Sunday, March 16, 2014

"Against the Car" - aka "The Planet-eating machine" or "The Canned Man"

I am sponsoring a research on the (disastrous) impact that CARS have on this Planet - approaching the issue from an anthropological, urbanistic, medical, social and political standpoint.

Surprisingly enough, there doesn't seem to be such a book.

Cars have replaced a varied and beautiful world with NOTHING - squalid parking lots, dreadful desert suburbs, isolated selfish individuals in prey to an omnipotence delirium that the amplification of muscular power through a pressure on the accelerator pedal gives to them.

Children can no longer play in the street. Precious soil is sequestered from human and animal life. Cities turn into animal zoos where animals in cages are separated by the flow of vehicles.

Fossil energy is siphoned from the earth causing this planet to go back to pre-Pleistocene climate. And triggering resource wars by which a neo-nazi elite is quickly affirming its domination on all of us.

Trade and business is expelled to the outskirts of the cities, impoverishing the urban life and concentrating wealth in the hands of large corporations.

The CAR is the G'mork, the Nothing eating the planet.





G'mork: If you come any closer, I will rip you to shreds.
Atreyu: Who are you?
G'mork: I am G'mork. And you, whoever you are, can have the honor of being my last victim.
Atreyu: I will not die easily. I am a warrior.
G'mork: Ha! Warrior. Then fight the Nothing.
Atreyu: But I can't! I can't get beyond the boundaries of Fantasia! [G'mork laughs mockingly] What's so funny about that?
G'mork: Fantasia has no boundaries.
Atreyu: That's not true. You're lying!
G'mork: Foolish boy. Don't you know anything about Fantasia? It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.
Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?
G'mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.
Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
G'mork: It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.
Atreyu: But why?
G'mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control. And whoever has control has the Power.
Atreyu: Who are you really?
G'mork: I am the servant of the Power behind the Nothing. I was sent to kill the only one who could have stopped the Nothing. I lost him in the Swamps of Sadness. His name was Atreyu.


http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_NeverEnding_Story_%28film%29



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