Thoughts on highways

Recently I had an opportunity to hitch a ride along the famous interstate highway system in the US. I had heard a lot of paeans about how amazing and well maintained the highways are for the average motorist. Till now the woefully limited amount of travel that I have done was limited to hopping from one airport to other or traveling in night to catch a flight in the morning. So the first experience of zipping along the interstate in a car was surreal to say the least. Though I was not the one driving, the 600 odd miles that we covered gave me ample time to appreciate how easy motoring has become on these highways particularly now with online maps when one doesn't even have to be that careful about navigation either, not that it is that complicated to rely completely on the well designed directions on the roads themselves. Curiously just couple of days after this I happened to come across a documentary on the very same topic "The End of Suburbia" dealing with the oil problem and also the effect these highways have on the global energy crisis. Some of the salient points from the documentary are eye opening to say the least. Here are some thoughts which came to my mind, perhaps worth noting down.

The twin factors of major reforms in the New Deal era and the bungling of Churchill to revert back to gold standard, which initiated the decline of the British economic might, had set the wheels in motion for emergence of the US as the dominant western economic power. Still even in the early 1940s Japan, Germany, US and UK along with USSR were still jockeying for the dominant position in the political as well as economic spheres. The end of WW2 with the decimation of Germany and Japan and though victorious the extensive damage to the Russian economy from war efforts and the unraveling of the British imperial dominance was the turning point in the race for global domination. The US was the only major industrialists nation unscathed from the ravages of the war and had built up a huge war industry to a large extent sustained the allied war effort. This war time boom needed to be sustained in long them as the assembly lines of Ford and GM which were rigged to manufacture tanks returned to their prewar operations. Crucial decisions at this time utilised this early US advantage so well as to make US the pre-eminent economic power till date. The first step was the Marshall plan for reconstruction of Europe which would kick start the nearly destroyed European economy and hence form a captive market for the US consumer goods.

Then there was a national reconstruction plan to create 2.7 million new houses for the returning war veterans. This the movie claims led to the emergence of the suburbia in public imagination to the extent that 50% of US population now resides in these urban sprawls. Apparently the initial popularity of such a living concept was due to the grimness of life in the industrial cities of the early 20th century which the public wanted to escape from. Social aspects of living in far flung verdant clusters aside, where daily commute is upto 100 miles, the suburbia made a compelling economic sense for sustaining the US auto industry. For starters the population density is low in the suburbs to sustain any public transport like buses, trams or trains. Further they are all sustained by stand alone superstores which makes it imperative to own personal means of transport. It is rumoured that auto, oil and tyre companies at the end of WW2 came together to buy out and destroy the existing rail road systems. The effect of this was so devastating on the rail road system that US probably now has a worse railway network than even 3rd world nations. Comparing this to the European intercontinental railways and the German, Japanese and now Chinese bullet trains just shows the dominance of wasteful automobile based transport over more efficient public transport in the US. This woeful state of the railroad system meant that transportation is dependent on an intercontinental trucking network across the US dependent on the highways! Curiously the existing highway system in 1950s was not good enough and hence there was frequent axle breakdowns during the average intercontinental trucking expeditions. Now we had a compelling case for the building of the super highways that the present interstate are! The economics of this intercontinental trucking system is so bad that people in Ontario get their salads from California after several thousand miles of trucking wherein the average cost of 1 calorie worth of food is accompanied by energy expenditure of 16 calories! Back to the suburbia, the emergence of super highways led to property development along a narrow strip adjoining these roads so that residents could use the fast commute that these highways offered. Now there was a vicious cycle of enforcement in operation so that the residents staying along these highways sometimes were so far off from the city centres where they worked , that the average daily commute amounted to 100 miles, needles to say the original motivation of calm country living was being lost somewhere with traffic congestions making one spend more and more time on the roads! The statistics of all this is even more staggering. US with 5% world population now has more than 30% of the cars worldwide and uses 30% of the oil produced daily worldwide to run these on commutes from far flung suburban centres and intercontinental shipping operations. Even neglecting the perilous effect on environment, the sustainability of this whole enterprise in the light of dwindling oil reserves calls for actions to secure supplylines and hence the recent Iraq expedition. It is just not by coincidence that the US government is so keen on promoting democracy in Iraq, Iran and the Caspian states which together control most of the oil reserves while there are far more dictatorial regimes starting from nearby Cuba to Zimbabwe to Pakistan and North Korea! Perhaps all wars are driven by the mundane economic necessity of ensuring supply of limited global resources than inspired by some lofty ideals of democracy and human rights!

