I saw this :reddit-logo: post and it got me thinking. Maybe it's the intense sleep deprivation, but I can't even muster the energy to be angry. I'm just sad. I know that individual choice is largely a psyop, but if at least a third of the populace actively wants things to be worse, how can we change things for the better? I know that there are many, many loving and wonderful and kind people all around this country. But as we're continually worked harder and harder and grow more and more impoverished, even the kindest souls will burn out. And what are we all up against? Not just the :porky-happy: elite, but the average swine whose main enjoyment in life is pissing off and upsetting anyone who wants things to be better. What can we even do against this?
a lot of these stand out to me as being car oriented. which, obviously, considering the sub it came out of. still, there really is something intensely depersonalizing and aggressive about these petroleum chariots. i don't really give a shit if my old little beater gets dinged or scratched, but you'd think i was the prince of peace compared to how other people conceptualize their cars as an extension of their body. don't touch. don't stare at. don't inconvenience MY car.
whether i'm on foot and adjacent to cars, or in one myself among other cars, everything feels so aggressive. people get mad over a 5 second delay and downright murderous by a 5 minute delay (delivery, oversize vehicle, miss one traffic light cycle). but on foot and in person, almost all of my interactions are extremely chill and pleasant.
honestly, if cars just vanished from the earth and the roads were only for bicycles and buses/municipal vehicles, with all the easements and sidewalks expanded for pedestrians, i would probably be in much better shape mentally/physically/emotionally.
car culture is really fucking us hard and we have normalized the shit out of it.
If spending too much time online has taught me anything, it's that behavior is a fluid that takes the shape of its "container". Change the environment, behavior changes with it.
Cars, by their very design, encourage people to see themselves as apart and slightly elevated from the rest of the world.
I was watching Cardcaptor Sakura today and was thinking about how nice suburbs can be if you just remove most of the cards. Individual houses with narrow roads with kids biking to school safety being a normal thing.
I'm from the midwest and particularly a suburb of a not-too-talked about small city. When I went to that "city", things always felt much more right with me. Even the lower density parts of the city had me thinking
:thinkin-lenin: "Huh, this is what the suburbs should have been."
I think the saddest thing about the Great Satan is how much better it could have been, that it is capable of nice things but actively chooses not to.