Originally Posted by
tandempower
For me, the norms of the automotive lifestyle seem extravagant and almost 'hyperreal,' to use Jean Baudrillard's term. It's like in the movie, the Matrix, where people are running around jumping buildings and dodging bullets. It's so strange that a normative culture has evolved around the combustion power, to the point where getting around by bike on smooth pavement, an incredibly fast and efficient mode of transportation by pre-automotive standards, is construed as falling short of expectations. It's so strange that people have lived their entire lives taking automotive culture for granted to the point they don't even have a car-free baseline to frame reality. It's like living in a Star Trek realitywhere people are so used to beaming around instead of walking that they forget what actual geographical distance is and means.