The Metal Cage: our crippling dependency on cars
Like Bilbo Baggins, whose natural lifespan was stretched by the evil power of the One Ring, a man’s whose very being is sprawled over many miles is a large burden to bear.
‘I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread’
- Bilbo Baggins, ‘The Lord of the Rings’
What our covert overlords in the World Economic Forum declare ‘unprecedented and exciting’, the everyday man of 200 years ago would have called it a ‘village’. While technocrats, by their very nature, ruthlessly seek to bend, mould, and cajole the human spirit enough for Pink Floyd to suffer an aneurysm, the concept of a 15-minute city is a rather disappointing scheme if it’s developed by a power-hungry cabal of wannabe Dr. Evils.
Brutalist Bladder-Runner urban design and bug cafes aside, the geographical element of the project is what humanity has long become accustomed to ever since it put down the spear and picked up the plough all those tens of thousands of years ago. Of course Davos will never mimic the architecture of Bath or the street security of Rudi Giuliani’s New York, nor can it be considered a suitable human settlement should it ban you from leaving as if it were East-Germany, but it is a highly intriguing concept to grapple with.
Half a century into the American suburb’s relentless invasion and subsequent occupation of the West, many European countries – and Britain more so than most – resemble an archipelago of clustered urban centres; its rural pastures devoid of so much economic activity and social atmosphere that aliens looking from above would consider it an inhospitable climate similar to how we view the Venusian surface.
Any ambitious youngster knows that his career is not found in the Yorkshire Dales or the Fens of East Anglia, but within the nation’s numerous concrete jungles, each a treasure trove of underpaid graduate jobs which our aspirational twenty-something is too overqualified for. But it is not just the nation’s youth who are trapped within this constrained economic bubble built on a house of cards.
It is all ages still active in the workforce striving to earn enough money to support their families or even survive on their own two feet. All are chained to the metropolis, even if they have nailed a work-from-home gig.
But the problem here is not where they work, or the unfortunate job market that the game of life has dealt to them, but the physical environment that hosts the out-of-office hours. If they live in the suburbs, which can stretch as far away as 30, perhaps 40 miles from the workplace, they are dependent on a car, and not just for their commute, but the weekly shop and entertainment as well.
Need food from Tesco’s? Car. Want to go to the cinema? Car. Taking the kids to football practice? Car. Gym day? Car. Date night with the wife? Car. Fancy a meal out tonight? Car. Need to pick up some flowers for Mother’s Day? Car.
Some view the suburban social-contract as convenient, almost liberating, but wee are relying on two tons of metal mined in the far reaching corners of the earth, whose specialised parts are harvested by child slaves in the Congo, with its petroleum blood imported from potentially hostile gulf states that have already sunk the West’s motor-vehicle lifestyle into the grave before, with devastating economic consequences. Not to mention that should China seize the semi-conductor factory of Taiwan, the price of cars are going to hit Weimar levels.
Now a sensible nation with a Government that cares one iota about the country’s future would consider manufacturing its own vehicles on home soil, but we would still have the raw materials to think about, and the North Sea can only yield so much of its black gold.
If cars suddenly go extinct overnight, that will lead to a greater reset than what Klaus Schwab and his friends could ever have dreamt of. But we are not stuck in a dream, but the cold coast of consciousness.
Given the sometimes vast geographic distances that are only attainable via a petrol guzzling mini-tank, the time and energy spent just to get to these elusive places necessary to the human body’s own survival and spiritual nourishment is downright cruel.
The brain is a primal organ but also one of rationality, very much like a basic computer system. This is why many, after a long’s day work and commute to boot, are disincentivised from going back out of their front door and into the land of living. Why suffer the long-winding road again and rack up a higher petrol bill, if you can just stick Netflix on the flat-screen and hire a Waitrose driver to fulfil your salt-and-vinegar crisp addiction?
The suburban life has two tragic conclusions: one of atomisation, and one of exhaustion. Like Bilbo Baggins, whose natural lifespan was stretched by the evil power of the One Ring, a man’s whose very being is sprawled over many miles is a large burden to bear. Like butter scrapped over too much bread.