’ve
I’m in the same boat of taking jobs I can safely bike to and only considering moves to cities I can’t afford with better bike infrastructure. Once I saw what micromobility represented as a liberatory technology, my ebike became the thing that defines me living in the 21st century. That bike infrastructure is collapse insurance and the literal road to degrowth that rehumanises people toward our value system. I can’t think of another individual consumer technology that acts as a reeducation camp for American brainworms.
“A car represents freedom,” they told me.
I’m beholden to the petroleum industry for the stuff that powers my car. I’m beholden to the company that insures my car. I’m beholden to the bank that gave me a loan for my car. I’m beholden to people in the trades that can repair my car. My car chains me to so many people who genuinely do not give a rat’s ass about freedom.
I was lucky enough to have been born with two feet and a heartbeat. Those come with almost zero operations and maintenance cost. Far less expensive than a car. And there are places I can go on foot that I could never go with a car. They represent freedom only on the surface.
I’m really glad that I didn’t start driving until my mid-20s. Before I found Debord and knew the word for it, walking everywhere was a constant dérive for me. I’m only an urbanist because walking and public transit turned cities into slow-motion exploration of whatever stood out to me until I saw the relationships behind it. The psychogeography stood out so much more than I could safely observe while driving. I love micromobility because it takes that same feeling, makes it much more accessible with better infrastructure, and increases the speed/carrying capacity just enough to make it on par with urban driving. Now every grocery run is a chance to explore something new in parks and wilderness areas, with a much broader spectrum of my neighbours safely maintaining their independence with whatever kind of vehicle works best for their body.
A friend (who told me about Fifthworldproblems, IIRC) and I used to do dérives all the time. We called it Shambling. It wasn’t until much later that I learned about the dérive and psychogeography and how it intertwines with ideas about magick.
I miss it.
This year I want to start organising formal ones between municipal greenspace workers having a union drive, the local DSA’s environmental justice committee, and regulars in the parks who have a daily personal connection to those landscapes. It seems like a really powerful tool for achieving something like Pedagogy of the Oppressed’s model and normalising holistic radical conversations.