Homo Automobilicus
“Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths.”
President Obama, June 23, 2010
I hope so!
I’ve been trying not to flinch every time I think about the Gulf of Mexico, but it’s getting harder. We’ve seen the news of the disaster steadily vanish from the headlines, even as the amount of oil entering the water increases exponentially. I do believe we are flinching. We simply can’t surmount the depressing emotions that accompany more pictures of dying creatures, or the tragic awareness that our unblinking faith in the “American way of life” should have been accompanied with unflinching skepticism. If only to preserve (for the short term) our mental health, we are looking away from the biggest environmental catastrophe we have have perpetuated.
While we look away there are things we can do to prepare for a better future. Let us look upon ourselves, right now, with a critical eye and see ourselves for what we are: Homo Automobilicus. Humanities and science departments have not prepared us to recognize that the definitions we use to define “normal humans” are hopelessly outdated. And what I mean by “normal humans” are those of us who cannot survive without automobiles: who need automobiles to supply themselves with food, clothing and shelter. You and me, our relatives and kids. Maybe even everybody we see or hear about on tv. 99% of us?
Take a moment right now and imagine who would be without the automobile(s) you depend upon to survive. It’s actually difficult to imagine that “you.” Maybe you can imagine that “you,” but are repelled by the image—of a naked, starving, homeless person.
Don’t flinch, though; this image is sponsored by oil companies, reinforced by inherited political rhetoric, and produced by the failure of humanities and science departments to teach us that we are no longer the humans that Shakespeare and Freud described. We are already “cyborgs”: fleshed beings whose capabilities are magnified and extended by machines. These machines know no “to be or not to be” or “id” or “superego,” and yet—as the enormity in the Gulf reveals—they have superseded us in terms of impact on the earth’s bios. We cannot destroy our ecosystems with our own bare hands; these machines that come with their unquenchable thirst for fossil fuels are required to commit such ecocides.
Don’t flinch! Your ancestors lived without automobiles, and so can you: not immediately of course, but over time with focused, consciously-willed, incremental steps. Transform in millimeters, not kilometers.
Start today. Imagine yourself as your great(-great) grandma who lived before the Model T was mass-produced.
Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass were car-less, and we admire them immensely.
You get the idea—imagine yourself as a human being. Not as a member of Homo Automobilicus: a briefly flourishing, self igniting, branch of the species Homo Sapiens.
Look away from the Gulf to who you want to become—
Related posts:
