Traveling the interstate highways can be a window into the present American condition. It is not a comforting view. Phil Rockstroh and Angela Tyler Rockstroh share what they see, feel, hear, and smell as they drive through interstate Georgia.
http://www.commondreams.org/...
We numb oursleves to the human experience that driving the hi-way actually is:
Enclosed in our vehicles, we hurdle from one sterile, impersonal location to the next sterile, impersonal location, and then on to the next. As forbiddingly huge trucks, loaded with the cargo of extinction, bear down on us, we grip the steering wheel -- we know to stop is to risk death therefore we continue onward, believing we must drive and consume and drive and consume in order to survive.
The SUV is a particular unfortunate creation. This morning I was walking my dog down an alley in the small city where I live. Suddenly an enormously large vehicle turned into the alley, coming towards me. It was a Lincoln Navigator, the Bismark of SUV's. I made sure my dog was off to the side as the imposing hunk of polished junk passed by, the driver giving me a look of mild disdain.
As, all the while, SUVs and oversized pickup trucks -- the overgrown clown cars of the demented circus of decaying empire trundle past -- the extravagant size of the vehicles vainly compensating for how diminished and powerless those within feel in relationship to the course of their fates.
They made a video:
Interstates and States of Grief from Phil & Angela Rockstroh on Vimeo.
Coming to terms with the reality and consequences that we have created is essential for rebirth and renewal.
Excuse my sense of fatalism: At this point, the system is too far-gone to be redeemed; it is in the process of systemic breakdown. Although, this is not as awful as it sounds, for one must let the old go and let a natural process of decay take over. When the rot is this advanced, at best, what you have is culture as a compost heap. Yet that doesn't mean in times of decay, there cannot be meaning and beauty, because life itself becomes vivid and alive in contrast to the extant ugliness.