Destructive Inventions

With seemless precision the machines create vehicles that give pleasure and ambition, hope and transportation, fast and gentle rides, efficiency and freedom. These same creations lend themselves to environmental concerns and ethical considerations, familial ruin and destruction, criminal intent and incendiary action, death and murder, worldwide genocide and strife. These vehicles have survived in our world for over one hundred years. Their creation was intended for faster, more efficient transportation. Their population has escalated higher than even mankinds. There are as many variations as there are the mammals which they destroy. Ferraris and Fords, Volkswagens and Valiants, Chevrolets and Customs, Plymouths and Panteras, Toyotas and Trailblazers, Chryslers and Chevy IIs. While I love them for their speed and efficiency, I also hate them for all the pain, suffering, death and environmental problems they cause. Humanity hinges on their daily use and possibly its own mortality.
As we all learned in our secular educations (assuming you attended such a horrendous establishment), Henry Ford invented an ingenious design, the assembly line. Despite its overusage, in it’s time it was a revolutionary design. Each man was assigned a particular job, put the heads on the engine, put the engine in the vehicle, put the fenders on, affix the headlights, etc. The pay was good and provided plenty of jobs. Naturally people of all walks flocked to see and obtain these creations called automobiles. First they were a sign of affluence and then slowly, due mainly to Ford’s assembly line, prices decreased and the middle class became owners. As time went by, the poor were given the opportunity to buy older models for inexpensive prices.
The success of this cycle of hand-me-downs is that it promotes recycling. The downside is that older vehicles often carry with them costly repairs and maintenance, and although the poor historically acquire vehicles by “hand-me-downs“, they have also discovered the evil of loaning money (title loans, bank loans, even family loans). The loan problem is a manipulative monkey and may possibly become another essay, but for now I’ll just say that the poor are poor because of the very institutions from which they are borrowing. They have already been plagued by corporate America and used by the rich, and now they must worry about the loans, insurance, repairs and maintenance that automobiles entail. Unfortunately there does not appear to be any change in the mindset of the poor or the middle class for that matter. Borrowing is the norm.
The government itself seems to be leading the charge in favor of automobile ownership by continually building roads and bridges and forcing taxes and registration fees upon auto owners. Only in cities that one may safely bike or walk and use public transit can a person become exempt from the multiple, neverending fees that automobiles entail. In addition to cost factors incurred by the average American, pollution and environmental concerns abound. From petroleum to tires to deterioration vehicles have spiked ozone levels, killed animals, are the cause of numerous fatal accidents (DUI and others) and the cause of genocide in an attempt to bring each of us advertisments of fun and sexiness, reliability and convenience.
There have been countless lives lost due to petroleum usage and if there is any doubt in your mind just look at the history of the Middle East. The loss of human lives may actually not be as staggering (number-wise) as the loss of animal life, especially on a grand scale. Many of you can probably remember an oil spill off a coast somewhere and as we all know these oil spills kill many species of life each time they occur and there is no way to assure ourselves that these spills cannot happen, merely safety measures. The seals and whales, birds and fish are only renewable to a certain point. Natural selection assures this, there is only time (and it is running out) for these creatures.
Global warming, once a ridiculous idea, has now been embraced by many people and is part of the “green” phenomenon that now sweeps our culture. In reality, we should have been paying attention as a society that we were creating unhealthy atmospheres for ourselves and our animals. It seems that society cares only about itself and enjoys the spectacle of zoos and animals in the wild, but will not collectively assume responsibility for its destructive actions. When polar bears and penguins are only seen in zoos and not in the wild, who will notice? There has been so much depersonalization of nature (albeit very educational and addictive channels, National Geographic and Discovery depersonalize nature to such a point that people become so intimate with nature that they think of big cats and bears as cuddly and/or simply objects of another film makers dream) that we cannot even fathom the reasons for their existence or their role in the food chain. We have reduced them to objects and created enigmatic, futile, deranged dreams of them roaming in our backyards, seeing them as interesting to stare at and nothing more. They are viewable at the zoo so why not just bring them all into zoos, out of their habitats, trapped in cages and fed already dead carcasses?
Putting aside polar bears and global warming for a moment, in our very backyards (i.e. the woods and forests, deserts and plains of America) there are concerns lurking beyond the treelines. There lie dead, rotting, leaking machines, dumped by some individual who had no other option or knowledge of how to dispose of their vehicle. You’ve seen them on hikes or walks or drives through the country, rusty bulks laying off the beaten path, cold, lonely, yet somehow nostalgic, tall grass growing around it and through the hole which was once the windshield. There are graveyards of tires and there are tire fires every year and then there are the junkyards. Hulks of dead automobiles lie on top of, beside, under and around other dying brothers and sisters in mass graves that could be someone’s home or simply empty land. But instead, these yards harbour the dead and even pawn of their pieces for profit.
These problems are environmental, humanistic, economical and ethical. What must happen before we realize as a society that automobiles are the single worse and destructive inventions ever created? Dare I say the worst invention in modern history? The spread of the green movement is a good start, but is the start too late? Manufacturers continue to search for alternative fuels and laws continue to be passed and created to curb traffic accidents. But the truth is, none of that is the cure. The cure lies in the resounding voice of the people and if that voice does not reject what is unethical (which I predict will not happen) I will simply pose the question, have we not any dignity or respect for our world?