this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
106 points (96.5% liked)

Fuck Cars

9629 readers
480 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

People are lonely. Is it because we are addicted to our phones, or is that a symptom of larger design choices we made when building our places? We cover some of the general concepts related to social infrastructure an try to evaluate what to do next.

top 4 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I've talked a fair bit about this with my brother. I'm the urbanist nerd, and he's the PhD psychologist. The United States is a deeply traumatized society, which has a great deal to do with our history and hyper-individualist ideology, but it's now a feedback loop in which the hyper-individualist ideology perpetuates the trauma. Our built landscape is largely a redirection of that, so it's both a symptom and a cause.

You see how the two are wrapped up together by the number of people who say (often in this very community) that they hate being around people, that they couldn't live in a city, that they don't want neighbors, or at least want to keep them at figurative arm's distance, so they NEED cars. That's a manifestation of the chronic fight-flight-or-freeze response, because at an individual level, our mental model is of other people as competitors and possible existential threats. (What's wrong with public transit? CRiMinALs wIlL KiLl mE!)

Thing is, to we're a highly-social animal, so the more we pull away from other people in fear, the more stressed and traumatized we get. That is to say, that it's not simply that the built landscape causes loneliness, but loneliness and car-dependency are interlocked in a feedback loop with other factors.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think others are threats, I just don't want to hear them arguing or farting or have them in my way.

Edit I've lived in a cheap apartment before and could literally hear when my neighbor took a shit. I've also lived in a condo, and while higher end, I could still hear my neighbor open and close their front door.

I would much rather hear the birds in my rural yard than hear people moving around

Edit edit I have lots of people in my life, and have friends at my home, or am at their home multiple times a week. I would not describe myself as isolated or lonely, just choiceful about what noise and space pollution I allow in my life

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah in europe this is pretty well mitigated with a healthy amount of solid concrete or similar dense building materials. In the US we put up walls and doors made of paper even in the nicest apartments. It seems standard but it's a pretty shoddy one if so. I will never understand it other than as a cost saving measure and more systemically, a tool to make poor people miserable and drive everyone else into single family housing.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Modern suburbs are a manifestation of the neoliberal mindset, which is summed up in this well known quote from Margaret Thatcher:

...who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families...

Detached, single family homes on their own parcels of land, with clearly defined borders. Each plot is like its own sovereign territory. That is not a society, that is a rejection of society.

But this arrangement wasn't established for no reason, it was done out of a desire for freedom and independence. With society comes shared culture, language, traditions, beliefs and expectations, things that can limit one's individual freedom. So, you reject the larger society, procure your own piece of land and form your own micro society where you and your family can have whatever culture, speak whatever language, and practice whatever beliefs you want. Of course this is very isolating, but freedom and independence often are. A totally free and independent person is a person who is totally alone.