[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Despotism of the Image

[Bill Totten]

by Dmitry Orlov

Club Orlov (November 22 2006)

Editor's note: This is the heartiest laugh I've had for a long time, and
it's because Orlov zeroes in so well on the dominant culture's
irrational attachment to the images of the car and the suburban house. - JL

The ostensible goal of this Web site, and the small but enthusiastic
community that surrounds it, is to change the culture. We all recognize
that the contemporary mainstream culture of over-consumption and
unbridled growth is toxic on every level  -  physical, emotional, and
cultural  -  and is accelerating on a collision course with resource
depletion, climate disruption, and environmental devastation. We all
want to jump off in time, or, perhaps lacking the necessary courage, to
find ourselves lucky enough to be thrown clear.

What this means in reality is anything but clear, and the best that most
of us manage is some small display of personal virtue  -  recycling
plastic packaging, bicycling instead of driving, taking the train
instead of flying, growing a bit of our own food, eating organic, using
energy-efficient light bulbs, investing in renewable energy, and so
forth. These are the tokens by which we recognize each other. How such
personal virtues are defined is a matter of personal taste: some
consider driving a hybrid car sufficient, while others prefer
eliminating cars from their lives altogether. Some seemingly necessary
steps, such as learning to live without oil-based plastics and other
synthetic materials, seem beyond all of us.

It seems to be something of an article of faith that if we all did
enough of such things, whatever they may be, then the problem, whatever
it happens to be, and however we choose to define it, would in due
course be solved, and civilized life would go on just like before. Just
yesterday, in company, light after-dinner conversation happened to
breeze past the topic of energy, and how the British were lucky to
discover coal just as timber was running out, and were then lucky enough
to discover oil and natural gas before the coal ran out. And now that
they have all but run out of oil and natural gas, "there will be enough
renewables to power it all!" was the swift retort. To those of us who
have the right technical background, and understand the physical
quantities involved, this claim is preposterous, but I knew better than
to object.

You see, I realize that it is a requirement of this culture that we all
project an image of unbounded optimism and faith in our technological
prowess. Anything less is automatically labeled as defeatist,
fatalistic, and lacking in imagination. What is meant by this word is
not the active work of the intellect, mind you, but the passive,
voluntary acceptance of a set of common imaginings, or images. The most
important images comprising this artificial reality, the ones at the
core of this realm of enforced fiction, are the ones that, on the
surface at least, have to do with personal dignity and physical comfort.

I sometimes have a chance to observe a clash between two competing
images: that of personal virtue (bicycling) and that of personal dignity
and personal comfort (driving). I am a year-round bicyclist in a
northern city where temperatures occasionally dip below freezing, and
where it sometimes snows. It is a liberal city, meaning that many people
here share this sense of personal virtue that attaches to tokens of
eco-friendly behavior, such as bicycling to work  -  not that they would
consider doing it themselves, of course, unless the distance were short
and the weather perfect. But quite a few of them wish to experience this
virtue vicariously, and, seeing me suited up and wearing a helmet,
strike up conversations with me in the elevator, on the way to work,
especially if it's hot or cold or raining or snowing. Often they ask me
how I keep my feet from freezing (I wear wool socks) or how I avoid
falling down on ice (I use studded tires) or how I negotiate those steep
hills (I push hard with both of my legs).

My answers, although offered quite cheerfully, are invariably greeted
with silent disappointment, and it is interesting to ask why that is.
Perhaps it has something to do with this: bicycling for me is not a
matter of personal virtue, but a way of conveying myself between places
with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of fuss and aggravation. I do
so with complete personal dignity and physical comfort, because my
experience of these things is based on my actual emotional state (which
is generally placid) and physical comfort (which, for me, involves a
healthy dose of pain, and results in good health and a sense of
well-being). My suspicion is that the dignity and comfort of my
car-dependent elevator companions does not have a basis in personal
experience, but is bound up with some other, atavistic impulses, which
find their fullest expression in the image of the automobile. They are
disconcerted to find it bested by a primitive, engineless, two-wheeled
contraption.

It is possible to erect a virtual mountain of rational, logical,
quantifiable arguments against cars and in favor of bicycles. A most
amusing line of analysis involves computing their relative effective
average speeds. First, compute the total cost of ownership of a car,
including purchase price, financing costs, maintenance costs,
registration, tolls, traffic tickets, and so forth. Now, include all
external costs: road construction and maintenance, damage to health
caused by air and water pollution, loss of productivity due to death and
maiming in auto accidents, associated legal costs, and, of course,
military budgets needed to equip the armed forces to fight for and
defend the oil.

