Gods of Speed
June 18, 2018
David Hockney
ALAN writes:
Wherever a man is engaged in contemplation, it is common for people to say about him that he is “lost in thought.”
I suggest that this is nonsense. They have it backward: Such men are not “lost” in thought. They are at home in thought. They do not “lose” themselves in thought. They create themselves in thought.
If they are “lost,” it is in the “real world” as they attempt to navigate through a maze of liars, fools, frauds, airheads and swindlers.
How is one’s mind assaulted in public places today so that it is nearly impossible to be lost in thought? Let me count the ways:
Traffic: The endless din of trucks, buses, and monster vehicles.
The beeping of vehicles used for landscaping.
The indescribable, mind-destroying noise of motorcycles and vehicles deliberately engineered to be as loud as modern technology makes possible.
The noise mendaciously called “music” from passing vehicles.
The season-long competition to determine whose weed cutters and lawn mowers can produce more noise.
The building-shaking roar of “traffic helicopters.”
The ear-splitting noise of sirens and air horns.
The beeping of delivery trucks and other vehicles when in reverse.
The risk of colliding with people not looking where they are walking because they are reading life-or-death messages on their handheld screens.
The risk of attack by dogs walking their pet humanoids.
The risk of attack by dogs not on leashes paraded through cemeteries by their irredeemably stupid or arrogant owners who cannot read rules posted in plain sight at the cemetery entrance that say pets are not allowed.
The risk of being maimed or killed while attempting to walk across a street within the crossing zone and when the “Walk” light is on, neither of which mean anything to motor vehicle drivers in a hurry, and they are always in a hurry.
The motor vehicle is modern boy-man’s best friend. It is the perfect proxy for masculine energy, the perfect means by which boy-men express their masculinity in machines while at the same time avoiding and evading the responsibility to uphold rules, laws, and standards. Look at my genius in creating fast, loud, powerful machines!, the boy-man boasts—when what he should say is: Look at my cowardice in refusing to uphold rules, laws, and standards to defend my people, my nation, my cities, my towns, and our way of life.
The motor vehicle enables boy-men to pursue the three pre-eminent pagan gods of modern anti-culture: Speed, Noise, and Sensation.
What’ll she do? is the key question they ask each other in a ritual they imagine certifies their manhood. At the same time, they neglect the moral responsibility to defend laws, rules, and standards that only principled and confident men can defend.
Modern “culture:” Too much, too loud, too fast, too many, too many infants, too few grown-ups, too many boy-men, too few men, too many feminists, too few women, too many dogs, too few children.
No generation in history grew up by staring at pictures throughout childhood. But three generations of Americans have now permitted their children to do that—over a span of sixty years during which we have seen a culture-wide collapse of rules, laws, standards, competence, and responsibility.
Modern Americans believe they are giving a wonderful thing to their children when they expose them from infancy onward to television screens and electronic gadgets. I believe they are taking something wonderful from their children by showering such things upon them: Something that all previous generations grew up with and likely took for granted: The capacity to develop imagination and conceptual thought.
