The Bruce Report

What is it about the internal combustion engine that transforms otherwise rational people into mouth-breathing morons?

 

I’m not referring to people who drive cars and trucks because they have no other choice. I’m not talking about, for example, cabbies, firemen, paramedics, cops, morticians, delivery men, long-haul shippers, and individuals who live so far out of the city that a horse and buggy simply won’t do.

 

I’m talking about the non-essential personnel of our urban civilization (i.e., the rest of us) who insist that, despite being surrounded by every other possible means of conveyance, they absolutely must own three or more gas-guzzling, polluting monstrosities to carry their fat asses from home to the corner store and back before the final contestant on “So You Think You Can Dance” has been properly eviscerated.

 

A case in point: A lawyer friend of mine is one of the smartest, most judicious individuals I know; yet he maintains a veritable fleet of expensive vehicles even though he lives only a few minutes’ walk from where he works. On this score, alone, he is the stupidest man I know.

 

“Why, on earth, do you need six cars?”

“I don’t need them. . .I deserve them.”

“Okay. . .why do you deserve them?”

“Because I work hard and I make lots of money.”

“Well, why not work hard and buy lots of bikes, instead?”

“I have lots of bikes, and every weekend, weather permitting, I stick them in the back of my Humvee, and head out to the country for a little BMX action. It’s good exercise. You should join me.”

 

The automobile – that cultural icon representing freedom and rebellion, in equal measures, since the early part of the last century – is never more cherished than when it’s threatened. Never mind that its engine’s essential design has not changed in more than 50 years. Never mind that, as a result, it’s responsible for more than 60 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in North America. Never mind that Detroit’s Big Three car makers – General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler – are begging for billions of dollars in tax-funded bailouts from both Canadian and American governments just to pay their bills. Still, as my lawyer friend insists, “I gotta have my cars. . .They make me who I am.”

 

It’s a sad admission, which also manages to miss the point. Whether we like it or not, we are now witnessing the end of the era of convenience in the industrialized world. The “plug and play” philosophy that has dominated our consumer markets is crumbling beneath the burden of massive debt, financial chaos in international money markets, and the devaluation of once-standard measures of wealth in the once unassailably free-enterprise West.

 

In other words, if cars make us who we are, then who are we?

 

We’re certainly not innovative. Otherwise, we would have pushed our legislators and industries to develop fleets of hybrid-electrics, instead of cashing in our dubious dividends from phony stock booms to buy millions of SUVs we didn’t need.

 

We’re certainly not canny. Otherwise, we would have realized that our increasing reliance on imported oil was undermining our efforts to develop alternative-fuel technologies, which might have freed us from the machinations of foreign interests.

 

And we’re certainly not wise. Otherwise, we wouldn’t still cleave to the notion that owning cars bears any relation to imagination, character or purpose – that owning inefficient technologies confers privilege and respect.

 

When I was young, the geeks were riding ten-speeds. Now that I am older, I see them strapped into their Mercs, Jags, H2’s, and Infiniti’s. I see them roaring down my city’s streets in their high-riding, mud-covered, off-roadsters, clipping cyclists at sharp right turns as they go, wondering how they’re going to pay for their next excursion when a liter of gas someday becomes more expensive than an ounce of caviar.

 

But, hell, who am I to argue with freedom and rebellion, and all the mouth-breathing morons who still party like it’s 1979?

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