How do you expect someone to imagine life without a car, when they live in an area where you have to drive three miles to get to the nearest store, and there are no sidewalks or bike lanes?
Can you really shame the caged mouse for being unable to imagine a forest?
Are we shaming them? I’m just acknowledging they can’t even conceive of an alternate future, which I think what “car-brained” is getting at.
But it’s a bit like the copper tops in the Matrix–they’ll always potentially be your enemy, through no fault of their own. For instance, these car brained people you are so eager to have sympathy for will show up in droves to complain about anything that would even theoretically lengthen their car commute by even a microsecond.
A distinction without a difference.
A mouse raised in a cage will be cage-brained.
Too many USAians can’t imagine life without driving a car, the same way that mouse can’t imagine a forest.
How do you expect someone to imagine life without a car, when they live in an area where you have to drive three miles to get to the nearest store, and there are no sidewalks or bike lanes?
Can you really shame the caged mouse for being unable to imagine a forest?
Are we shaming them? I’m just acknowledging they can’t even conceive of an alternate future, which I think what “car-brained” is getting at.
But it’s a bit like the copper tops in the Matrix–they’ll always potentially be your enemy, through no fault of their own. For instance, these car brained people you are so eager to have sympathy for will show up in droves to complain about anything that would even theoretically lengthen their car commute by even a microsecond.
If calling people names that sound insulting in order to point out their lack of intelligence and/or imagination isn’t shaming, then maybe not…
And I’m not defended car dependency or even sympathizing with car-users. I’d much prefer to have a robust rail system.
I was merely pointing out the flaw in your “distinction without a difference” argument. There is a difference.
A difference in political messaging, yes. In describing a reality, no.
It does make a difference in describing reality.
The difference is whether they’re being willfully ignorant or simply born into a system which compels them to ignorance.