This past weekend at my wife's family farm on County Highway D south of Madison, Wisconsin, we had a garage/estate sale to dispose of my brother-in-law's material possessions. Traffic was good - if one considers 99% of potential buyers using a motor vehicle to access 99% of their destinations to be desirable.
For once I kept my mouth shut about our nation's wars and occupations for oil, our addiction to driving everywhere, the enormous Environmental Footprint of homo automobilicus, etc. and just tried to sell my brother-in-law's stuff and thus cover his bills. Instead I used the occasion to quietly absorb the vast gulf between my beliefs versus our prevailing expectations and norms.
The overwhelming majority of people in these parts simply cannot imagine not driving everywhere. They lack any comprehension that their way of life undermines and destroys far more frugal - potentially even SUSTAINABLE - ways of living in their midst. Spending time there near that highway (a once-quiet country road which has morphed into a heavily congested two-lane commuter artery into Madison) I was stunned by the violence of movement. Seeing the vehicles that pulled into the yard, I was disgusted by the phenomenal size of many of them, especially when one considers they are used nearly all of the time for single-occupancy commuting and chauffeuring little Brittany to extra-cirricular activities rather than carpooling or hauling heavy, bulky stuff to jobsites.
What kind of power-mad, self-obsessed monsters have we become? So many people have collapsed their own identity into the identity of their motor vehicle(s). Motorcycle as lifestyle. Pickup truck as codpiece. Speed and power and restless movement as rebellion…against what? Everything branded, everything a logo and image. My own brother-in-law, God rest his soul, was a man who could express his love for his Harley and Suburban and Corvette far better than he could express love for humans; he bought into the Happy Motoring paradigm for the better part of his life. He may have been "book smart"; he certainly did well in the corporate world for a while; but he was a sucker for the perpetual dissatisfaction corporate America has to sell.
It strikes me as less and less likely that I can make any practical difference beyond my own household. This weekend helped me to realize that I have absolutely no idea how to engage most of my neighbors in discussing the issues and beliefs that really matter to me. More than a few - including a man I consider a very close friend - have already shut me off for rocking the boat.
2 comments:
I know what you mean. We are a messed-up people, and we won't change until we're forced to. We love our stuff more than we love each other.
And yet I'm reminded again and again that as my family tries to become self-sufficient and to prepare for a future with much less of almost everything we take for granted now, that one of the most important things we can do is belong to a community. But reaching out to people, finding common ground, and nurturing relationships is for me the most difficult part of it, especially when so few people seem to get it.
I'm sorry. I know blogs are supposed to be places where people rant and people who agree with them post endorsements, but did anybody think to truly evaluate what is being criticized here?
Hans holds an estate sale, where people might be expected to come to purchase possibly large items to ferry home. Unbelievably, they bring large vehicles. Hans is beside himself with grief. He thought they would carry these items home on their bike.
What kind of power-mad, self-obsessed monsters would do this? Are you kidding me? Maybe the kind that wants to bring the crap they just bought home.
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