People are now 'motorised'. They cannot carry their selves anymore. They trundle about in a variety of ever-pretty prams polluting with impunity. And it's not just the air and the land they pollute with their fumes and their roads, but their very bodies. In subscribing to the 'motorised pram' man has lost his way and let the pram and the infantilizing tool guide him. But of course, infantilizing tools simply guide him into more lostness, until eventually, he is so far gone eco-existentially that the mere mention of the words 'ecological' or 'existential' sends him into a tizz, like the overweight woman this morning that I had to remonstrate with due to her driving her moped onto the sustrans cycle-walkway. 'No motorized vehicles on the path,' I shout loud enough to penetrate her helmet (and her evidently thick skull) as I pass her. 'It's electric,' she shouts back, as if cleaning the blade of the guillotine makes any difference to the ethics of execution. 'An electric motor?' I rhetorically holler. And I wonder if it's the body or the brain that suffers the most when you abandon your own locomotive force and pumping heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment