Driving the automobile is a violation of civic duty.
In the context of a community where there is the potential to walk to a destination or alternatively drive to a destination, there is an intermingling of modes of transportation. In this intermingling of pedestrians on foot with motorists in automobiles, there are casualties via the logical form of a dilemma, as follows.
If a person drives an automobile they are at risk of getting hit by another automobile.
If a person walks instead of driving an automobile, they are at risk for getting hit by an automobile.
Both of these options are undesirable for the individual and so this is a dilemma with two horns threatening bodily safety.
As a consequence, the following thesis is advanced. This dilemma creates a neurological state of fear vibrating in the chest caverns of all persons affected, and the consequences are hefty in the resulting creation of a bureaucratic insurance state which is, essentially, manifest desolation of the Republic.
The conclusion of the above considerations, then, is that driving the automobile in the above context is a violation of civic duty.
If a person drives an automobile they are at risk of getting hit by another automobile.
If a person walks instead of driving an automobile, they are at risk for getting hit by an automobile.
Both of these options are undesirable for the individual and so this is a dilemma with two horns threatening bodily safety.
As a consequence, the following thesis is advanced. This dilemma creates a neurological state of fear vibrating in the chest caverns of all persons affected, and the consequences are hefty in the resulting creation of a bureaucratic insurance state which is, essentially, manifest desolation of the Republic.
The conclusion of the above considerations, then, is that driving the automobile in the above context is a violation of civic duty.
Comments (38)
If you don't like the way I drive, stay off of the sidewalk!
I know what you mean. Stay put and let the world come to you. I admire your convoluted reasoning.
Oh wait. Those coming to you will drive or walk, so staying put is not the answer. What is? :chin:
I'm not afraid when I drive my car or walk. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the risks. I try to be careful. I think this is true for most people, so I don't see the dilemma you describe. On the other hand, there are much more significant effects of automobile use, in particular, impacts to air quality
Forgot to say - welcome to the forum.
So, by people giving up driving to walk, the community will be safer? It would reduce traffic accidents, and the roads would be clear for emergency vehicles. On the flipside, it is safer to drive through dangerous neighbourhoods.
You would still have to have a decent rail network for long distance travel, or permit driving for long distance travel (over x mile journeys), otherwise the cost to quality of life may be too great.
The answer is a philosophy of self-contained realization, as the religion of the ancient Egyptians and then over the course of the progressive evolution of this ideal, into the new testament writings unto the philosophy of Jesus Christ.
Risks are not bad. When you swim in the ocean you risk being attacked by jaws. Every society is different. There is no one rule when it comes to safety. It's up to each society to evaluate safety for themselves. I find it meditative to be in the car while I listen to music, Napoleon Hill CDs, ect. My life is good and if other countries feel their poverty is a blessing then don't go after us for being how we are. Having cars gets people to hospitals faster as well btw
How far do you need me to walk in this community? Do I have to walk 20 miles to get some bread or can I drive?
The West needs criticism and suggestions but saying car driving is sinful is going extreme
Without automobiles (and trucks) the transportation of food, goods, and services would be impossible on the scale that we enjoy now. Subtract all motorized vehicles from traffic, and most of the world would starve to death or die or dehydration.
Driving motorized vehicles is evil, it is a violation of the civic duty, but much less evil and much less of a violation than not driving motorized vehicles.
But for the American public generally, the argument is something like this. Walking five miles a day is normal, defined so by evolutionary theory. So no small community five to seven miles in diameter should need the automobile for its maintenance and thoroughgoingness. In a small community, residents are to be receptive to social cues and are to take on the role of ants, carrying and doing up the community componentially, bit by bit. Old women can carry pieces of plastic. Bicycles sometimes weigh as little as eight pounds.
It is not argued that use of highways is prohibited. Large scale logistics in the form of highway travel is not a violation of the natural mandate. The caravan can be used for highway travel. Remember the context was to develop this model for a walking town. Not a walking highway. Calling it sin is in order to implicate persons of all walks of life, such as Christians. God forbid a Christian would relinquish his keys; how would he get to church? It is sin, and Christians need to address it. And it's also sin for naturalists, who believe in evolution which was perpetuated through bi-pedalism. The word is difficult to avoid when we are trying to improve life by adhering to lofty ideals and formulated strictures for humanitarian and disciplinary reasons.
I wish you'd stop holding back and tell us how you REALLY feel about cars.
For sake of conversation, would you have made the same argument in the days of the horse and buggy? Do you object to the "Surrey with a fringe on top?"
Yes each society must evaluate safety for themselves. And what I am pointing out is that due to our own psychological and nationalistic impoverishment people in this country are gravitating to their cars too much. I would understand 100 years ago. But not anymore. There simply is no sensible reason why a small community cannot be what you drive to the city to experience. Maybe back in the days when it was considerably more difficult to pass the time due to lack of available options, but with the rise of globalization it is possible for a society to be much more multi-cultural and people-oriented. You don't need to drive away anymore. Especially with the smart phone revolution and the internet. Sing in the street and stop auditioning for American Idol. People need too much money because the money is in the insurance and automobile industries, which are negated when the automobile is voided out. The lifestyle choice of driving is replaced by developing character and making more money doing whatever it is you choose to do. The automobile industry is where the surplus of funds comes from.