Now, take the drivers' average income and hours worked, and find out how
many hours of labor it takes to cover all of these costs. Add to that
the actual time spent driving. Now take the number of vehicle miles
traveled, and divide it by the total number of hours spent both driving
and earning enough money to pay for cars. Rather than give you the
answers, I encourage you to do your own homework, but I can tell you
that the end result of this exercise is always the same: the bicycle is
faster than the car, and, depending on one's assumptions, driving is
slower than walking.

Another amusing line of analysis involves the subject of public safety.
There are some overall practical limits on how long one's daily commute
can take, generally under an hour each way, regardless of distance
traveled or form of transportation used. Thus, the relevant
safety-related statistic is still accidents requiring hospitalization
and fatalities, but per unit time rather than per unit distance. And
here, it turns out, bicycles are somewhat safer than cars, even in
congested urban areas lacking in bicycle paths or bicycle lanes. And
although everyone's health suffers from the effects of car-related air
pollution, the daily exercise of bicycling mitigates against them to
some extent, further increasing the gap.

Thus, from the point of view of public safety, bicycles win as well.
Similar types of analysis can be applied to trains, rickshaws, or pogo
sticks, with similar results. In short, there seems to be no point in
looking for rational explanations for why people prefer cars, or even to
think of cars as serving a need for transportation. Their perceived
comfort and convenience is but a culturally engineered mirage; if the
convenience were real, Al Gore would have made a film about it, perhaps
titled "A Convenient Truth: Why I Drive a Car". It is about time we
acquiesced to the fact that their primary function is to satisfy a
powerful set of atavistic urges.

In its anatomy, the automobile is clearly descended from a certain
quadruped ruminant of the equine family, cross-bred with a buggy. Along
the way, it gained some predatory genes, giving it a rather vicious
disposition, and an often vicious aspect to its facial expression
(headlights and grille). It has two eyes (headlights) and four legs
(wheels). It likes to run in herds, but resists being overtly
constrained, either in direction or in speed. It obeys foot-signals from
spurs (gas pedal) and hand-signals from reigns (steering wheel).

There is a large variety of breeds, most of which are prized for their
ability to run fast, although they rarely do so. Their main function is
to impart a certain sense of nobility to those who own them, whether by
giving a gentleman-on-horseback aspect to the driver, or a
lady-in-a-carriage aspect to the passenger. As with horses, their
sometimes overpowering flatulence does nothing to degrade this sense of
nobility.

The car's secondary function is to allow its owner to wield power over
life and death. If it were regarded strictly from a public safety
perspective, private ownership of cars would have been banned long ago.
In fact, what makes a car so enticing, and makes it such a powerful
image within the public imagination, is that it is "an inherently
dangerous instrumentality", as a lawyer once put it. Unlike a horse,
which has two eyes and a brain, and, left to its own devices, will avoid
running into things, a car is only too happy to collide, and requires
constant vigilance.

This trivial but active supervision, which, to avoid sudden death or
serious injury, must be maintained at all times, is at once intensely
boring and exciting. Iggy Pop once captured the spirit of this
contradiction: "In the death car, we're alive!" In a car-dependent
society, millions of people are at all times actively involved in the
act of avoiding instant death. In due course, cars and the carnage they
produce come to be regarded as forces of nature.

One periodically hears of plans to create "smart highways", and, looking
beyond the obvious implication that the current highways are indeed
"stupid", it becomes obvious that the cars that travel them are "stupid"
as well. Redesigned purely with transportation in mind, an automobile
would look quite different.

Three wheels is quite enough, and four is quite excessive, as evidenced
by many examples, from race-winning solar cars to Buckminster Fuller's
Demaxian vehicle. The drive wheel, front and center, would steer, but
would also be designed to run in a groove, eliminating the need to steer
except when maneuvering. Hitches front and back would allow cars to be
linked together into trains for improved efficiency. When not hitched to
the car in front, a simple infrared sensor would regulate the speed so
as to keep the proper braking interval. Minimum and maximum speed limits
would be bar-coded onto the pavement, and the car would obey them
automatically. The engine would be an outboard, lowered onto the front
wheel using a hoist and clipped in position, to make it easy to switch
out for maintenance or replacement. The bottom of the car would be sheer
and watertight, and its drive wheel would have paddles on its sides,
allowing it to traverse bodies of water. For storage, it would pivot and
stand upright within a small footprint.

