the ALLDERBLOB

Anyone heard of Ayn Rand?

She’s the author of a few books out there, notable among them one called The Fountainhead, which suggests that architecture is the last noble profession, the sole remaining testament (emphasis on testament) to man’s claim to godliness. She was a lover of Frank Wright [er, shouldn’t that be Frank Lloyd Wright? –ed.] She also purportedly wrote a collection of essays called The Virtue of Selfishness which states, according to my sources [wake up, people, he’s trusting Google again! –ed.] “self-interest, properly understood, is the standard of morality and selflessness is the deepest immorality. ”

Thing is, what is it to be selfish?

Is it selfish to ride a bike everywhere, taking advantage of one’s freedom to roll to cruise through green lights and places where you have the right-of-way as carefully as you do through red lights and stopsigns?

Guilty!

Is it selfish to use public transit when you feel like it, when the weather’s bad or when you need to travel with friends who don’t have a bike?

Guilty!

Is it selfish to rent a car when you want one, taking advantage of the proximity of rental agencies and the ridiculous subsidies given to car infrastructure in North America?

Guilty!

It’s getting to us, this “guilty” feeling, even knowing Ayn (may we call you Aynie?) backs us up with her formidable charms [you mean intellect, right? –ed.]

Shouldn’t we do our part and buy a car? After all, the major automobile industries are taking such a hit. Word is Wagoner of GM (that genetically modified car company) may not get as big a bonus this year as he’s used to, thanks in part to the chronic “junk bond” status of the company he runs. Shouldn’t we who have the means all run out and “buy” a car? Of course by “buy” we mean a no-money-down four-year loan from the finance company run by the automobile manufacturer (the only part of many of them actually to operate in the black). By conservative standards, we who don’t own a car save $8,000 to 12,000 per year by our act of parsimony. Isn’t it pretty selfish of us to keep our money in our pocket?

Luckily, like that second-greatest American architect Frank Wright, we have Aynie on side.

The news is depressing.

First, there’s the information that cigarette companies, which are responsible for the creation and marketing of a product that addicts and afflicts millions, will be allowed to promote themselves through jazz festivals and the like.

This does not bode well for the call to ban car advertising.

Second, there’s the information that each liter of gas that’s burned creates carbon dioxide enough to keep three trees busy, according to the Hinterland Who’s Who website:

Every time 1 litre of gasoline is burned, about 1.4 kilograms of oxygen are sucked from the air and are spewed out as over 2.25 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global ozone depletion. On average, it takes 3 trees to absorb and lock away those 2.25 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

And finally, from a website called the Shitegeist, we have the following observation about cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, which will not please either our car-lovin’ or our walking friends but which strikes us as a delightful summary of the state of affairs.

December 20, 2004
The Anthropology of Roads
Posted by barry

My anthropological study of roads emerged from my observation that motorists and pedestrians seem to ignore the existence of cyclists, as if they are not really present with them on the route ways they traverse.

Of course, this led me to suspect that much is going on at the subconscious level, where cyclists are being “filtered out”. It was also quite telling that when motorists and pedestrians do seem to notice cyclists, it is to engage in violent altercations with them.

The invention of the bicycle in 1861 represents the beginning of the modern era. Those who remained pedestrians after this watershed moment represent a backwards-looking and resentful tendency that has greeted modernity. Fear of technology, and a belief that everything was better in the past, has given rise to the pedestrian of today. It is notable that even though the noun “pedestrian” is neutral in meaning, the adjective “pedestrian” is exclusively pejorative. However, the pedestrians have been, in some sense, right to fear technology. Motorists, in the ascendant since the invention of the automobile in 1885, represent an extreme of modernity, that anti-human and antisocial tendency that threatens society.

In the motorist, we observe major psychological dysfunctions emerging from the ego.

Motorists are egotistical. Hence, the ego manifestation boxes (“cars”) in which they propel themselves about the planetary landscape. A car is always physically larger than the motorist’s own (human) body, as it is the physical manifestation of the ego that has inflated beyond the physical space the body occupies. Motorists will not always be aware of their ego problem, subconsciously inventing the “need” for a car, such as the placement of their habitat (“home”) far away from the place where they must forage (“work”).

