Road to Nowhere
Obviously, the major purpose of building a rail to the suburbs -- which has never been proven to be a good idea anywhere else in the world -- even in metropolitan areas where inner city rail is an unqualified success, is to create high paying jobs of the construction sort. In the meantime, they don’t want to solve the problem for the next 15-20 years because that would eliminate their argument that the only way to solve the traffic congestion problem is to build a rail, and so real solutions have to be ignored and discredited as being too simplistic.
Chief among them would be developing a state of the art electronic bulletin to facilitate car and van pools, and to get people in existent mass transit -- which is the only sure fire solution of having fewer cars on the road. That was one of the major solutions that brought an end to the energy/traffic crises of the ‘70s and ‘80s worldwide. The limitations to that success was that it was in the age before electronic bulletin boards were invented -- giving universal access of information to everyone, from anywhere.
In those days, carpooling was done by actually having to go to an actual physical bulletin board at which people filled out cards offering to share rides, or requesting rides -- and were matched in that primitive fashion.
Because of the present campaign of disinformation, the present bus system is no longer referred to as a mass transit system but is now derided as a primitive notion unworthy of these sophisticated times, in which nothing less, than the most expensive option, will allow us to hold our heads up high with those from New York, Tokyo, and London, etc. We must be world-class too -- which is equivalent to thinking that the only thing preventing us from being New York City, is building the Empire State Building. And then all the high-paying jobs would follow.
The proposed route is a city planner’s wet dream -- of how and where they’d like to see development take place, and admittedly, not where it already is. In the entire history of the civilization of mankind, none of the places that ended up being the most populous places were conceived in that fashion -- while many places thought to be the next great center of coming civilization planned in that meticulous fashion, never turned out that way.
Centralized planning of that sort became very popular in the 20th century -- of which it was thought that communities would develop in the ideal manner that city planners meticulously envisioned. Virtually no community has emerged in that way -- just like the dynamic development of any phenomenon is not subject to the projections of its academics or even shrewdest businessmen.
Every action and decision produces a response so that projecting 30 years into the future thinking that is how it must end up, is usually a sure-fire prescription for disappointment. Meanwhile, doing the best with what there already is, is the best predictor of future success -- in solving any problems and difficulties that actually arise. Devoting all society’s resources in preparation for the theoretical 100-year flood, is never as productive as preventing one person from actually drowning.
posted by Mike Hu @ 10:38 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
With a state of the art electronic bulletin board, one can also do education, as it becomes less of a specialized, compartmentalized activity, and the basic activity of everyday life.
One really should be learning every moment of one's life -- and implementing that learning, immediately, as needed. Gone are the day's when a person learned just for the future possibility of using that learning. What is more important is learning as one actually needs to; then learning (education) becomes much more efficient, and actually eliminates the need for the formal setting to do so.
That is also the problem of education -- fighting mightily to justify its continued existence when something different is possible -- that is the self-directed learning, which most intelligent people do not have to be compelled to do. People do have to be compelled to learn that which is useless -- which is the old education paradigm.
When there is true competitive or survival advantage for doing so, people don't have to be rewarded with grades. The learning itself is the reward. Schools have become obsolete for this purpose -- of learning useful information. Instead, it mainly serves to transmit the old academic traditions --for their own sake.
People learn to read gibberrish and meaningless syllables. They learn of fantasy worlds -- while never discussing the real world they live in. Instead, they pay more attention to life on the other side of the world -- than their own, in which they could already begin learning to apply their minds to solving real problems with fresh perspectives. Instead, they are inndoctrinated into the old problems as the realities of how it has been and presumably always must be.
And so that opportunity is wasted anew with each generation -- as the old corrupts the new. It would make more sense to learn from the uncorrupted minds that can see things freshly, without the prejudices and limitations of the past.
The only way we know there is intelligent life on earth, is if it is manifested and embodied -- and not just fantasied as some kind of unobtainable ideal -- which is total nonsense.
Rather than this intelligence existing somewhere else, it is only to be found in our daily living -- and the actual interactions we have with one another.
For the most part, laws don't mandate those interactions -- but are mostly the realizations we come to freely, as a matter of common sense. So one is disturbed seeing the need for laws in areas in which common sense should prevail.
Do we really need laws banning bikes from using the sidewalks -- or cell phones from being used in public places, or is the more important exercise, the sensitivity to others -- that arbitrary laws defeat.
Particularly in the case of the use of sidewalks, the sharing of resources is really a vital opportunity -- of Aloha. It's quite possible these days to go about one's life in isolation and alienation from every other-- that is addressed in actual contact and interaction.
The essential fabric of civility is recognizing others and their rights -- besides our own, and banning that possibility, is really the problem of the impersonal society.
While there are inevitably and unquestionably a few who dedicate their lives to competition with everybody else -- thinking that in order for themselves to win, everybody else has to lose -- there is the possibility that those same contests for exclusion, can be also viewed as opportunities for inclusion.
In the event of sidewalk use, that one wants to share it with as many as possible -- rather than reserving it for one's exclusive use, regardless of whether one actually uses it. There's just not enough resources to go around in that way.
Of cell phone use, there are intelligent examples as well as the boorish behavior of those thinking they have to impress others with how important they are. They should run for public office or have their own public access show.
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