How many angels can text and drive in a Kia Sorento
Ever wonder what it would be like if cars were sentient and were hunting you down? Me neither, but in the video game ‘Decimate Drive’ that’s exactly what happens. The game is so visceral, so lifelike, that you feel every inch of your skin prick up in fear once you hear those cars barrelling towards you. That got me thinking; they really have human beings, with bodies made of soppy flesh and flimsy bones, walking along right next to those 4,000 pound death machines capable of going 250+ kilometers per hour. Surely a society of smart and normal people would do their best to keep the flimsy bones away from these bone exploders.
That’s where we get the sidewalk. A 4“ height separation and a couple meters in length away from the cars natural habitat (the road). Some bone-hungry pedestrian-craving car must have come up with this invention. But of course cars aren’t actually sentient beings hunting you down like in Decimate Drive (although if they were, they may have an easier time getting around than you in some cities). But instead, cars are operated by fellow humans. The same humans who brought you Chernobyl, climate change, and the military industrial complex. Notoriously unscrupulous creatures at worst, and downright clumsy at best. I’ve recently been observing drivers on the road and found that many are staring down at their phones while barrelling at bone shattering speeds. Hope those 4 inches keep you safe when a Kia Sorento decides that your life is worth less than watching how many booms the Costco Guys give that chicken bake (5 big booms).
The point of this entry is not to criticize car owners or even to improve road safety. In fact, by the end of this you may find this had no point at all. My friend and I once discussed the inherent silliness of the philosophy of the dark ages, an example being this argument discussed at the time: ‘how many angels could dance on the head of a pin’. Despite the question seeming silly to us now, it’s important to realize that questions like these were important to answer because a failure to answer them could result in the collapse of the system it supports. It could cast doubt on all the truths that people relied on, shattering their collective worldview and causing social chaos. We like to look back and laugh at our ancestors, feeling a sense of self-importance in recognizing just how far we’ve come. But I would argue that we might not be so different. We have entire fields dedicated to systematizing and formalizing the nuances of Capitalism, yet the critiques of the very fundamentals of Capitalism are not widely accepted or recognized. We mimic our medieval ancestors, who would question how five angels could dance on a pin rather than six, instead of questioning what brought them to that question in the first place. We question how many lanes allow for the most efficient traffic, or what kind of curb cut best protects pedestrians, but not the fundamentals of why we continue to prioritize the metal bone destroyers/flesh pulverizers (that farts death into the atmosphere and locks us into a cycle of unmanageable and unsustainable infrastructure) over human beings. In a thousand years they’ll look back and ask: “1.19 million people were killed on roads annually! How could they allow such a thing?” And all we’d have to say is: “You gotta get to work somehow!”
-Written by GAPSS VP Planning Neil Roy Choudhury