The damn car!
Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:27 pm
One man's view of the coming of the automobile, from the 1800s ....
Consider the man on horseback, and I have been a man on horseback for most of my life. Well, mostly he is a good man, but there is a change in him as soon as he mounts. Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot. The man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous.
I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common. It will breed violence on a scale never seen before. It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home. It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of Nation. It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, ruinized countryside, and unhealthy conglomerations of specialized farming and manufacturing. It will make every man a tyrant.
~R.A. Lafferty, written in the late 1800s, as quoted in Adbusters, Spring 1996
Forget about R.A. Lafferty and his version of the coming of the motor car.
What about this.
"They rage in the streets,
They rush to and fro through the square,
They gleam like torches,
They dart like lightning!"
From Nahum via Gordon.
Nahum lived two and a half thousand years ago.
Consider the man on horseback, and I have been a man on horseback for most of my life. Well, mostly he is a good man, but there is a change in him as soon as he mounts. Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot. The man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous.
I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common. It will breed violence on a scale never seen before. It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home. It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of Nation. It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, ruinized countryside, and unhealthy conglomerations of specialized farming and manufacturing. It will make every man a tyrant.
~R.A. Lafferty, written in the late 1800s, as quoted in Adbusters, Spring 1996
Forget about R.A. Lafferty and his version of the coming of the motor car.
What about this.
"They rage in the streets,
They rush to and fro through the square,
They gleam like torches,
They dart like lightning!"
From Nahum via Gordon.
Nahum lived two and a half thousand years ago.