bike as organizing principle?
(via death & mayhem)
bicycle nomads
“For the radical few, the bicycle is an important part of the solution. The bicycle, that technological throwback from the nineteenth century, is for them a literal and metaphorical organizing principle for a new vision of the world, one that stands not simply against the most obvious form of petro-consumption, the automobile, but that heralds and celebrates—in advance of its actual arrival, and with bright little bicycle bells and radical cheers—a new, post-petroleum era.”
~ From “Send in the Clowns,” by Mark Svenvold, Orion Magazine
I don’t mean to impugn anyone’s motives but the bike doesn’t seem to be a true organizing principle to me. Instead, it seems more like a proxy for shared values, rather than a reason for gathering that’s based on a more natural need (e.g., the need to organize to share bread because it will go stale quickly). You’re just liking something in public to be identifiable to others who you think you’ll get along with. A reasonable desire, really, but there isn’t too much noble about it. The whole idea that the bike, a technological throwback, will herald the post-petroleum era is ridiculous, and the suggestion to me speaks to the desire to get together with similar Luddites, not actually live in the new world order.
