I spent the last week in Charleston reading an analysis of the journals of Civil War veterans from both sides called For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. This jelled into a complex of weirdly connected thoughts about what it takes to impliment radical change and why people tolerate privation when they do have a nominal choice. Read an interesting article in the Washington Post (sorry, I'm not linking to anything this entry) about how our traffic problems are caused by a quiet federal and commercial subsidy on driving into the District. Many random late nights spent considering the fact that forcing public transit on people would probably be as radical and unpopular as freeing the slaves even though it is good for everyone. Wondering deeply how you motivate an army of commuters to philosophically engage with our national needs. Silly parallels, I suppose, still -- the trouble is, people DO have to be forced to do things. They only perceive a greater good much later after forced exposure to the thing they have denied in the abstract (certainly was true of ending slavery. would be true of functional mass transit or anything else.)
Anyhow, as usual, I'm not sitting down to deeply and thoroughly meditate on a subject. It's just been too long since I said anything at all.
Posted by karen at July 17, 2002 12:00 AM