Driving is an act of violence

Very quite rather a lot distinctly importantly vital point: I said "violent" not "evil", and the the two are not the same.  Yes, many a violent act is tinged with a trace or more of evil, but violence is also a necessary part of all animal kingdom life.  Take eating, I used to overly specifically describe consuming meat as a form of violence, but I when I mentioned this idea to The Mary Badass, whom I met last summer fresh out of my neck brace and on her New England Trail thru hike north from New Haven, she corrected me that all food consumption is violent because plants too were alive.  So, violence is a part of life human life, and lest I gave the wrong impression, yes, I do now and again use the canine teeth that evolution left me even if I consider myself best described as a nonpracticing carnivore these days.  Even nonpracticing Catholics go to church now or then!

I first considered this post last summer, but delayed, avoided, and eventually moved on out of concern for how it would land, skid, then flop in a heap, but ideas in my last two submissions hinted at it, not withou awareness by me, and the timing now feels, well, less horrifically wrong for addressing the subject directly, or at least in my typically tangential way.  

Last summer, when my own individual transport was restricted to walking, I was reminded of the graces of moving simply, at what I think of as a human pace, and within a human scale.  We evolved for a top speed of a fast run, and anything above that takes our bodies out of their comfort zones, to tremendous effect when things go wrong.  For as graceful as cats are, even cheetahs must trip once in awhile, but I'm guessing their bodies are better able to survive an "oops" at 40mph than ours are.  Even riding a bike can be violent, as alas evidenced by the fact that I killed a chipmunk and later a red squirrel whose darting crossings I failed to avoid on area rail trails.  Both times I felt the bump after I thought we'd successfully avoid impact, and I stopped.  While both were clean kills in that no blood was shed externally, neither was immediate and the animals expired only after a minute of limping movement of convulsive twitching.  In the end, the incidents had an impact of one sort or another on all parties involved.

But in all the years and miles I have traveled by bike, those are the two sole animal kills of which I'm aware, but I know my record of causing dubious demises is many fold higher while driving, but I didn't once stop.  In a car, you are in a box, isolated to a greater extent from the world around you, apart, heck, I'll even say, other.  An animal is hit and the car moves on, possibly without the driver even knowing a life has been taken or permanently altered, and sometimes that animal is of the human species, and once late last spring, I was that animal.  Even before that, I'd started feeling a morbid kinship with the roadkill animals I'd see, recognizing that we were both composed of the the same vulnerable skin, bone, and flesh, and yes, that feeling is a wee bit stronger these days.

Black Squirrels Flatter?

Sorry, yes, that one is awful on so many levels.

But, not all violence impacts are fast.  Some are slow and creeping, but this latter sort can also be impactful on a much larger, say global, scale.  Turn the key to start the engine of an automobile and you've just committed an act of violence.  No, nothing dies or even is injured in that moment, but when you do it, and your neighbor does it, and over a billion people around the world do it, it adds up, and goes up into an already carbon dioxide insulated atmosphere, and more things, both floral and faunal will die.  No, none of you gets exclusive credit, but Martin Niemöller once wrote a poem about that kind of rationalizing excuse.  For those of you using over 3,000 pounds of electric car to move around a couple hundred pounds of flesh and feeling like using energy with a different LOCAL source is carbon-violence-free and also makes up for that gross inefficiency, you (IN MY OPINION) need to rethink your delusions.

But remember, I very specifically said "violent", not "evil", so where the demarcation between those two concepts?  I won't attempt to more than graze the surface of that answer, but I will suggest that there is a degree of grace to personal awareness when you commit a violent act, weighing your options, and accepting that there may be consequences for other entities.  Make it a conscience choice and not just the default.  Is riding a bike free of immediate or long term climate violence?  No, certainly not, but it is exponentially less than that of a car, and it is that active, aware choice that I find I can accept for me.  Peace in your choice as well.