But such design exercises are futile: they are a rational approach to an
irrational set of requirements. Stupid cars, and the people for and by
whom they are designed, will be with us for a long time. Their image is
indelibly imprinted on the public imagination whenever little boys roll
their little toys around the playroom floor, murmuring "Vroom! Vroom!"

Conversely, it is the downfall of our current public transportation
systems that they are designed strictly with transportation and public
safety in mind, and fail to satisfy the atavistic urges of their
ridership. In adhering to the image of a safe and foolproof public
service, they fail to deliver either the thrill of victory or the agony
of defeat, and the unsatisfied commuter must make do with impatience,
unease, and boredom.

A properly designed streetcar would have either no doors at all, or
doors that shut definitively and with great force after a peremptory
warning. It would not stop at stations but only slow down just enough to
allow passengers to jump on and off. It would be equipped with running
boards and external handrails, allowing passengers to display their
acrobatic skill by riding on the outside, saving themselves the cost of
a fare.

To keep the lawyers at bay, all passengers would be required to sign a
waiver absolving the streetcar company of all liability, and traffic
laws would be amended to give streetcars absolute right of way in all
circumstances and to place all other traffic automatically at fault in
case of collision. The fronts of streetcars could then be equipped with
plows to sweep aside any object blocking the tracks, eliminating delays
due to accidents. The inevitable carnage would provide a constant stream
of public safety lessons, courtesy of the tabloid press.

Not only would such a system be cheap and efficient to operate, but it
would also, in due course, breed an agile and alert ridership, whose
daily displays of bravery and physical stamina would produce a
camaraderie and an esprit de corps that is so sadly lacking in the
effete and pampered commuter of today. Of course, such a service is an
impossibility, for it would go against the image which public
transportation is called upon to fulfill: the image of a public charity,
serving the young, the old, the poor and the unwell; in short, something
called upon to exist for the benefit of those unlucky few who can not drive.

In more and more places, public transportation is made untenable by a
condition known as "suburban sprawl", which, more than anything else,
fosters car-dependence. The cause of suburban sprawl is the suburban
house, and, just as it would be a mistake to look at the car strictly as
a form of transportation, it is a mistake to look at the suburban house
strictly as a form of housing. Although it provides a set of modern
amenities, it must also conform to a certain image, and, just as with
the car, we will find that it is this image that best explains both its
typical location and its typical form.

It is a common misconception that the main function of a suburban home
is to provide shelter, when it is quite obviously and clearly to provide
parking. In a car-dependent society, access is controlled by limiting
and controlling one's ability to park. Public parking is always limited
and often not available, and semi-public parking  -  at stores, malls,
office parks, and other private institutions  -  is limited to those who
have money to spend or otherwise have some business to transact there.
While the car confers freedom of movement, it is the freedom to move,
via public roadways, between places where one is not free but must
fulfill some specific social function, be it working, shopping, or some
other socially sanctioned activity. Even if you wish to escape the
oppressive strictures of society for a while, and spend time in a
wilderness area, you will find that, in a car-dependent society, even
wilderness keeps business hours, and closes its parking lots shortly
before dark.

In short, the only freedom the car confers is the freedom to drive to
and fro between places where you are not free, and the only true
exception to this rule is your own driveway. No proper suburban home can
be without one: it is your own private highway that leads to your own
private house. This image dictates that it be expensively and
unnecessarily paved, and not with paving stones, for then it would be a
walkway rather than a driveway, but with asphalt. Suburban driveways are
not paved for the benefit of the cars, which can handle dirt roads, and
clearly not for the benefit of the now commonplace off-road vehicles,
but for the benefit of satisfying some innate drive within their
drivers: the urge to own a piece of the road.

The symbolic function of the suburban home is to serve as the final
resting place at the end of the long drive home. Peace and quiet are
considered to be its most essential features, and although the overt
preoccupation is with safety and security, its source is an irrational
urge for ultimate peace. If a suburban dweller were to trade both the
car and the house for an apartment within city limits, the increased
chance of becoming a victim of violent crime would be more than offset
by the decreased chance of dying in an auto accident, and so the choice
is not a rational one from the standpoint of safety.

