Miracle Comfort Coffins

I have an ongoing obsession with trying to identify the things I can't perceive because I live in this particular society at this particular time. What is the air we breathe, the water to us as fish, and all of those other metaphors that are so often kicked around? What would alien xenologists make of us?

Personal motorized vehicles are clearly one of the things we have normalized, and one that xenologists would spend a lot of time studying. I already know this, and in a way I was just thinking about it this morning while waiting for the bus and watching expensive, multi-ton, gas-powered cars and SUVs cruise past me, each with one human being inside. I wrote a little bit about it in the early years of my blog, focused on how amazing gas-powered transportation is (eight pounds of fuel can move you, your whole family, your stuff, and the vehicle as far as horse can go in a day... whoa!). But I didn't go far enough.

Today, Bill Lindeke posted what may be the ultimate essay on stepping back and looking at motorized vehicles from the outside, if that's possible for a person living in this culture. He identifies in detail just how much goes into making them what they have become, resulting in drivers' ability to cut themselves off from everything without paying the cost. Resulting in the destruction of neighborhoods and of cities, in many ways, and our planet's climate, clearly.

It's a piece I will return to again, so putting it here in the filing cabinet.