Travel has its high and low points. One of the low points are the unfortunate comparisons I find I am drawing between the way we get around the streets where we live here versus in Europe.
In Europe we noticed that all the cars are small. No Hummers, Escalades, or F250 club cabs. The vehicles were predominately tiny hatchbacks, scooters or motorcycles.
Next to these, my Toyota Echo seems positively, well…”midsize” at least.
We did some vehicle watching on the way back from grocery shopping this morning. It is the weekend so many of the vehicles were carrying families on errands or to events. Some had a passenger in each seat. ”Full occupancy” so to speak. Yet even here, the vehicles are larger than is strictly required.
It IS a safety issue to some extent. My Echo is one of the smallest cars on the road. If I mix it up with even a small pickup truck, I will be in big trouble.
I see it as just one more symptom of our consumerist society. We are the contents of our wallets. We are the cars we drive. We are our 4000 square foot homes, we are our designer clothes. We’ve drunk the koolaid.
We are also, in general, in North America, in over our heads in terms of debt. Our jobs are disappearing. We work long hours, spend little quality time with our families and we are fat in ever growing proportions.
It used to be that being fat was a sign of affluence. We are bloated in so many ways as a culture and it’s more than corporeal. Things went south fore the Romans. And for the gang that drank the Koolaid. Maybe we need to hit rock bottom before we figure it out.
WHAT IF…
We all drove smaller cars, lived in higher density communities in smaller living spaces? Would we then have enough money to work less? To spend more time with family? To exercise? Would our debt levels be lower? Would the incidence of stress and environmental related disease be lower? Would fewer people be buying homes they cannot afford? Would we even have had the greed driven recession? Easy question with no pat answer for sure. At the back of my mind though, is the thought that our way of life is unsustainable, toxic and well…just plain greedy.
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Piazza San Marco last month when stress was low.