Maybe you find it meditative to listen to music in your car. OK? Should you have the right to pollute the air and threaten the bodily existence of other beings while you do it? I don't think you should.
Oh I wish I could be such a jester, but if you want to know what I REALLY think about cars, the UNCENSORED essay is available for viewing on Amazon.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN BY ADAM BRUNSWICK.
To an extent, yes
When are you going to sell all your personal items and give them to poverty stricken places around the world?
For sake of conversation, would you have made the same argument in the days of the horse and buggy? Do you object to the "Surrey with a fringe on top?"
What I mean is, do you object to transportation in general? Or just internal combustion engines? If the latter, how about steam engines? Should we bring back the Stanley Steamer?
Indeed that is the greatest evil of the automobile, that it replaced the horse, and severed man from his natural relationship with that animal. Only vestiges of it remain, as in the term “horse-power”.
Domesticated animals used to form the bridge between us and the animal kingdom in general: horses gave us transportation, bulls served as our tractors, cows gave us milk and goats were our lawn mowers, etc. These relationships are now, of course, viewed as exploitative, as though a mere animal has the same rights as a human being, and that we were treating them inhumanely... thus the moniker, “The Humane Society”, applied not to the interrelationship b/w human beings, but to our relationship with domesticated animals.
As I understand it, cities in the late 1800's had streets covered in horse manure and didn't smell very good in the summer. It's easy to romanticize the past but it must have been awful.
Well, first of all, I’m not romanticizing the past. I’m saying that the horse served an evident purpose to mankind for millennia, and that the chief good that arose from that for us, besides the fact that we were able to transport ourselves more rapidly, was that it gave us an obvious connection to animals that we lack when they are purely wild.
As far as the repugnance of manure goes, I agree with you. I don’t doubt that cities of old hired men to clean the streets. But I also inhale a lot of repulsive fumes from diesel trucks everyday off my road, which was a very rural and bucolic one only half a century ago.
...that’s what I call noise-pollution.
Lol i put my material goods at the curb and let any and all pick at them.
I dont even have electricity. You wanna hang out some time?
Come by on a saturday and if im not too drunk from wine due to sabbath ill explain how the lotus pose is ideal for a homeless man.
Please do read the essay. I tried to make it free but amazon is a business.
I understand 100 yrs ago needing a car. But not anymore. So much more is known about societal and cultural options there's no reason to drive away anymore. Each small town can be its own little city. I dont reject highway travel. Its simply neglectful to isolate yourself in a small community. Its poor application of spontaneity and person to person commerce due to how much weight and how many obligations the automobile carries. A person needs to walk in off the street, not drive there. If you drive there, you dont know them. Not the way you know them if you sleep there.
The small town now has so much potential. Yoga, martial arts, different philosophical perspectives, cuisine from all over the world. As long as we have time and space through which to do these things.
Many people try to live off the state by paying more for cars and insurance instead of eating essential and having social and dietary needs met. Then they work 60 hrs a week to afford daycare for kids they dont raise. GREAT.
Even today there are people who clean up after horses. Its called life. At least now we have hoses and SELF PHONES to let them know on the spot where its at. Doody calls.
Strong as an ox, cunning like a serpent, sly like a fox. Nowadays its, YOU'RE LIKE A MACHINE. Awkward, as I AM that which the machinists are trying to create.
Someone owes me a drink.
Do you like James Howard Kunstler? He's a proponent of downsized living. His novel is called, "A World Made By Hand." Good essayist. His main thesis is "the long emergency," meaning that the world's running out of oil and we're all going to have to make some new arrangements, of the downsizing variety.
I agree with your ideals, but the practicality is tricky. I live in a relatively small town but the grocery stores and other services are not within walking distance.
No one OWES you a drink...but I would offer you a free one were you here, sitting in a rocking chair on my porch and sharing conversation: the trucks have long since stopped their offensive noise and fumes. The cicadas are chirping now, night has fallen...
...don’t become a machine. If you have become one already, fight against it with all your might...
...for the rest of your life.
With a voice like James Howard Kunstler, it is nice to know that social critics such as myself are not alone. I will definitely look further into his work so thanks a bunch for mentioning him.
I do agree that the practicality is tricky. As a philosopher who is a bit other-worldly and ascetic, I have to admit that this seems to call for an alternative which is going to ask of us a different response to the problems of the world. I actually consider my philosophy to be an alternative to religion and non-religion.
In working to establish this philosophy, it was necessary for me to create an alter-ego in order to express the idea. The reason is because it is very difficult to embrace the philosophy full-force and live up to the standards as a real person, owing to the fact that the current socio-economic climate is predicated upon the automobile and its use. An ideal can live up to the standards and everyone can collectively idealize, strive, and try, but it's difficult for a person to actually say NO, 100% all the time. SHA'ANIAH BACCOPHET can speak brazenly, because he isn't real. The flesh and blood man who types these words finds it difficult but do-able, and the battery in my van atrophied twice because I didn't start it for so long. Pardon any violation of civic duty as I strive towards this ideal. I am actually an Ohio State graduate and live in a small community, but with an alter-ego like SHA'ANIAH, people think I'm from somewhere else, which is the point.
