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Elijah Price (12) Installment 1

                                                 
                                                   On the Philosophy of Car Culture

      "We are born free, but everywhere are in chains." While I can't quite get behind Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas involving noble savages swinging about the wilderness, I wholeheartedly agree with his ideas about freedom and limitations. Unlike Rousseau and other popular post-Descartes thinkers, I wouldn't blame society for our intrinsically rebellious spirit. We are confined within the human condition; you might say we're small fish in a big pond. Carl Sagan's pale blue dot seems much larger from where we stand on it. Indeed, it's a big world and we're all given an opportunity to get out and experience it. In this quest to go out and live, mobility is one of our greatest enemies. Perhaps this is why cowboys love their horses and sailors love their ships, and maybe even why the peripatetic philosopher prefers travel. Luckily for us, the world has never been as mobile as it is today. Among other modern innovations, we owe the automobile quite a bit for the freedoms it grants us. But car culture is a deep and enigmatic phenomenon, and there is more at work in it than man's wanderlust. It just so happens that some of us see the world as a much smaller place, and ourselves as much more free, from behind the wheel of a two-seater on the open highway while the sun sets. To others, it's an uninspiring part of everyday life. If this sounds familiar, you may have the wrong car. I happen to see cars as the paragon of freedom, and a ticket to anywhere.

http://jalopnik.com/ten-things-everyone-gets-wrong-about-car-enthusiasts-1721880981 - for some sort of perspective on the truths and myths about automotive culture.