Dear God, that's scary! Whenever I hear stuff (or say it myself) like
this, my standard response is a lamenting smirk (if that's actually
possible), and the infamous line, "It's a Brave New World, don't ya know."
However, you're right. There's only so much you can do to slow the process
of a media controlled, mass-minded society. I jokingly have been known to
say, "Our fall will be indivisible from the fall of Rome", and yet I see it
happening, and fight off a bit of worry for me and my future children, let
alone civilization in general. You see, I'm 22 years old, and don't have
the ability to say, "well, I probably won't live to see the day" because I
probably will.
I don't mean to sound horribly pessimistic, but I have little faith in what
most folks call "progress". You can't fear it, but you can't always trust
it either. There are countless civilizations which have self-destructed in
the name of rampant "progress". Sometimes, I wonder how many of us really
think of what we do when we continue to allow more individual-restricting
laws to pass. Not to exaggerate, but hey, it all starts with regulation on
how many cars you can own, then it's homes, then it's the size of your
home, then it's how many kids you can/can't have...where does this "best
interest of the whole" or "progress" legislation become an infringement of
our civil liberty?
However, I agree. If it's going to happen anyway, lets at least get a
piece of the action! I'd hate to be 60+ years old, broke, sitting in my MG
which I've hidden in the basement, and saying, "Gee, honey, remember when
we drove cars on the ground!"
Leave it to me to really open the can of worms :-),
J
>
> We also must realize that the days of the automobile as transportation
are
> numbered. The horse was as commonplace a century ago as as the car is
> today. By the mid teens, other than on the farm, horses became the toys
of
> the rich and rides at the state fair. The future of transportation seems
to
> be a combination of telecommuting and some sort of public transport. As
> the suburbs populate and grow into each other, as they have in LA and
more
> recently in my native San Francisco Bay Area, the businesses that
develope
> there (like Silicon Valley in Santa Clara/San Jose) will draw employees
> closer to the new business centers. Sure people will have to get together
> for meetings once or twice a week and there still will be skeleton crew
on
> premesis to mind the store but this wont require two-thirds of the
> population of Los Angeles to get into Honda Civics and Ford Explorers and
> drive fourty-five minutes across town to sit in a cubicle to be brow
beaten
> by managers and supervisors. In the future, a good supervisor will be the
> person who can effectively brow beat by email! (you can tell who is the
> free lancer is here!)
>
> The media message that people get today is that cars are disposable
> appliances that are of so little value that they are blown up and crashed
> for no appearant reason. While a necessary evil to get to school and the
> mall, they are also dangerous, expensive to own and are ruining our air
and
> water. If we could see what we love through the eyes of the people who
will
> eventually vote our hobby off the streets and into museums, we would see
> ourselves viewed as Disney's Mr. Toad or Mr. Magoo in their antique
tourers
> or Jack Benny and Rochester in the mythical Maxwell. Sure we can, and
> should, lobby the government and fight the system and buy ourselves more
> time, but we can't fight the tide and we can't fight progress. These very
> computors that have made it so easy for hobbiests to communicate and
> increase interest in what we value will ultimately become the angle of
> death of the same. When I became an automotive journalist, I gave up
> building and collecting and now spend most of my time talking and writing
> about cars.
>
> Someday, all of us will be driving virtual cars and taking the light rail
> to two or three big local events each year to see the collections of the
> rich or government funded collections. While we might have hidden away an
> old MG in the basement, we wouldn't dare drive it because if caught, it
> would be impounded and destroyed. LOOK AT THE LAWS THAT ARE BEING PUT
INTO
> PLACE TODAY! In some communities you are not allowed to have more than
> three running and registered cars on your property, and if turned in by a
> nosey, Nazi, neighbor; your car can be legaly "abated" (stolen and
removed)
> and sold for scrap. Sure we can fight these draconian laws but good luck
> trying to change the mass mentality that creates them.
>
> I know this sounds bleak, but greybeards like me probably will be too old
> to care as this "new order" actually comes into being. We might even
> welcome a relaxing train ride in a retro '30s deco lounge train or the
"Old
> West" railroad cars that will be offered as transportation companies and
> amusement parks merge to keep our media overstimulated minds from going
> into screensaver mode on a long boring train ride. Young enthusiasts will
> be able to bolt a Le Carra steering wheel to their Atari auto simulator,
> turn on the turbo electric wind fan option and slip in the MGTD CD ROM
and
> go for a ride in the hills in the comfort of their media rooms. (Hey!
Let's
> build some of this shit and get rich!)
>
> See you on the Funway! - Rick Feibusch - Venice, CA
>
>
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