On Sep 9, 12:08Â pm, Paul
gmail.com> wrote:> I hate being cut off in traffic on my way home from work. Can't do
> anything about it. The cowards know they can get away with it.
> Otherwise, if they knew I could bash their brains in with a brick,
> they wouldn't do it.
This reminds me of a Harlan Ellison short story
where people have the right to duel on the freeway.
So they armor their cars and mount missle launchers
and lasers and so on. I guess it's his take on the
California freeway system.
> I hate being powerless. I hate this society, where you can't rely on
> natural human instinct to defend yourself. Our humanity has been taken
> away.
But that's okay; we weren't doing anything useful with it
anyway.
> Sure, the guy cutting me off doesn't deserve his head to be bashed in.
Maybe he does for reasons you don't know about.
It all depends on what your definition of the word,
"deserve" is. Just what _is_ justice, anyway?
> He doesn't even know me. And maybe he's cutting me off because someone
> else cut him off 5 minutes before. Maybe he's a nice guy like me, sick
> of being disrespected and doing the little he can to vent his
> frustration (by cutting me off). maybe he has a family, like me.
Being cut off is the least of my problems with the
traffic system around here. What I hate is the guy
who de-synchronizes the lights, such that on TV
highway, I wind up waiting at every single red light
for blocks, sometimes more than once at the same
light. It's the sheer overpopulation of automobiles
that bugs me. Maybe we can thin out their numbers.
> But still. This is the problem. It's not that I want to go around
> flying off the cuff whenever someone does something wrong to me, but
> it's not just me. We're all powerless.
A self-fulfilling belief, don't you think? Me, I just no
longer commute at all. Or, rather, I commute at the
speed of light. It's the choice of a new generation.
Who needs flying cars, when you have the electron
fantastic?
> Bah.
