🚀 go-pugleaf

Karen O'Mara wrote in message <3874DAF5.4A2DF2CA@randomgraphics.com>...
>Jeffrey Hurwit wrote:
>
>>     Oh, I dunno..  Sometimes that's true, but sometimes recognizable
>>     patterns do emerge in a series of similar experiences.  To me a car
>>     was just a car until I began to recognize what I termed "Beemer
>>     (BMW) attitude" several years ago.  I realized that I was seeing the
>>     results of an incredibly successful snob appeal ad campain that
>>     turned a small car (if you've ever seen an early BMW) made by a
>>     manufacturer better known for their motorcycles into =the= status
>>     symbol of the 80's and 90's, a campaign that exhorted people to
>>     (among other things) "Emerge from the freeway victorious, not
>>     victimized."
>>
>>     When I was studying sociology and psychology in school 20 years ago,
>>     there was already a solid body of evidence from experimental
>>     research that people are more willing to harm others if they're
>>     anonymous, ie. unknown to those they injure.  At least one popular
>>     psychologist has observed that being isolated in separate vehicles
>>     creates a high degree of anonymity, which fosters this phenomenon
>>     (and people do heap insult on each other while driving in ways that
>>     they'd never dare to do face to face).  Add to that the need many
>>     people have to feel that they're at least better than =someone=
>>     (often accompanied by the need to demonstrate it), and it should
>>     come as no surprise that at least some people will decide that
>>     they've earned the right to be cavalier to everyone else.  Of
>>     course, it's when two of these bang their hard heads together that
>>     you have yet another "accident."
>
>kinda like usenet!



A very apt analogy.

I've found myself at times falling into practices
of discussion on usenet where I don't put in the sorts of qualifications
and prefatory remarks I would in face to face conversation which we
use without thinking about it to ease or mitigate the expression of
a different viewpoint to people we are two feet from. We see a lot
of posturing on usenet (I've sometimes fallen into this myself) which
is encouraged by the isolation of each individual from the others.

But doesn't this, then, imply that a serious deficiency of driving autos
(whether SUVs or Yugos or VWs or pickup trucks or whatever),
as a way of getting around, is that it encourages (or removes
disincentives from) antisocial behavior
by virtue of isolating people in sealed metal boxes? And might not this
behavior get worse as competition for roadspace gets more severe?

This is just another argument, added on to the many ecological ones,
that driving needs to be discouraged in favor of getting around on
foot, and in shared environments like sidewalks (and buses and trains).

Tom Wetzel