All this begs one to question the oft repeated platitude about captialism and market forces being the most efficient resource allocators! Efficiency and optimality, actual or imagined comes at a price ... and that seems to be the wars which sustain the modern brand of market capitalism, calling for the most wasteful expenditure of economic and human resources.

The Point of Blogging

The title of the blog says it all ... trying to pen some random flights of thought process. Well what's the use ... nothing really. But writing down or rather as is the wont now a days typing out has a purgatory efffect from too much randomisation affecting clarity of thought. It is said that keeping a diary is a healthy mental practice. Lack of discipline or probably more than that the vascillation about what to write and what not to that has dissuaded me from maintaining one. The good thing is that it lets one articulate bring certain harmony to the thinking and in the process helping one understand a bit better.

To think about it, how much do we know really about ourselves, in the sense about the true reasons behind our thoughts, actions, behaviour etc etc. All the time in company with others we consciously or otherwise try to keep projecting an image, a sense of make beileve which eventually we start believing as our true self. The pressures from family, friends, peers, colleagues and the society at large imagined or otherwise in a fast changing world just makes us a twig in a swirling stream bobbing along the highs and lows. It is terrifying to think how much little control do we have on the directions of our life ... like a cosmic drama of which we are a player ... some more expendable some less. Truly life is so much full of day to day cares and owrries about existential realities that like Davies said there is "No time to stand and stare". The key is the trappings of the success we run after through our life, be in the social, professional or even spiritual sphere keep dissolving into a set of mirages so long as we igonre the key question as to why we are running after them! Possibly one should follow the cliched dictum "Do what you are passionate about or you like!" Easy to preach, hard to practice not withsitanding the plethora of self help books screaming at you about the latest cure all from Amazon or any of the traditional book stalls. Not that there is anything wrong with the remedies they peddle, but unfortnately there are no silver bullets, 10 commandments or 7 ways or whatever to escape sinking into the quagmire of chasing mirages. This is because the self itself is not immutable as the pole star, it keeps changing to external influences, pulls and pushes, pleasures and pains as we go along. These changes are inevitable, but the key is to if not control but then at least be aware of the changes and the agents causing them.

So what is the connection with maintaining a diary and this! To think about it at the end of the day to make some sense of it all a diary offers that mental space to sit back and analyse! Its like the twig in the torrent getting its monentary respite on a sand bank and amazing at the chaotic activity around it before the next wave comes crashing in on another ride. All of us through the mundane routines of the daily life get flashes of thought now and then, some profound most others banal, some which reinforce our beliefs while some which force us to question them. Hidden in these multitudes of thoughts lie nuggets which could unravel why we are the way are, but these get hidden in the layers of mental dust. It is the period of penning the thoughts that we give a chance to ourselves to unravel the happenings, to pickup the nuggets, to study the sign posts which give us a glimpse of who we are and what we could/should be. It is this realisation that will hopefully bring a sense of harmony a purpose and direction, be ever changing that may be, that will give energy to pursue and sense of fulfillment on achieving the goals. Again the devil is in the discipline required to introspect and meaningfully act upon the insights! Keeping up with the modern times blogging is an as effective tool as the old diary I suppose, what with the additional value of feedback from friends! I hope that I do keep at it, time and fickleness of mind permitting and make these blogs more than just a poor attempt at existential philosophy!