Our man Bernie is a champion of the environment. We need to be champions of the environment too! I want you to look at that picture. It is a massive Chinese traffic jam. This is a typical scene there, and in a lot of major cities world wide. This is the worst one that I know of. I know I sure wouldn't want to be stuck in the middle of it having to go to the restroom!
I sure do hope that when Mr. Sanders becomes President he will be able to work successfully with the Chinese to address, and take proactive measures to eliminate this type of scene from our planet. To work with all our human partners, our brothers and sisters world wide to eliminate this insanity.
Really, when one thinks of what they're doing, and why they're doing it and the way they are doing it, it becomes absurd. It's not just them either, it's all over the world. People living in a box, getting in a box, sitting in the box for hours so they can go to another box to do tasks in order to make a living. It is anti-social madness.
Think about it. Everyone sequestered inside their motorized box, usually alone in the box too. They see people around them all the time, but don't have the opportunity to meet, or interact with any of them. They are separated by the walls of their motorized box. Most of the boxes are built to be sound proof too so even if you yelled at the top of your lungs to another person in a motorized box, they would never hear you. So everyone keeps to themselves by unintended consequence of using these motorized boxed to go here and there.
Look at all the millions of tons of steel, glass, plastic and rubber. The billions of gallons of oil burning to keep it all going. A huge portion of it devoted to the pursuit of sitting in a motorized box to go from here to there. Seriously, pluck out all the motorized boxes in the picture with people in them who are working daily with the building or maintenance of motorized boxes.
There are other unintended consequences of everyone sitting alone in their motorized box. Everyone gets alienated from one another. No one gets to know anyone except for them inside their little circle. That little circle is regulated by the motorized box. When we wake up in the morning, we say good morning to our family all of which live in a box. Then we get into our motorized box, all alone, and go to work in another box. We say hello to the people we know who also work inside the same box as us. Besides those three boxes, the home, car and work, there are few others. The store, church, club or another thing perhaps.
When we are inside our motorized box going to where ever, we see a lot of people all around us. Sometimes like in the picture it can be many thousands of people all around, but no one has access to any other person. None of them interact with each other, other than a flashing light or the sound of a horn. While they are at all this, lots of them get the wrong idea about the other. I've got a good example.
Once I was driving a cement truck down the road when I seen a pickup truck pulling a trailer full of furniture. The guy driving the pickup truck didn't see the cushions and other stuff falling out all over the road. So I sped up to get beside him and tooted my horn and waved to warn him of all the stuff he was losing. The guy flipped me off! He had a total wrong idea about me. I guess he thought I was trying to be a prick, but nothing could of been further from the truth! We both were stuck inside our motorized boxes, unable to effectively communicate, me wanting to help my fellow, trying and failing. I bet when he got to his destination and seen what happened, he slapped his forehead in realization.
How many times have you seen a person standing on a street corner asking for help with a hand written cardboard sign. How many times is it that people see them and say "God damn bum. Get a job!" or "I'm not giving him anything. They'll only buy alcohol with it." or some other thing to justify inaction. They really don't know anything at all about their fellow standing there, but they come up with all kinds of made up stuff. As long as the one is inside their sound proof, motorized box and the other only has a pen and cardboard, things will never change. The person on the corner could of lost all due to tragedy beyond their control. Their depression could run so deep over loss, that life has little meaning for them any more. No one would never know it sitting inside their little motorized box. They can get away pretty quick and think of something else.
It really seems dehumanizing in a substantial way. It also seems that the separation of all these people and their non-interaction could play into the hands of despots. Look at how people like Fox News disparages the poor, all the while they never interact with the poor. They don't have to. They are separated from them while they stay inside their boxes. The next time you drive down the street in your personal motorized box, look around you. Look at the people around you and try to tell one of them anything. It is hard to do. Look at them all with their heads looking forward, or down texting while driving (shame), but the thing is, social separation of the masses.
