Recent events
I’ve been thinking a lot about car accidents, because one of my family members was just in one. And I’ve known it for a long time, that all of these human fatalities are because of things we build and choose to continue building, but feeling it firsthand is worse. A lot worse.
She died on impact. So did the drunk driver.
My Work
I don’t think this happening is right. Obviously, no-one would. But we all just stand idly by, more or less, and we keep buying these cars. More importantly, we keep agreeing as citizens to car-favored infrastructure budgets. Build more dangerous roads. Kill more of our people. What are we sacrificing them for? We are still okay with sacrificing our family members so we can get to work every day? We don’t have the will as a species to think different enough and actually change things?
I am only 23, and this is a very messy post, but at least I already know what’s right. Buying into more car-centric infrastructure is not right. Choosing to build our communities with methods of non-fatal transportation is right. It’s very simple, and is the right thing to do. I don’t know why we make it so hard to understand.
Futuristic Transport
It is a well-known, or at least well-understood, or at least everyone I’ve ever told nods their head at fact, that a lot of our current sci-fi-looking tech in the world was very much inspired by media. Smart watches and all that shit.
And I know a good number of places in the world have bullet trains, mag-levs and all those fancy, shiny, non-fatal things to move us squishy little people in. I’m moving somewhere similar, somewhere going up.
But America? It feels more and more the closer I get to moving away that this country simply wants to be stuck in the past. It wants to eat itself alive and blow itself up before it ever grows up and realizes that life can be both urban AND pretty. Do you know what I mean? We are making this country a garbage dump and pouring glitter on it. I’m so sorry to tell you this, but the glitter just gets absorbed into the shit. Nationwide, failing infrastructure is matched with random, expensive, completely unnecessary new road infrastructure projects, which just exacerbates the problem. We’re consuming more than we have, and that’s in the richest country on Earth. We get so much imported, whether it be labor, money or goods, and we still come up short!
Other countries handle themselves just fine. But something in this place, I don’t know, it’s like we want it all to self-destruct. We hate ourselves enough to keep ourselves living in a shithole. Something something white guilt is the only preliminary answer I could write. To me, I see the liberals and conservative-libertarians as two sides of the same coin. I don’t think either of us are happy. Most of us white people handle our continued treatment of this land and some of its people by trying to be good, but the furthest most of us can seem to get is hating ourselves. The remaining minority of us white people are isolated in some capacity from the real world, and are taught by families some weird coping mechanisms for a shitty reality: Excessive nationalism, blaming everyone else, making up problems that don’t exist and blaming even more “others”… and, above all, growing a special sort of sense of “I can do no wrong”. No, I obviously don’t see them very worth arguing with. What’s the point of arguing with someone who has made such bullshit worldviews so unshakable inside of them, like racism and misogyny and such? I’m not on this Earth to argue anymore, I’m only here to be kind and work.
Final Notes
This was my messiest post yet, and will be my messiest post for a while coming. Don’t take this as an example of my normal work. With the car accident, I just had to get these few things off my chest. Channel my emotions into something worthwhile instead of just staying sad.
Fatal car accidents are one of the reasons I want to keep going with my life’s work. Even when it’s hard, I don’t give up. I have more energy than most and I am always going to use it. This world deserves better, dammit!
Thank you for reading. Enjoy your day, and if you drive, drive safe. Especially during the holidays.
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