Jim from Boston

I have previously posted on a few threads,

Mobile 155

You do have a point and maybe I am being too hopeful that "that philosopher" will stop and look at what he is posting and realize that societies all over the world are not embracing his philosophy. To get philosophical myself it is partly related to something Maelochs said to me. The world has to learn to deal with tribalism and in this case "he" and I are from totally different tribes. I am not sure how to deal with his tribe. It would be highly unlikely we would ever run into each other even if we were in the same state. I sure would never want to join it. I come from a place were success is working to make your family as comfortable as you can. He comes from a place were success is only doing just as much as you can to get by. I can never accept that society will slip back to pre industrial life styles without a catastrophic slip in our society. The statement that, "we just have to get people to, " followed by things that people have demonstrated they don't want to do is science fiction and fantasy. I should know better but hope springs eternal I guess. but I will try to do better and stay away from hopeless conversations.

Maelochs

Because some of us have actually gotten out of our own fantasies and traveled a little, and met those people and found out what they think would be better.

You know ... traffic lights came After roads ... because stop signs didn't regulate traffic sufficiently--cars going one way wouldn't ever stop to let cars traveling perpendicularly take the intersection. Stop sings came about because people had accidents.

You think stop signs cause traffic jams? Accidents do too.

I understand a lot of your philosophical positions ... I started on Thoreau when I was 12---live deliberately and simply, simply---keep your accounts on your thumbnail. Some people really can appreciate a simpler life. Some folks can manage complex lives. Your "My size fits all" approach is just unreal, though. As in, not rooted in reality. Same as your thinking that people without sufficient food, clean water, climate control, transport, and connectivity don't want those things because they are "complications." Fact is, if you actually meet those folks ... they do want to conveniences we are used to.

I respect your philosophicval position ... but your attempt to apply them tot eh real world without actually including reality ... it makes you a a failure.

A perfect example si your idea to remove traffic signs and slow all cars. What it would do is recreate a situation which was IMPROVED by higher speed limits and traffic lights ... but you are so tied to your imagination, you refuse to learn or think.

Please, stop wasting your good ideas but divorcing them from reality.

People like you can come up with the ideas the human race needs to move towards a sustainable future ... but if you refuse to actually recognize that there is a "real world," with real people,. who are as they are and not as you imagine them ... then you make yourself useless and deprive the human race of some of the ideas it needs to save itself.

McBTC

You're getting so far out there you probably expect the rest us to buy into the system and continue to drive on the right side of the road whether we're coming or going; even if there is no sign telling us to do that-- call me a pragmatist but... okay, you talked me into it.

Mobile 155

For me this seems very insightful. Many have seen this as the difference between those on the ground or in the field trying to talk with those in the board room, class room or coffee shop. If you take the human factor out of the plan it can sound like it might work. But put people in the picture and complications arise. People in other countries even with lower standards of living are not ignorant about what is going on in the world and how their lifestyle compares with ours. They are just as aware as any of us and more aware than many of our educators and political activists.

It almost always sets me on edge when I hear, " we just need to show these people what is our idea of what is right, " and things will change. "These people" are working their tripe out trying to climb out of poverty and telling them they just want too much is offensive. I contend someone that graduated from a university in Nairobi as an engineer working for the government to develop water services and living in government housing with two rooms and three kids are every bit as aware of what they want as someone living in Florida that believes everyone makes to much for the work they do. Before they get bad mouthed for "seeing the grass as greener" on the other side some people need to get off their bottom and go look at the grass on the side the engineer is living on. At least that is my outlook.

tandempower

Basically it seems what you are arguing is that material abundance makes people happy and so it's a good thing, but then I don't understand why you don't celebrate everyone in the world having as many children as they want, since that obviously makes them happy. For that to happen sustainably, though, we all need to use resources and land more efficiently and increase the ratio of natural land to developed land so we don't throw nature out of balance by overtaking it with industrial machines and architecture. LCF is a big part of this, but you argue against it because you don't think people can be as happy driving less as they can with driving more. As a result, you argue against the freedom and happiness of everyone to have more children, so I don't think you're really for abundance, freedom, and happiness as you claim to be; just a certain kind of freedom/abundance for certain people and for everyone else you just want population control, regardless of how un-free/unhappy that makes them.

tandempower

It's hard to grasp that individuals can simultaneously be just individuals living individual lives while also being constituents of collective patterns, but that is the reality of human existence.

tandempower

Ok, but what makes you think their perspective is based on anything except what they imagine from their limited perspective based on their lack of travel and experience?

