Bike Forums - View Single Post - Cars=Class Warfare?

01-09-11 | 03:24 PM

#278

Robert Foster

Banned.

Joined: May 2008

Posts: 3,498

Likes: 2

From: Southern california

Bikes: Lapierre CF Sensium 400. Jamis Ventura Sport. Trek 800. Giant Cypress.

Quote:

Originally Posted by electrik

You're right, none of this matters. Really, it's not about me or how much money my job pays or if i'm left or right. What business is it of yours friend-o...?

Recognizing that political, economic and etc groups(the so called classes) who choose in a self serving manner to physically separate(burbs), isolate other groups(unserviced ghettos) and limit their competitiveness(no car, no transit, no job) is what is important. The car is a yoke around many people's necks. Gone are the days when in our society the automobile was simply an optional status symbol. This "new" reality entails, like other groups, very much a narrower being and thinking to those who own a car. The problem is the car turned out to be so damaging. What you own ends up owning you, and the more expensive and powerful the thing the more total it's domination. How you don't realize that while posting in "Living car free" is beyond me.

I don’t see it because the car doesn't dominate me and maybe because I have no connection with any single location. There is no portion of a city that has my total loyalty and no area. If opportunity or weather or standard of living or even simple interest falls on me I feel free to move. I have lived in several states and traveled to several countries, including yours.

I have seen class warfare up close and personal in Kenya and the problems between the urban area and suburban areas of Toronto pale in comparison. I have been to places were one class chases the other into refugee camps in another country. I have sent money to families that had to move in the middle of the night because one political party came into power and wanted to remove people from the other party. Inequity in the world exists for all of us I simply don’t look for a demon to place the blame on. As I said earlier the same thing that is said about cars can be said about housing, food, clothing, utilities.

Your definition of class warfare puts everyone against everyone else. If I have something that someone else doesn’t and that something gives me an advantage it is class warfare to you or at least it is how it has been expressed. Education becomes class warfare, cell phones become class warfare. Suburbs become class warfare. Security buildings become class warfare. And simply living in a different city becomes class warfare. Supermarkets become class warfare.

This forum proves that there are people that can survive without a car and hold down a job. It might be difficult but what in life isn’t difficult? Taxes are difficult for some and easy for others. Housing is easy for some and hard for others. But to hate someone and declare war on them because they vote differently that others is counterproductive. Because as a fist is raised to shake in anger at someone that has something more than one person fails to see the fist raised behind them by someone that has less. If the working urbanite is at war with the working suburbanite they are just as much at war with the laid off urbanite or homeless urbanite, which just may have more in common with the laid off or homeless suburbanite.

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