It looks as though over the last 100 years there has been a kind of generational overlapping. First it was necessary for our great-grandfathers to have cars. Then our grandfathers had them necessarily as well. But this was in the days of Jim Crow, when a black person looked foreign to the local whites. Then when my father took the wheel, things really were changing. We saw the rise of hip hop and black culture in jazz music. The first Yogis came to the country. We started to see evolutionary theory quite popularized. Such was not the case in the 1920s.
Now at this point, the automobile and its use has been drawn out excessively to the point where it is detrimental to society, rather than beneficial. At this point Lebron James makes 20 million dollars a year when there are so many able-bodied young men who would be willing play ball at a local level for 60k dollars a year. The automobile allows them to drive away to attempt to make it into the NCAA and then hopefully the NBA. This is a false dilemma. Either make millions or play for nothing. I argue that it is due to excessive mobility and lack of taking advantage now of resources like the internet. I think that the driving age should be 21, because a person should be required to stay in the community for a few years after graduating high school in order to make the town better and learn to live independently of the automobile and contribute to the community and depend on others as well. That's to say nothing of the drinking age, which I think should be 16. No driving means drinking is safer and that's what high school kids want to do anyway, right? Let's get rid of the Wal Mart and install 5 small grocery outlets, and the grocery stores will pay people to deliver food all over town. These are real jobs.
But someone has to point these things out with conviction because we need to really make a strong change. Tupac Shakur pointed that out in 1996 when he said "its time for us as a people to start making some changes. Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so it's on US to do what we gotta do to survive." Now is the time for the fruition of such a calling. Without conscious intent, people continue to gravitate to their cars, and the automobile industry was bailed out in the first decade of the 2000s when all of that money should have went into the pockets of every American.
I have to be honest, it is necessary to meditate and excel the mind to higher states of consciousness. It's time we stop denying that reality is fundamentally MENTAL. Quantum Mechanics is proving the words of ancient sages like Buddha and Jesus: if you had faith the size of a mustard seed...Those who think that the world turns off of a material plane alone may simply not be able to live in the New World which is calling for us to make these changes. This alternative to religion and non-religion is a form of advanced civilianship, and may indeed be for the elite.
As opposed to the rest of us ignorant cattle. It's striking how often these kinds of lofty sentiments eventually come down to raw elitism. That's why we have the white liberal elites living in gated communities and calling for the abolition of police, while actual black residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods overwhelmingly want more police.
Quoting Sha'aniah
In 2020 the US government wiped out local small businesses and drove record profits of Amazon and WalMart. An unprecedented transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich. Aided and abetted as usual by the liberal elite, who know so much better than the rest of us how the rest of us should live.
If you want to know why there's a resurgence of worldwide populism, this is why. The elite talk a good game while promoting massive inequality to further enrich themselves. The Obamas preach global warming and buy expensive beachfront property. Just look at the carbon footprint of the jet-sitting climatistas. Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck vacation aboard a 140 foot mega-yacht that uses more energy than some third-world nations. And so on.
Not attacking your idealism, which is commendable if naive. But far too often, if you look at the holier-than-thou rhetoric among the most greedy and rapacious members of society, you see that the more pious the social commentary, the uglier the soul.
Fantabulous!
Risk though is part of life. Everything involves some degree of risk and if one is completely risk-averse, one would be like this :point:
Consider further. How would furniture evolve in a society where no one drove, or at least, where driving was reduced by 65 to 70 percent. I can see furniture evolving into something more COMPONENTIAL. That is, parts of furniture can be assembled together but made of light material to be carried by one person.
Also, sharing of resources. Can you imagine if everyone were told to empty their garages and put everything into the street so we can all see what we've got to work with? First, the streets need to be cleared of the automobile. Second, people need to not be afraid to share.
That is what I mean by ELITE. It is a higher state of consciousness through yoga, or UNION. That is why I say this is an alternative to religion and non religion. What non-religious person says you need to curb your greed and desire? Well if you believe in evolution and you care about the planet and the community, here is an opportunity to do so. But it requires conviction the likes of which is found in religious sentiment.
Finally, calling this class of citizens ELITE is to give a concluding remark concerning this point in history. What ELSE would we call it? HOW WILL YOU GO WITHOUT A CAR? Do you have any idea how many people are TERRIFIED of that? It's ridiculous. Without sacrifice we aren't going to make it. Look at 9/11. You mean to tell me those airplanes made it ALL THE WAY TO THE TRADE CENTERS? Talk about wanting to sit comfortably. That's what I'm talking about. Sacrifice is essential to solve this problem of global warming. I hear so much talk about how this is a problem and so many Americans keep starting those cars, as though they don't realize that they can stop it. Apparently it IS for the elite...
Good old Sheldon, the product of not enough philosophical discussion in the Republic due to not being able to convene in the street. Which is why he's so aloof and weird.
Risk can be had on the highway; we don't need it in town, bub. Keep your air pollution and weapons of mass destruction towards the borders, will ya?