Motorists are antisocial. Their immersion in their own egos results in a loss of interest in society. They are happy for people to be kept at a distance from one another, as they see interaction as mere ego-clash. Their own egos are so inflated that they see all egos as equally in need of ostentatious physical manifestation. Motorism promotes the redesign of towns, cities, countryside, and the planet in general to meet the needs of the car. In essence, the motorist wishes to replace the presence of interactive human society on the streets and greens with the constant traffic of machines. The car is thus more than an ego manifestation box – it also has an antisocial function, separating people from one another.

Motorists are subconsciously homicidal. If you are egotistical and antisocial, the next logical step is obviously going to be the desire to kill other human beings. The reason the car is so fast, and so heavily armoured, is to satisfy this subconscious urge to kill. The homicidal impulse is indulged with car ownership, which is the attainment of the power to kill. This feeling of power can be enough to keep the homicidal impulse tamed, but motorists find it difficult not to desire “accidents”, in which their urge to kill is finally sated. Motorists will always claim that cycling is “dangerous”, because they want to be able to murder cyclists with impunity, by making it look like the cyclist’s “fault”. But cycling is not inherently dangerous. Cyclists are only in danger from those people who profess it to be dangerous, i.e. those who deliberately wish to make it so.

The pedestrian leads generally a more positive existence than that of the motorist. The pedestrian is, after all, out in society interacting with other human beings, without the distancing effect of metal armour. But pedestrians are seriously psychologically dysfunctional, and these dysfunctions stem from their self-loathing. Unlike the rampantly egotistical motorist, the pedestrian suffers from a lack of ego. Pedestrians hate themselves, and that is why they don’t cycle. This is the explanation for their rejection of the bicycle’s invention in 1861: their self-hatred disallowed their participation in the elevation of quality of life that the bicycle represented. Pedestrians know cycling would be good for their health, yet they don’t cycle, taking perverse pleasure instead in their psycho-physical deterioration. They know too that cycling will save them the money they would otherwise waste on public transport, yet they don’t cycle – in fact, they will often choose a habitat at an awkward location in relation to their “work”, which guarantees them the necessity to use the most unpleasant form of public transport, as they enjoy being miserable, packed in like sardines with other miserablists. For many of these ego-depleted self-loathing individuals, ego-compensation can only be achieved through escape into the sickness of car purchase, which is, of course, over-compensation and leads to egotism and the other psychological dysfunctions of the motorist.

As I noted above, the pedestrian is not antisocial in the way that motorists are. But the pedestrian is antisocial in relation to the cyclist. The cyclist represents to pedestrians the symbol of everything a pedestrian could be: healthy, sane, thrifty etc. and this causes deep resentment. The pedestrian wishes to physically attack a cyclist, so will subconsciously filter out all visual and aural information relating to cyclists, only “noticing” the cyclist in an “accident”, or near-“accident” situation. The more desperately aggressive pedestrians will “notice” cyclists at traffic lights, zebra crossings or in parks, and will hope for some kind of altercation. Unlike the motorist, however, the pedestrian is not homicidal. Rather, the pedestrian prefers to enact beatings and maimings, and does not require the need for the certainty of killing power (unless, of course, the pedestrian goes on to become a motorist). The archetype of the pedestrian is the street thug. Pedestrians, if they are not already in a street gang, are sad, frustrated people itching to join one.

It seems to me that cyclists represents the “norm” in terms of healthy human psychology, and they exist in a dysfunctional society, sandwiched in between two frighteningly dysfunctional groups, motorists and pedestrians.

Three stories of note fell from the business pages of “Canada’s paper of record” the other day. They seemed to speak to each other, although it’s taken the ALLDERBLOB some time and labour to piece together the veil of connection.

1) According to the Globe and Mail‘s Tavia Grant, “If job cuts continue at their current pace, the year-end total [in the U.S.] will surpass last year’s 1,039,935 level and mark the fifth consecutive year that one million job cuts were announced.”

Is this bad news? Or are these figures, reported on August 4 2005 simply, “as some economists say” (Grant quotes exactly two) masking “robust job creation?” The fact is, every year the U.S. loses jobs, and it creates jobs. Somehow, “unemployment numbers” are actually “falling” down there.

