Automotivated
Sadly, as the environment begins to shine a few shades shy of true green, society willingly sacrifices such majestic creatures as the internal combustion engine on their altars of recycled toilet paper and compostable yoga mats.
As everyone but a maudlin handful of still extant Neanderthals knows, the world is going to hell. Our oceans, busy devouring the mansion-ridden coastlines of the world (Here’s looking at you, Florida), shimmer with crimson luminescence under a coat of mercury pollution. Species of flora and fauna find themselves vying with one another for a seat in biology’s Valhalla: a glass-enclosed case at the Museum of Natural History. Yet there is another, more humanly relevant extinction in progress; and while the average person doesn’t care, doesn’t know, or applauds this little-known, approaching Armageddon, there stands a minority at the vanguard, staring with utter terror as one of humanity’s most precious companions moves ever closer to its ultimate demise. I am speaking, of course, of the most beloved form of automobile: the car. I am not talking about those electric-powered monstrosities that seem to have been inspired by an over-budgeted Lucasfilm production, but about a breed of automobile that is fast, loud, and sexy. Such a creation is more than mere vehicle; it is the consummation of man’s desire to become more than himself—a nirvana that can only be experienced at speeds above 120 miles per hour. Sadly, though, as the environment begins to shine a few shades shy of true green, society willingly sacrifices such majestic creatures on their altars of recycled toilet paper and compostable yoga mats; and what have the Green Gods offered us in return? An assault on aesthetics: the Prius.
In fact, the present ubiquity of unsightly hybrid vehicles should stand as a sweeping indication of humanity’s imminent fall. Our collective sense of environmental responsibility has warped us so much that the contemporary object of automotive desire looks like, well, a coagulated piece of green nose cheese from some distant, intergalactic space monkey—where is Charlton Heston when you need him? And it also appears that, in our environmental zeal, we have all come down with a case of vicious amnesia: Honda’s 1985 CR-X was just as fuel efficient as the fanciest Toyota Prius on the market, and yet the former achieved its greenery through the brilliant engineering of light-weight material, not through overly-complex power trains that require the manufacture and eventual safe disposal of toxic batteries. Further, the CR-X’s traditional internal-combustion engine allowed the car to retain the beautiful feature of manual transmission, making it fun to drive while also providing the added benefit of left-calf-muscle exercise, a noted mode of preventing left-calf-muscle atrophy (a serious problem in a world that is turning to automatic transmission electric vehicles).
Legitimate complaints with “green” vehicles aside, I am far more concerned with the malicious existential effects of society’s environmental crusade. When I express my love of tree-unfriendly speed, the common argument devised to make me feel like some kind of environmental Jeffery Dahmer is that I am putting my own pleasure and happiness over the well-being of the entire planet. The accusation, therefore, is that I am an asshole. Perhaps, but allow us to consider the terms under which I am being indicted. I am crucified because I am putting my own desires over those of others, for refusing to act like the insignificant speck that the cosmos must incessantly remind me that I am. Yet how can I act otherwise? When you demand that I drive a Prius, you require that I resign myself to being nothing more than a microscopic ripple in the flow of time. When you deny me my love of internal-combustion engines, you ask me to give up my personhood and dissolve into the collective, with no use for my own existence except as some dew drop on the great, black pane of this social solar panel. A society that demands such a sacrifice in the name of the planet is not benevolent; it’s cruel, alienating, and selfish.
It’s likely that my grievances will fall upon ears deafened in the awkward silence of idling electric cars, but I will continue to shake my fist in the face of the inevitable and continue to drive fast cars, like a thirteen-year old choirboy given a last meal of Playboy magazines while he awaits castration to preserve a voice he never wanted. And when everything automotive that I love is scoured from this earth, and society has been molded into a homogenous mass of shoppers leaving the farmer’s market in electric cars, I will remain a melancholy Luddite. I will curse my misfortune of being born in these times, and I will refuse to sink to their level of celebrated, terrible boringness. And maybe then, only then, will I consider taking the bus.
