henry ford and the demise of the community of compassion.

henry ford is responsible for the reddening of the US map. that damned assembly line gave us cars, televisions and bubble-wrapped lives.

people are friendlier in DC than they are in Atlanta. not because of the quality of their friendliness, but because of sheer quantity. yes, DC people are used to having tourists around in a way that Atlantans will never experience — they are so clueless, it’s hard not to be nice to them — so that definitely ups the overall value of the nice bank in DC, perhaps unfairly. it’s also much more image-focused. but the fact that i am in close proximity (sometimes uncomfortably close…b.o. on the metro, anyone?) to hundreds and hundreds of people every day. people who of many nations, races, classes, beliefs, vocations and avocations. people who look different from me, talk differently from me, grew up differently from me, live differently from me, love differently from me. jews, christians, muslims, atheists, UUs and apathetics. democrats, republicans, greens, libertarians. intellectuals and people who actually do things (okay, not so many of the latter). black, white, brown, citizen, immigrant or visitor. israelis, palestinians, americans, sudanese, iraqis, chechens, russians, north koreans.

and we peacefully coexist.

we tolerate each other, not because we agree, but because before we get to work, we don’t care if the person whose ass warmed up the seat for us is a republican or a democrat. on the way home, we don’t care if the person with whom we rub thighs or touch hands as we hang on when we reach for a handhold to steady ourselves is white or black, gay or straight, young, old, male, female or somewhere in between. we accept situations that are uncomfortable for us because it’s a necessary part of life.

cars and television change all that. they put us in little bubbles where there are walls between us and Others. they make it possible, and comfortable, for a person to choose to lead a completely homogenous life, even desirable. cocooning is human nature and far easier than challenging oneself, after all.

i feel it in the difference between DC and Atlanta. in DC, even those with cars walk. a lot. see Others on the street a lot. in Atlanta (after i left the classroom) i could easily go a week surrounded exclusively by other white, mid-upper class, well-educated liberals. home, work, church, core circle of friends. virtually all of my neighbors are black and lower on the economic ladder than i, but i can go weeks — months! — without interacting with one of them face-to-face because i rarely leave my house in any way other than in a moving vehicle.

television cleanses. and cable. oh, cable’s even worse. with the antenna, you get clean, politically correct news, and clean, politically correct programming. nothing that might make you question the way of things and your place in it. with cable, you have 347 choices from which almost everyone can elect to watch themselves 24/7. no shit that the poor pay 100 bucks a month for cable. could you stand watching clean, white people who have no observable source of income but still manage to live in chichi apartments on central park and drink $4 cups of coffee all day? sort of reminds me of that old SNL sketch where eddie murphy goes out in white face and Everything Changes. easier to drop the benjamin and stay in your bubble. it really is a psychological need — otherwise they disappear. survival is at the top of maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

i take the news very personally. it astounds me when people choose to know nothing of current events, “because it’s depressing.” well, no shit, sherlock. that’s why you need to *know*. it needs to be part of your consciousness that fucked up shit is happening to Others.

when you don’t interact with Others, though, why would you care? there must not be that many of them out there since i don’t know any, and i can’t *do* anything about it because american idol is on tonight, and my state congressperson probably got a hundred other letters about it anyway. mine won’t matter. or, yeah, serves ‘em right because they fuck the wrong sort of person, worship with the wrong sort of person, live near the wrong sort of person, were born the wrong sort of person.

a relatively recent study showed that television is the main culprit for the steady decline of community involvement by americans. because we don’t have time to do anything, but still manage to watch something like 2 hours of tv a night. so, instead of quilting bees, bible study, barn raising and political involvement, we watch. alone. and when we do get out, we can turn the key and do it with the people of our choice rather than those who live nearby. even reading, not a particularly social activity, still breaks down the wall between you and Others, oftentimes. because the action is happening inside you. it doesn’t dance around and entertain you while you passively warm the couch.

it lets everyone live their lives in black and white. another recent study showed that one of the top personality characteristics of conservative thinkers is “lack of cognitive complexity,” a fancy way of saying black and white thinking. it is bad, so it should not be. no room for grey. abortion is a Bad Thing, so no one should be allowed to do it. instead of abortion is a Bad Thing, so we should increase availability of effective sex education and birth control so there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies since teens have been fucking since the beginning of time. no sophisticated connections between related facts influence the thinking.

when you live inside a giant cocoon of bubble wrap, it’s easy to lack cognitive complexity. because you lack compassion for people who aren’t like you. because you allow yourself to blissfully believe that everyone is like you. that everyone should do the Right Thing, that is, the thing you would do. it explains the red that’s sweeping the nation. the reddest spots are the ones where it’s easiest to avoid tolerating Others. the easiest to think that you know Best. the easiest to believe with the depths of your soul that your truth is The Truth.

so, fuck you, henry ford, oh, and all the rest of you, choose public transit whenever you can, not only is it good for the environment, it’s also good for your soul.