All Electric Vehicles and the Concept of Enough
December 28th, 2006The all electric SUV is almost here! While it’s not quite the electric Hummer I wrote about recently, what did I tell ya!?!
Head down to the clean, green Walmart to buy some blood soaked crap made by slaves in China with your somehow fungible U.S. dollars. Haul your goods back to your no-money-down, stucco box (“bought” with a 50 year adjustable rate mortgage) in your new, all electric, zero emission SUV! Water your lawn. Enjoy a handful of genetically engineered peanuts as you BBQ a big, juicy clone burger. Live it up! Because it’s back to work on Monday morning.
How much more absurd can this thing get?
While the energy situation we’re facing is a serious, engineered-to-happen crisis, it’s inconsequential when compared to the dire anthropological and spiritual shortcomings we humans continue to bump up against. We’re essentially feces flinging apes that somehow acquired the ability to create and use written languages and abstract computational techniques.
We have used these traits to systematically murder the Earth and enslave each other to the extent possible.
Don’t take this personally. I’m not saying that you are a planet killing fascist. But look at what has tended to happen when more than a few dozen people get together and it’s just not too pretty.
Yes, I know about the anti civilization movement, and I don’t see anything worth emulating there. I’m living a more primitive, lower energy existence than any of the people writing about anti civilization issues! This gives me quite a bit of pause about that area of inquiry. Besides, why stop at stone age tribes? Stone age tribes (the few non-violent ones, of course, not the head hunters, etc.) seem to be the nirvana state of being that these people like to write about, in front of their computers, in their heated homes. Why not crawl around on all fours? Why not partially blind ourselves to reduce our visual capability to that of a paramecium, with its light-sensing eyespot? If it’s all about going backwards, totally, and without question, why not really go for it!?
HA.
I don’t know why some of us have a concept of enough while most of us don’t. As the never-enoughers ruin the world, reactionary belief systems grow in popularity and seem increasingly valid, even though they are just as stupid as the more-forever paradigm.
Humans are great at extremism, but not so great at seeing the big picture, and carefully choosing and using appropriate tools to create stable systems that are in balance with the environment. While it’s theoretically possible to create stable systems that don’t wreck the planet, like lots of things on paper, it doesn’t happen in the real world. Why?
The tragedy of the commons is still the best explanation of why humans have failed—and will continue to fail—to create stable systems that are in balance with the environment. Even if some of us, or many of us, create such systems, hierarchical dominators will eventually build armies, bribe, swindle, deceive and kill us to exploit the stable systems we worked so hard to maintain. The enoughers have never been able to defend themselves from the notenoughers because the enoughers do not resort to extermination to achieve their goals. The notenoughers would rather see a resource destroyed than lose control of it.
The side that is better at extermination/exploitation will gain control, gain influence, and if unchecked by a different hierarchical dominator, this process will continue until some higher plateau is reached. Decline and disintegration follows in the years or decades after the plateau. Warlords will rise from the smoldering ruins, climb the mountains of skulls and do it all over again.
So here we are, having never really developed the consciousness necessary to wield the tools—that our large brains enabled us to construct—in any good way, raping the commons to within an inch of its life. Instead of flinging feces, crushing skulls with clubs, lighting off cannons or shooting machine guns, the creatures are now armed with nuclear weapons. Same ape consciousness as ever, but with the power to exterminate with god-like efficiency.
So, while the clean, green fascists jump up and down and cheer the arrival of the all electric SUV, I’ll count each day that passes without the appearance of mushroom clouds as a precious gift to those of us who understood the concept of enough.
Via: Phoenix Motor Cars:
Phoenix Motorcars manufactures zero-emission, freeway-speed fleet vehicles. It is an early leader in the mass production of full function, green electric trucks and SUVs for commercial fleet use. Based in Ontario, California, Phoenix Motorcars uses the NanoSafe battery, a non-toxic, all-battery solution to eliminate noise and toxic vehicle emissions that contribute to air pollution.
“Why not crawl around on all fours? Why not partially blind ourselves to reduce our visual capability to that of a paramecium, with its light-sensing eyespot? If it’s all about going backwards, totally, and without question, why not really go for it!?”
now that’s F’in funny!
Nice piece. It’s one of the reasons why I abandoned the ecovillage concept, the idea that these so-called havens would survive the collapse intact was ludicrous.
The will to dominate all life forms on the planet cannot be broken until something inside the human psyche changes. And I don’t know what that is. Nobody alive today will live to see it, and maybe nobody ever will.
Until such time, I have no intentions of being forever victimized by the dominating evil running rampant all over the planet. My little ‘haven’ will not be defenseless.
We all rest on a pile of bones, we just don’t want to admit it.
Man, I wish my good friend, TR, would write a guest piece about the time he spent in an Oregon ecovillage. Holy crap. The place turned out to be a mental institution that used a Soviet style bureaucracy to, quite literally, pass the time by busily accomplishing nothing.
What incentive was there to do anything? There was ultimately no personal stake in the thing for people. The only thing they really had was their bureaucracy.
Again, the reactionary responses to mainstream society can be as stupid as the thing they hate so much.
one of the most lucid writing hidden under a hilarius style…
this graph explains all : http://art.afterculture.org/Timeline.html
thank you for making me grow !
“go ahead… make my day !”
Read ‘The Birds’ by Aristophanes if you think your utopia will be better than your current situation.
Kevin, I have been baffled for many years by the misspelling of lose as in ‘loose control’. I thought it was a Midwest problem, but you come from southern California right?
Capitalism gives people what they want; if they want this pseudo-green utopia, they will get it.
Can you think of an algorithm that will change this?
Our power went out here in Tahoe last night for only 6 hours, and my son asked ‘What if the power went out for a year?’.
If you gave consumer the choice of playing XBOX on Plasma TV but requiring trillion dollar wars and heroin funded CIA secret operations worldwide, or a lower energy lifestyle with world peace, they would choose war lifestyle 98 of out 100 times.
Our destiny is never-ending war to defend our high-energy lifestyle.
If you doubt this, just take 12 hours playing the game ‘Risk’ as we did last night and see if you do not turn into a little Dick Cheney.
Reality Sucks.
lose/loose. Yes. My wife (almost with a PhD in comp lit) thinks it’s funny that I make that mistake on occasion. I need to post less and proofread more.
>>>they would choose war lifestyle 98 of out 100 times
I wouldn’t be that optimistic.
Great post, Kevin, perfectly darkly humorous. Best, most horrible cynical laugh I’ve had in weeks. Keep up the great work.
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