the more i fall in love with cycling the more i grow to resent the role cars have come to play as a tool of isolation, both from society and from the actual experience of moving over land
i watched Stalker again recently and - among other things, of course, that’s a movie you can watch forever and notice something new every time - was struck by the role the open-top land rover plays in it
if you’ve seen these opening scenes where they drive around evading guards to find the railway line into the zone you know what i’m talking about. it isn’t treated as a separate space from the world but as a tool for mobility that can be entered and exited at a moment’s notice. it’s a jarring thing, almost, to see people jumping in and out of a sheet metal bucket on wheels at a moment’s notice, because it’s so outside the way we think about the role a car plays.
it’s all about how the combination of highway systems and parking lots have us think about transport. transport, which until the rise of private automobiles was (for most people) either conducted outdoors or in a public space like a train or bus. the act of entering and driving a car is totally different. it’s in the most literal sense an inhuman form of transport. you enter a space that shuts you out of the world to navigate another space that is not navigable by a human being.
the way modern cars work is key to some of the isolation. some of that is literally that they’re better at isolating you from the sound and vibration of the rushing air and tires on asphalt than they used to be. they’re a lot smoother too, and safer, and more reliable. so are the systems around them. chances are you don’t know how a car works and you don’t care to either, you just take it in at the recommended service interval and have someone else take care of it. all this is key in creating the illusion that it isn’t a form of transport but an intermediate space one occupies between others.
it isn’t healthy for your only real exposure to the outside world to be brief transitions between the space of home to car to work to car to home, but that’s how some people live. that’s how a lot of people live, actually, and that’s why i like cycling as a part of my commute. it’s like streaking. you’re not wearing the suit of armor, or occupying your personal mobile space, or what have you like everyone else. you’re totally nude. you can smell things. when was the last time you smelled something in a car that wasn’t an industrial stench off a river or something?
the counterargument is, of course, well isn’t a train also such a space that operates as transit? sure. but you have no agency in a train, which is the problem. you cannot perceive transport that you have an active role in piloting as a space you occupy. your mind doesn’t work like that, it breaks down sooner or later unless you have the capacity to hold that sort of doublethink in your mind. that’s why texting and driving is a problem! you do it in any other intermediate space to fill time. everything about your surroundings says you’re reclining on a couch and not piloting a vehicle at several times the speed that you can
in essence you’re being sold the brand of comfort in an activity that should by no means be comfortable, and that’s dangerous
and i say that about brands because there is is a parallel here to the difference between the way advertising used to work in, say, the 19th century and how it began to work in the latter half of the 20th century to now. it’s no longer meant to present the benefits of a product and make you aware that it is for sale so much as it is to make you identify with a brand, one that may have no relation to the product in itself. both are ways to interact with the material world through a layer of perception engineered by people whose goal is not to enhance your vision but to get your money
in short - the time you spend in transit is as important if not more than the time you spend doing anything else, everything is fucked everything sucks, and the only way out is to actually opt out. drive ancient cars or ride a bike, preferably equally ancient because this sickness is slowly making it there too. make the choice while you still can
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