The real concern is not with safety but with the embodiment of an
abstract image of peace. Zoning regulations and bylaws restrict noisy
hobbies and deviations from community standards, for it is a sacrilege
to violate the eternal slumber of the suburbanite. The ideal suburb
features an unbroken expanse of manicured grass dotted with little
neoclassical monuments, all slightly different yet all essentially the
same. This is the essential decor of a cemetery: the house is in fact a
family crypt. Not surprisingly, the final destination of the death-car
is the death-house.

All other functions of the death-house, save one, are superfluous, since
people can, and do, eat, sleep, and have sex in their cars. As cars grow
larger and commutes become longer, more and more of the living is done
inside the car, with the sepulchral dwelling only used to unwrap fast
food, keep beer cold, and fall asleep in front of the television set.
But the death-house has one room that is essential, because it offers
services a car cannot provide. This is the bathroom, and it contains the
shower, and, of course, the toilet. And not just any toilet: a
chamberpot or a bucket of sawdust simply would not do. No, it must be a
most unlikely contraption that allows one to defecate directly into a
pool of drinking water (which may be deodorized according to taste) and
flush it down with copious amounts of more drinking water. How curious
it is that while other carnivores have an instinct to bury their feces,
to avoid spreading disease, these ones insist on mixing theirs into
their drink! Various expensive artifices, none entirely successful, are
then needed to keep the drinking water and the sewage apart.

If the urge to defecate into drinking water seems irrational, then what
of its ultimate purpose, which is to deny that the body smells? The
flush toilet is a tool for denying that the body smells on the inside;
the shower, with the help of enforced daily ablutions and chemical
deodorants, does the same for the exterior. The urge to deny that humans
smell like humans is very strange, because these same people happily
tolerate the smell of their cats and dogs, who rarely bathe and smell
precisely as they should. In fact, humans do smell, no worse than dogs
or cats, and the healthier specimens generally smell just fine, although
a junk food diet makes for a rather unpleasant funk. The obvious
suspicion is that these people, who drive death-cars and live in
death-houses, make every day a bath day because they feel compelled to
present an odor-free facade, out of fear that the subliminal stench of
death they cannot help but sense wafting all around them might be
emanating from them.

Contemporary mainstream culture of over-consumption and unbridled
growth, which we would so much like to change, to save ourselves, or to
save the planet, or a little of each, is not now, and was never a
rational proposition. It is the realization of dark, irrational,
self-destructive urges, which were programmed into us through some
evolutionary accident, and which are now, and for a short time longer,
being given their fullest expression by the availability of cheap and
abundant energy.

Appeals to rationality or good sense are futile, because the motive
force is a set of indelible, immutable images, which are imprinted on
simple minds and at an early age. These images are easy to ridicule, and
although ridicule can be powerful, its effectiveness is restricted to
those few who have the capacity to understand it. Voltaire was quite
thorough in his treatment of the Catholic church, and yet these priests
are still with us today, blessing things indiscriminately and fondling
altar-boys, because the average churchgoer never had any use for Voltaire.

A much more promising approach is to create new images, of great
seductive power, and still simple enough to leave a deep impression on a
simple mind. This is the stuff of dangerous politics and revolutionary
change: a path rife with unintended consequences, and certainly one to
avoid. All that remains is the possibility of an individual effort to
free yourself from the despotism of the image.

As for the rest of the consumers who are sold on the images of death,
dignity, and comfort, we can be sure that the free market will meet
their demand. Those with deep pockets will receive a truly luxurious
death that may include a personal museum of transportation and library
set amid formal gardens, while those at the opposite end will only be
able to afford death in a brown paper bag, but is that not the essence
of consumer choice? We should hope that their culture of death dies with
them, and, being numerous and diverse, we should hope that this happens
long before our species becomes an endangered one.

_____

For a wealth of articles on car-free consciousness and the road-fighting
movement of the 1990s, see the archive of the Auto-Free Times (renamed
Culture Change) Magazine, at
culturechange.org/auto_free_times.html

Carbusters Magazine: carbusters.org

Culture Change mailing address: Post Office Box 4347, Arcata ,
California 95518 USA, Telephone 1-215-243-3144 (and fax).

Culture Change was founded by Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly
Fossil Fuels Policy Action), a nonprofit organization.

Some articles are published under Title 17 USC. Section 107. See the
Fair Use Notice for more information:
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