Amanda wrote: > You are invited to join Community Car for our FIRST Divorce your Car > Party TONIGHT! Stop by after work and toast to 6 Madisonians who will > sign their car divorce papers and break up with their cars in style.
This is offencive and certainly not a way to describe what is otherwise an arguably positive change. A week or so ago, one list member replied with a light-hearted remark about not divorcing but perhaps seeing other forms of transport more often, and perhaps it was a way of using humour as a response (I thought it was funny, anyway.) But the way this event is being promoted as a "divorce" strikes me as inappropriate and reflects poorly on the sponsor. The first objection is that it "anthropomorphises" the motor vehicle. Maybe there are people out there who do consider their cars to be people, like a member of the family, but I don't think this is the message we want to send. The other thing is the association of reducing or eliminating* car dependence (what most of us would consider a positive development) with the horribly negative and destructive concept of "divorce." I understand that there are some limited cases in which divorce might be something of a necessary evil, but I generally believe that divorce is like abortion--it should be safe, legal, accessible, and used only as an absolute last resort. Couldn't you have come up with a more positive and uplifting analogy to celebrate someone making a commitment (the antithesis of divorce) to trying to have a lighter footprint (or tire-print) on the Earth??? [*I speak of "eliminating" with some reservation, because even those who do decide to give up their personal cars the vast majority don't really give up motorised transport... they accept rides from friends, they sometimes use taxis (to be distinguished from mass modes of motorised transit in that a taxi is still typically a non-shared type of transport and that produces more emissions than a personally owned vehicle (because the cab must travel additional miles for the pickup and cabs are generally larger vehicles), et cetera. Yes, overall, they use less and that's good, but even the car-free person is really "car-lite." Only a very rare few actually come close to being truly "car-free" in this society. Nothing wrong with car-lite, of course, but just don't get too self-righteous ;-) about being car-free... you've only given up ownership] Now go back to lunch! -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
