Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

metocin wrote (edited )

I think it's really easy to see massive train networks as the radical solution to our current reliance on personal transportation. Obviously the much more radical, simple, and ecologically friendly solution would be to give up the privilege of fast transportation over land. There is simply no ethical or sustainable way to implement it, and further, I think that in a radically decentralized society an inability for people to travel long distances could actually be beneficial.

If we live in a truly ethical and sustainable way, why would we even need long range travel? Being able to escape your locality and the people within it is simply serves to alienate people from building radical relations with their neighbours. What if instead of constantly dreaming about escaping work, we didn't have work to escape from, and we loved our communities so much we didn't ever feel the need to leave?

5

existential1 wrote

I think one of the central questions of anarchism that can be used to examine most things is, "What is keeping me from not doing anything?" Using that question as a frame, it quite easily leads to your last sentence. Most industrial forms of travel are used for commerce more than individuals, per se. And because of that, people's lives are shaped by the possibility of travel more than needing to travel. The more relationships you build in your area, with humans, plants, etc, the less you'll find you need to go anywhere else. But our current world has as a tenet the idea that not only can you be anywhere, you should go everywhere you can afford to.

7