Higher speed limits and traffic lights work when relatively small populations share relatively large amounts of roads and pavement. As population increases, the stresses on pavement, potential for congestion, etc. mounts and it becomes more efficient for everyone to slow down instead of stopping and starting a lot and taking just as long to get across town as if they would just maintain slow constant speed.

Please stop assuming you are the king of 'reality.'

When you assert that other people are fundamentally in conflict with 'reality,' you are implicitly defining yourself and others as being masters of reality, which is the same thing you are accusing me of doing.

Maelochs

I made my gesture. I knew in advance it would be wasted effort, and it was, but I have to try to do good even if it does no good.

Sayonara.

wphamilton

I don't think that it's a hard concept to grasp. It's just negligible in this case, of our bike ride altering collective patterns of transportation choices. You know, we CAN quantify this sort of thing at least in a ballpark sense, so it doesn't need a mystical appreciation. X number of co-workers, you're an example of Y cycling commutes over some years, and Z people there are influenced to emulate you. In my experience, "Z" is negligible relative to X and Y.

Mobile 155

I-Like-To-Bike

I think it would be safe to say that Z= Close to Zero, where "Z "represents the number of people likely to be influenced in a positive manner by the extreme over-the-top LCF Philosophy™, regardless of how many times ( "Y") it is repeated or reworded and bandied about by a LCF Philosopher on BF, no matter how many ("X") co-workers, acquaintances, relatives, or rational strangers get exposed to the LCF Philosophy™.

I-Like-To-Bike

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
These words are usually credited to the acclaimed genius Albert Einstein.

It doesn't take the genius of an Einstein to figure out that you are wasting electrons if you are expecting your reasonable responses to an extreme LCF Philosophers to result in a constructive or even reasonable discussion.

Mobile 155

It is a character flaw. My wife loves Spanish Olives. The ones I buy are produced or bottled by Goya. She always brings the bottle to me to open for the first time and I always try to open it with nothing but hand, wrist and arm power. Never works and I always have to resort hitting the lid with a butter knife two or three times to open the lid. Now that you have pointed it out maybe I should just have her bring a butter knife with her, and save my posts for real two way debate or conversation.

McBTC

Life is like a bike ride-- you've budgeted enough time to carefully and productively accomplish your goals and objectives, having already invested time and energy in the necessary preparation and planning to accomplishing a specific task, which includes having thought about what you learned in dealing with unexpected as well as anticipated events in previous endeavors and have taken the time to listen to, consider and learn from what others have experienced along the way, and soon after setting out on your bike ride you chance upon and give a nod of acknowledgment to a bedraggled traveler walking in the other direction and as you pass by at 12-15 mph and smelling the trail of stink in his wake, you're content in the understanding that that he is the best he can be!

tandempower

It's not a question of numbers but one of evolution. The biggest trees start with a seed. Massive numbers of people and cultural norms suppress change but they don't cause it. Everything gets old gradually and people want new possibilities. The more they realize they are trapped in patterns that are not inevitable, the more they seek to transcend those patterns.

cooker

Something inspired all those people in Amsterdam and Copenhagen and Gronigen to bike,

Maelochs

Triple the cost of driving and cut each road by a third, while simultaneously making every place a person wants to visit less than two miles from home, .... All those people used to walk before the bike became widely available .... by the time the car became widely available there was no room and not a huge amount of need.

What's your plan?

Something based in rality, I mean ....

It's sort of liek saying, "Somehow all of Japan and China managed to feed itself with chopsticks." A whole culture grew up over a long long span of time which included a thing .. you cannot cut-and-paste it just anywhere because you happen to approve of it.

jon c. 

Birth rates tend to decline as the wealth of a society increases. So perhaps people are happier with more material goods and a higher standard of living than they would be if they had more children.