From folks losing heart and giving up the job search entirely? From folks finding new McCrappy jobs in the service sector?

Actually, Tavia has a theory.

According to her story, job creation has averaged 180,ooo per month in the past year, as opposed to a monthly loss of some 200,ooo. And while (contrary to what one might expect) it’s in “health care and construction” where jobs are being created, it’s the automobile industry that is really feeling the pinch. “Since the start of the year… the auto industry [has announced] 72,598 job cuts.” The Ford Motor Co. is typical of the basket cases that comprise America’s biggest employer. It’s just announced plans to “make deeper cuts to its North American salaried work force than it had previously disclosed.”

In a perfect world, the auto industry would continue to slump, shedding jobs and political influence like those limbs of ancient saguaro hit by David Grundman, the original (Darwin award-winning) cactus plugging cowboy. Just hope they don’t fall on you.

2) Elsewhere in the same newspaper we see sorry news from Canada: “Big Three’s Canadian auto sales surge,” according to the Glob’s Greg Keenan, “auto industry reporter” [talk about yer reasons to shoot yourself –ed.] The story is, in response to the so-called “red flag” event (discussed here some weeks back) of Ford, GM and Chrysler, vehicle sales by the “Big Three” were up an average of 25% in July, compared with the year previous.

So the advertised deep price cuts paid off?

Well, maybe. But maybe not.

Turns out vehicle sales at BMW were up 43%, while at Mercedes Benz it was 57%. No one saw either of those companies advertising “employee prices” (although no doubt they did something just as condescending).

Nonetheless, according to Keenan, “[a] key question is what will happen to the Big Three sales when they drop their employee discount programs… .” He turns to a carhead spokesmodel [that’s “consulting firm J.D. Power and Associates” to you –ed.] for the last word: “It will take a month or two of heavy marketing [our emphasis] to convince buyers that they’re still getting good deals” (after the red flag is pulled down).

More heavy marketing. Well, ain’t that peachy. And quelle surprise. The position of the Allderblob is well known: there ought to be a law against heavy marketing in public places. At least for the automobile.

3) Meanwhile, almost lost in the shuffle, the same issue of the Glum and Bale(ful) reports in a Reuters story, “Armstrong’s success filters down to U.S. bicycle industry,” that

“The struggling U.S. automobile industry may do well to take some lessons from its non-motorized brethren because bicycles are selling like hotcakes.

“Americans purchased more bicycles than new cars and trucks combined in the past year — and all without employee discounts or zero-per-cent financing.”

Lance Armstrong? Or Peak Oil?

Fact is, the 19 million bicycles sold inthe U.S. last year is just one point shy of the 20 million sold yearly “during the oil embargo of the early 1970s,” according to Tim Blumenthal of “Bikes Belong,” a “national [bicycle] industry association” (J.D. Power, sit down!).

Ah, the oil embargo of the early 1970s. The glory days. The Allderblob’s formative years, when Scientific American could proudly tell us of the marvelous efficiency (unrivalled in nature) of the bicycle (March, 1973). When Ivan Illich could write in a national newspaper (Yeah, I know, it was a French one) of the “social necessity” of the bicycle: “High speed is the critical factor which makes transportation socially destructive. A true choice among practical policies and of desirable social relations is possible only where speed is restrained. Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.”

Are we coming back to our senses? Or does the crisis of crisis have to deepen?

To Australia’s Tony Fry, author of Defuturing, we turn for the last word (we will let you make sense of it): “Consider this: unsustainability has a psychology. Two examples: on the one hand unsustainability is manifested in the technocentric and instrumentalised lives of many millions of people who have ever diminishing agency over their workplace circumstances, but are compensated by ‘the freedom to consume’ (one could again cite Henry Ford’s 1913 policy of high wages for dumb work as one of the key designing moments of this trajectory). On the other hand, and more crassly, unsustainability is evident in the continued abandonment to abject poverty of ever more of the world’s population as numbers grow, as humanism fails and in, for instance, many parts of Africa the structure of the State and the social fabric of society completely breaks down. Here is the psychology of the abandoned in an inoperative community of total dysfunction, but equally here is the psychology of lack of concern, of oversight, of assumed unconnectedness that is one confirmation of the inoperative community at large. ”