Originally Posted by
cooker
I think you have an idealized memory of the "good old days" when people had higher standards. It's a variant of what I call the "old man rant" - you know the one: it starts off with "These kids nowadays......!" You've mixed in a bit of the "slippery slope" argument as well. It's all about the decline of mankind.
There is actually no such thing as car-free or drug-free or sugar-free. Those are Platonic concepts like the perfect circle, etc. that exist only in the abstract. In real life it's all about getting a reasonable working definition.
People call themselves drug-free if they avoid ingesting certain drugs - opiodes, benzodiazepines, crystal meth, cannabinoids or whatever, but often they smoke cigarettes like crazy and drink coffee and cola out of buckets. However they have adopted a working definition of drug free that tolerates those drugs.
Sugar-free is defined by authorities like the FDA as a sugar content below x% where x is a small number, but greater than zero.
And we define car free as we define it. Some have a stricter definition, some have a looser definition, and through a process of discussion we may reach a consensus, or we may continue to disagree. The forum header is simply one possible definition, not accepted by all.
I am pretty sure you will notice I didn't ask for the definition. When I first visited here I had just started getting re-interested in being car light and noticed there were people that had given up cars all together. One of my first conversations was with just such a person and I almost got my hat handed to me for simply saying I admired people who were car free in a world where cars seemed so indispensable. They told me that people can do pretty much whatever they wanted and that no one had to use a car if they made up their mind not to. At that time several people indicated they were indeed car free and they didn’t own, lease, rent of borrow a car. I think Roody can remember the conversation.
Is it possible that a car light person, like myself, could drive a car less than someone who borrows, or rents a car in a two week period? And if the two of us were going to the same place and I arrived by bike and they by rented car the latter can in good conscience consider themselves car free? Soundsd very Lewis Carrol doesn’t it?
It seems as if both of us should be willing to admit we are not car free.