This all came to me when I started using mass transit. Instead of getting inside a personal motorized box, I walked a block and entered a public motorized box. There were other people inside there too! People who I had never met. All kinds of people of every description. When I looked at them, some of them smiled and said "Good morning." and I could hear them! It was so cool!
I sat there talking to a new friend, only giving enough attention to the road so I didn't miss my exit. It was way better than sitting inside my personal motorized box. I really started meeting a lot of people while riding in public motorized boxes. I was no longer trapped inside a box all alone. I had broken free of the machine. Now the machine served me.
So here is something radical that no one will agree with. I think our species should do away with personal passenger autos (motorized boxes). Our civilization should use all the millions of tons of steel, glass, plastic, human resources, etc. to build public transportation and maintain it. All of the efforts to build roads and infrastructure for the movement of people and goods should be given over to transforming our entire motive system to public mass transit. If humanity wants to take seriously the dangers of global climate change, and do something about it. If humanity wants to become more humane towards one another doing this radical thing would cause positive results.
People would start communicating once again. People would make new friends instead of making up fantasy about people they can see, but not touch. Many trillions of tons of global warming causing gases would remain trapped underground where they belong. People would have many more hours of leisure time they could spend with new found friends and family, because they would be using fast efficient public transport instead of spending all that time in traffic jams, stuck all alone inside a little box.
I would like to see high speed rail going global. Our human civilization should construct what I like to call "The Super Rail". Envision the construction of a stepped up gauge, global, high-speed rail commuter system. Railroad and cars at least double the size of existing ones. Passenger and fright cars in the Boeing 747 size range. Construct a global rail system that would connect by a bridge over the Bering Strait, the Straits of Gibraltar and other places even going to South America and Australia. All of it powered by an inter-connected global solar power system. The power system would be global by means of installation of solar panels on every mile of track that it is practical.
All of the Super Rail system would make juncture with smaller local high speed, and low speed transit hubs.
The societal benefits would be even more than just in the realm of interpersonal relationships among the human populace, and the serious reduction of green house gases from the elimination of personal fossil fuels powered transport. The elimination of the ten thousand commercial and private aircraft from our skies would be transformative in a hugely positive way. I've got a clear example of that you may remember.
The day the tragic events of 9/11 happened, all air traffic over the continental United States was grounded. On a normal day there are 5000+ commercial aircraft in the skies over us at any given moment. All of them with 2 or more engines burning jet fuel faster than you could imagine! The next day, 9/12 I went to work at Dallas, Tx. Love Field. Normally you could hear the busy sounds of people working on aircraft, and the roar of jet engines from aircraft taking off and landing. Things weren't normal on 9/12. All was spooky quite. Then people started talking about something amazing.
The sky was so bright and clear! No one there had ever seen it like that. It was amazing, and a nation wide phenomenon. The sky was clear and bright, the way it is meant to be for a reason. The reason was the elimination of 5000+ commercial aircraft, with their accumulative 10,000+ jet engines from our skies. That's the reason for the clear skies after 9/11, and the reason I advocate the elimination of the commercial aviation industry in favor of a global solar powered Super Rail system.
I must add that even though the events of 9/11 were tragic to the extreme, and gave our nation "National STSD", we can do something to keep all of those human brothers and sisters from dying in vain. Remember the clear skies of 9/12 and the profound lesson of those clear skies and of the profound revelation of what that meant.
They show us that we can turn it all around if we really try. We can have clear skies again. Clean waters and abundant life. I think we have the strength of will, and character to get all this done now. We have reason and conviction to carry it through to the end. The reason is, all of the events leading up to the people saying "Enough is enough" about a lot of supremely important matters to human survival, advancement, freedom and liberty. Let us carry that momentum into the future for a better tomorrow.
Okay you guys. There you have my thoughts on some of the matters at hand. We need to do something drastic to avert global climate catastrophe, with the resulting unbearable human loss. This is my idea for some drastic action.
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