First off all the car critics are car users: 'Its not that easy' says Doug, 'its a sad necessity' says Wojtek, 'my typical is 13.5 miles a day' says Michael. I suppose I could say that now I know whose fumes I'm choking on, but then I always knew that car regret was not meant to be acted upon, but more of a mood.
And what is the content of this mood? Doug is exhausted and raging at the enemy vehicle; Wojtek is frustrated by the false choices presented by the market; Michael yearns for a lost small-town solidarity, Carrol for the neighbourhoods of his youth; Charles feels isolated; Louis is lonely and Yoshie has a fear of factory work.
All of these are no doubt very interesting reflections on the state of late capitalism, but what do they have to do with cars? All of the car critics, it seems to me, are not really talking about cars, but about their own feelings towards society.
Charles was right when he allied this question to Marx's theory of alienation. He should have added 'commodity fetishism', that state that Marx described in which relations between men take the alienated form of relations between things. Its not the cars that are the problem, its the form of social organisation - but the car is a kind of stand-in.
I was impressed recently when my sister-in-law calmed my niece after she hurt herself on a sharp piece of plastic by punishing the 'bad' piece of plastic. But then my niece is only three. Punishing the 'bad' car is to remain within the ideological framework of commodity fetishism.
So when Doug says, tellingly,
>every other vehicle becomes an enemy,
he should ask himself why it is that he sees other people as reducible
to their vehicles.
In message <l03130323b17661c4b0b3@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>it's just not that easy to get by in the U.S. without a driver's
>license
> I've
>been driving rented cars a bit since I got the license last summer, and it
>really strikes me now just how exhausting and rage-producing driving is.
>Hurtling along in your sealed vessel, every other vehicle becomes an enemy,
>someone who might steal a parking spot or smash head on into you.
In message <3.0.1.32.19980506145850.00a317e4 at jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu>, Wojtek
Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> writes
>Since Baltimore, unlike London or New York, is but a
>huge suburb (except dilapidated), driving is a sad necessity. And that is
>precisely what pisses me off about cars -- our so called 'elected
>representatives' do everything humanly possible to make you buy one.
>Welcome to the land of choices where, paraphrasing Henry Ford, you can
>chose any means of transportation as long as it is a car.
In message <3550DDF6.98231A97 at ecst.csuchico.edu>, michael
<michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> writes
>I only drive when I go somewhere with my wife, usually about 3-5 miles a week.
>Chico is a very nice place for bikes, but less so every day. My typical ride
>is 13.5 miles per day.
>
>I dislike cars and the car culture. Cars have destroyed traditional
>neighborhoods and along with them much potential solidarity.
In message <199805062001.PAA109904 at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>, Carrol Cox
<cbcox at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu> writes
>in the early 20th century (up almost to the War) even quite small towns
>had street car (trolley car) systems which worked very well. There was a
>great strike of street-car motormen in Bloomington IL in 1917 (Mother
>Jones came to town to support the strike), and I can barely remember in
>the thirties the street car system in my home town of Benton Harbor
>Michigan.
In message <s5508ffe.095 at ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown <charlesb at CNCL
.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
> Cars as a mass transportation form also
>allow and influence a more scattered and
>thereby more isolated and lonely residential
>pattern.
Yoshie writes
>>I would also like to call attention to the fact that driving car is very
>>much like factory work in one sense: it forces drivers to pay _constant
>>low-grade attention_ to their machines and surroundings so as not to cause
>>accidents. This need to pay constant low-grade attention is very mentally
>>stressful and yet does not require meaningful intellectual engagement. The
>>same need is imposed upon workers inside factories, so they have to put up
>>with the same kind of stress before, during, and after work hours.
Louis Proyect writes
>I personally am convinced that one of the greatest social ills in America
>is loneliness. You can look at a glossy magazine like New York and see
>hundreds of personal ads. Highly successful yuppies can not make
>connections with the opposite or same-sex. This is related to the
>atomization of the modern urban milieu. Even in the case of people who are
>in long-term relationships, the loneliness can exist, or even be greater.
-- Jim heartfield