Eco-communities as a social vision

Eco-communities as a social vision
Egalitarian and ecological communities, like the pictured East Wind (www.eastwind.org), are very close to our vision of an ecological society

28 August, 2008

"Traffic Jam" by James Taylor, Album: JT (1977)


Damn
This traffic jam,
How I hate
To be late.
It hurts my motor to go so slow.
Damn
This traffic jam,
Time I get home my supper'll be cold.
Damn
This traffic jam.

Well, I left my job about 5 o'clock,
It took 15 minutes go three blocks—
Just in time to stand in line,
With the freeway looking like a parking lot.

{Repeat Chorus}

Now, I almost had a heart attack—
Looking in my rear view mirror.
I saw myself the next car back,
Looking in the rear view mirror,
'Bout to have a heart attack.
I said . . .

{Repeat Chorus}

Now, when I die I don't want no coffin;
I've thought about it all too often.
Just strap me in behind the wheel
And bury me with my automobile.

{Repeat Chorus}

Now, I used to think that I was cool,
Running around on fossil fuel.
Until I saw what I was doing—
Was driving down the road to ruin.


Great lyrics about our strong real or mental dependence from cars in transportation and our mobility and the consequent causes of loss of time in traffic jam, aggression, stress, and degenerative diseases like heart failures. Artist do sarcasm about this addiction expressing a wish to be burried when dead with his car. Many years later, another band, Rage Against the Machine, will sung similarly that cars will be our wheel-chairs putting this problem in a global political context of oil dependance, global pollution and eternal war conficts for the controll of oil production territories.

Many researches show that cars devour too much of our leisure time not only in everyday traffic jam but also in search of parking, on the way to service station, to pay the related taxes, fines, insurances etc. They produce many accidents, deaths and permanent injuries. They occupie free space by making big roads at the expense of free mobility for pedestrians, or as obstacles when parked to people with mobility disfunctions, etc. So to speak the real total cost in our health, life, money and time by using every day our cars is not perceived easily in its integrity.

You can hear a cover of this song by Don Haren in Youtube

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