I tried to write the last article by Wednesday but instead finishing it up by Thursday. This can just be set aside as private matter, but it is also essentially related to degeneration and rise of abusive tendencies in American culture.
My work and what I tried to do was discouraged by many annoyances, in large part because so many motor cyclists and loud muffler cars/trucks coming and going out from the gas station near our house, which is less than 100 meters away. The bike gangs noise is so loud that when they pass by as group, the entire house shakes, renders ear plug obsolete. This gas station was built by demolishing the small-business-local-owner operated gas station which operated from 6AM to 6PM after Hurricane Sandy. That previous small gas station was fine, but this big company offered the owner $1 million dollars and also started to cater/cajole/pressure the town councils.
I live in a small town and a lot of big trucks come here to get coffee (even in the middle of the night) because this is the only 24/7 gas station with 25 mile radius, and also to avoid toll, so to save a few dollars. They know this is 95% residential area, but Instead of passing by quietly, they have to rev up engines and press accel as loud as possible, especially 5-6AM in the morning (sometimes including weekends). The autobike gangs and loud muffler abusers are oftentimes just sitting in the gas station revving up their engine and not going anywhere, just to make loud noise and show off how manly they are (often times I hear they play loud songs such as “kicking the world in loving way” “bad to the bone” etc.). Often times as gangs, these vehicles with loud muffler chase each other and going round and round around town even in the middle of the night (especially in the summer). I have upset stomach (on and off) because of the disturbances and bad sleep quality caused by it.
Some of the cars/small trucks/motor bikes seems to be drug dealers and buyers. Nowadays, they seem to not have any fear about dealing drugs openly. They also play very loud degenerate songs and have a lot of curse words with subject regarding drug/sex/violence/anger/hatred. Many of them seem to have “bug eyes” i.e. (wide, hypnotic, and/or glassy eyes) and tend to stare at people. They seem to know that people in this town (me included) wary about them and when they see such people they tend to rev up their engines and/or make even louder muffler noise by speeding up. This is very dangerous because it is small town and a lot of little children/kids play around in the front of the yard. Often times we had to pick up dead animals killed by trucks/cars/auto bikes by the side of the road in front of our house – the speed limits within the town are 25-30 miles/h, and I live right at the center of the town. Fortunately, we didn’t have any children (or pets for that matter) gotten hurt or worse. Police used to enforce much harder on these loud muffler and loud music abusive characters – who often suddenly speed up inside the town limit – in the older days then now.
This sort of abusive behaviors using motor vehicles became much worse during the pandemic and seems to remain as general trend. Nowadays car manufacturers have loud muffler on the car by default to “follow” this trend, which people must protest and be outlawed. Otherwise we are to lose essential public good (quiet, calm public space without abusive) that is basis of so many things.
Some people may think, “Oh, things disintegrated, that’s general trend, there is nothing we can do about it.” Disintegration of these public good demoralize everyone and everyone loses (eventually) because so many other public good and mutual regard depends on it which basically makes civilization disintegrates in the end. People think it is the end, but world does not end, everyone slowly suffer as it has been. People with fatalistic view thinks world ends tomorrow and don’t care, but every day of their life, they are dependent on public good which enables them to go to work, buy grocery, drive safe, walk on the street without fear of being violated in one way or another. People in fatalistic mode thinks dying is easy. It is not. It is slow and painful for most of us no matter how bleak the situation is. As an example, in North Korea, even during their worst famine of 1990s, less than 10% of their population died – the rest suffered horribly. If we do not want to suffer like that (do you want to?), let’s not make our life miserable by letting the public good falling apart, let’s keep it up with everything that we can do reasonably. We have to demand that politicians be reasonable and not just mouth piece of super rich constituents with selfish interests and/or special interest groups. We as citizens of republic must make sure that we do away with such way of lobbying politicians in modern politics.
More then a decade ago, when this gas station was proposed to built inside the town limit, we were against it because it would have bad influence on this town but people voted in anyhow – majority of people didn’t care. Some people who live outside the town thinks that this gas station is the greatest thing that ever happened in this town. They often come here to have chick wings, chips, soda, and other junks food and drive back to their houses, often on loud muffler vehicles. Often they throw thrash in front of our yard. People who read this should see grave wrongs of these people with their willful ignorance of their lifestyle which destroys public goods, environment, social good will, callousness abusive attitudes toward children, animal, and their fellow human.
As people become more addicted to substances and become obese (therefore unhealthy), this tends to become popular trend.
When I read about alcoholics, as alcohol addiction progress, they become gradually seem to become immoral/degenerative in one way or another. I think every additions are like this. Obesity is just a by-product of many addictions (a symptom, that is) in our society – addictions toward meat/dairy/process foods (refined carbs, caffeine, artificial food additives/chemicals, GMOs). However, it is also manifestation of our avoidance to face the real problem in our society, which is child abuse/neglect. Usually, most obese people who seek council to lose weight had abuse/neglect in their childhood and practically all of them believe losing weight will make them happy. Good diet and losing weight are essential part of healing in both mind and body, but that additive tendency in the person’s psyche will not go away unless the person resolve that complex developed during their childhoods first. Many people have addictions that come back or have addictions that move from one thing to next, from one addiction to another – in Fairbairnian term, this is projecting their anti-libidinal/libidinal egos on external processes and persons which can never meet their compartmentalized unconditional need, unless they face and deal with it fully, and/or resolve that.
The Motivational Triad and Fairbairnian psychology; these two frameworks are not panacea, but can explain so many destructive and addictive human behaviors and social phenomena at so many different levels (which is why I wrote the previous article). Addicted psyche tend not to look at these in calmly manner, instead it looks for next fad, next bigger things (bigger cars, bigger house, bigger sex related bodily organs, saltier, more sugar, more fat), newer, more intense stimulus in their lives – which also can be explained by Motivational Triad / Fairbairnian psychology. It seems turning this around is slow process, just like any public goods that has been built over time.
I wish I can go some place else to write about these, but I don’t have a car. It is hard for me to get a ride and go somewhere, and it is dangerous to access internet over unsecured network. So it is difficult to do my work. I try to buy membership on private libraries (because public local libraries are often small crowded with children and teens. Also their hours of operations seems to get shorter and shorter) but they are expensive. Regardless, I buy it because that is only precious quiet hours I can work on with my work. It is tiring to have a long car/bus/train ride in a day, but I don’t seem to have much of choice here.
Speaking of public transit, I should write a post about this (including the fact that more train will reduce truck traffic).