Maelochs

Actually, birth rates tend to decrease as education and employment opportunities open up for women.

Yes, that is usually coincides with development and wealth ... but it has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with whether or not women are seen primarily as baby machines, or if they have chances to have lives of their own. it happens Before wealth, often, because working women can increase the wealth of a society.

But basically, once women have the freedom not to be walking wombs in service of their husbands, they opt not to. Education and employment opportunities generally follow once a culture accepts that women are human beings on par wit, and not in thrall to, their fathers and husbands.

But the idea that material good create happiness is a straw man. basically, people who lack the necessities are pretty unhappy. people living in deprivation are unhappy. People whose lives are a little more secure and a little more comfortable tend to be happier.

I don't know exactly what it is ... something about having enough food to eat, having heating or cooling as needed, clean water, shelter, steady income to pay for all that .... is somehow more conducive to pleasure than privation, starvation, income insecurity, homelessness ... hard to figure, eh?

wphamilton

A social movement in the early 70's in response to thousands of fatalities on the road, including hundreds of children yearly, combined with the Middle East oil crisis to prompt the government to build cycling infrastructure.

Flat terrain, densely populated areas, and mild climate are factors. Being inspired by the hard core cyclist braving the mean streets, probably not the inspiration.

Maelochs

Same thing, in my experience ... because commuting or transport/errands cycling in most of the U.S. involves long hauls in questionable weather on busy roads, people were never inspired to follow my example---they were put off by the efforts I made and the hardships i endured.

They didn't get that the "hardships" were less hard for me than sitting in a car surrounded by people like themselves .... but then ... they were no 'cyclists" by nature.

For whatever reason, i have always been happier walking, running, jogging, biking wherever I have to go. very, very few people share this. i can be sure i didn't inspire anyone to actually change their very natures.

I-Like-To-Bike

Also the same "something [that] inspired" all those people around the world to do what they do, the activity that seems most practical/useful at that place and time usually gets choosen over the alternatives. Applies whether discussing transportation choice, eating utensils, or means of communicating. People get inspired to change their personal preference when it is no longer considered as practical or useful as an alternative.

Only a minuscule few individuals may be inspired to change their own life by the "good ideas" posited by zany street corner "The End is Nigh" ranters or by Internet scribblers posting multiple out-of-touch-with-reality-stream-of-consciousness opinions/postulates on politics, economics, science, culture and whatever else bizarre a hyper active imagination can conjure.

tandempower

If that were the case, then US population would have stopped growing sometime in the last century and everyone would be completely happy.

tandempower

People travel to Europe and get charmed by the quaint cities, sidewalk cafes, and people biking and walking everywhere. They find the public transit amazingly efficient and convenient. Then they either write off the possibility of having something similar happen culturally in the US because of the assumption that the US is 'just different period,' or they consider the possibility of getting around car-free in US cities and decide it would be too much effort, the expense of making good public transit too much, etc.

Then when they see people biking and taking transit in the US, they experience cognitive dissonance. They have categorized the US and Europe into radically different categories in their minds and decided that what works on one continent wouldn't work on the other and vice versa. So for some people who just happen to care more about revising their assumptions instead of defending their closed-minded assumptions, seeing people getting around by walking/transit/bicycle causes them to realize that it's much farther from impossible in the US than they imagined.

This, in turn, scares people who view US automotive culture in terms of demand inelasticity. Such people don't want there to be any 'threat' of widespread LCF on the cultural horizon because it would cause investors to hesitate in continuing to put their money into those automotive industries. That is the bottom line of why I believe there is negativity toward LCF. It's because people don't view transportation separately from economic planning and so they want to stabilize the economic future by excluding the future possibilities that don't add up to the highest revenues in their economic analyses.

As long as transit is relegated to a charity system for people who can't drive or can't afford to drive, they are ok with that because it doesn't cut into the automotive business maximization plan. Same with transportation cycling being limited to a handful of brave, dedicated souls. But the moment it seems like there could be a widespread movement or shift toward popularizing LCF, you end up with loads of nay-sayers loudly voicing rejection, i.e. because they are trying to discourage auto-investors from questioning the automotive future and thus pulling their investments.