Vehicular Abstinence
Posted by Ace on September 18th, 2008 filed in from the CommentsFrom the comments for Sacrifice:
Yoko:Â Nick, weren’t you trying to learn how to drive several years back?
Nickykaa:Â Yeah, I started the process of learning. Had about five or six lessons. Dragon Lady really wanted me to be able to drive, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to know how (though I made it clear to her that even if I learned how, I reserved the right to abstain from putting the skill to use). As it turns out, the lessons confirmed what I’d long suspected – I’m just not neurologically wired to be able to learn that particular skill, at least not easily or well (I function so well in the neurotypical world that even people who know me well have trouble fathoming how much I struggle with abilities that they take for granted – abilities that are important when driving, such as the ability to distinguish between color and sound).
In the long run, my abstinence from the driving addiction has proven beneficial in many ways, from the good cardiovascular health that comes from all the walking I do, to the simplicity and clarity that comes from having to take my time getting places. And recent world events, from oil-based political turmoil to catastrophic climate change, have made it clear that there are also moral benefits to having only minimal and peripheral entanglement with my culture’s automobile addiction. But my neurology has made this particular abstinence an enforced abstinence, so I can’t pretend that it’s the result of any sort of wise ethical or spiritual choice on my part (which I suppose puts it in a different category from, say, my alcohol abstinence or Ace’s alcohol abstinance – it’s hardly a mage’s act of Will to abstain from doing what one can’t do).
This provoked a number of thoughts on my part:
Concerning automobiles: my own utter abhorrence of them is no secret (although it is perhaps more familiar to readers of my previous site than of this one.) What I find fascinating about Nickykaa’s comment is that he is (as he proudly admits) now a parent, and must necessarily reconcile the desire to avoid the automobile culture and/or his inability to drive with the challenges of having a child in the modern environment, and with her needs. Living where I do, I can’t even begin to imagine how he’s going to do that. The literal physical geography West of the Rivers is so completely structured around cars, so utterly hostile to adult pedestrians, much less children, that the problems of finance and maintenance involved in auto ownership pale in comparison to the logistical problems I would face trying to take Jack to his Scout meetings or his classmates’ birthday parties or his doctor’s appointments or out to the movies, or along with me to do chores– or even to see him at all– without one. Maybe it would be different if I lived in the City of Mists itself; maybe not. Nickykaa, how are you meeting this challenge? And does anyone else have any insight or stories about being a Parent Without a Car?
Concerning abstinence and Will: is the value of an act of abstinence somehow denigrated by its being of immediate benefit to you, or if it’s something you “should” do, for whatever reason? This may seem like a strange thing to say, since it’s not strictly logical: NOT murdering people, for instance, is no less valuable (I’d like to think) because we generally agree as a societal convention that it’s impolite to murder people. But it feels like there’s a fine point there, or a psychological principle. If one of the reasons I’m abstaining from alcohol is that alcohol screws up my body worse than it does the average person, and that I have been advised to moderate my consumption of it, is that a different impetus than Nickykaa not being able to process driving neurologically, or just a different gradation on the same scale?
September 18th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
As you’ve implied, the difficulties of automobile abstinence do indeed vary greatly depending on where one lives. My status as a non-driver (in combination with my unwillingness to depend on other people’s cars or even on gasoline-powered busses) is one of the primary factors in my decisons about where to live.
I live within easy walking distance of all kinds of food and shops. I live three blocks from a weekly farmer’s market, four blocks from the YMCA where I teach, two blocks from UC Berkeley (a nice place to walk around with a kid), two blocks from a nice public playground. Within ten blocks there are pharmacies, a grocery store, a good video rental place, four bookstores, a great comic book store, and three movie theatres. I live four blocks from a BART station (BART is our local commuter train system), and BART will take me to Downtown Oakland, to Downtown San Francisco, to within four blocks of the school I go to, to within seven blocks of River’s daycare center, and to within ten blocks of my physician and River’s pediatrician.
Whenever we move to a larger place, we won’t move that far from here; we’ll stay within the Berkeley city limits and within easy walking distance of a BART station. And Berkeley’s not a big town; wherever we end up, the local public schools will be easily accessible to us without a car. And this town in general is as friendly to pedestrians and cyclists as it’s possible for a modern American town full of automobile addicts to be (not very, by my standards, but astonishingly so by comparison to anyplace I remember from the East Coast).
Dragon Lady DOES own a car, by the way, and is just as addicted to it as most other American adults. She drives to work every day, and she drives when it’s her turn to transport River to or from daycare or somewhere else. For her part, River loves riding in the car, loves walking on foot, loves riding in a stroller, and (especially) loves riding on BART.
September 18th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
As for the question of abstinence and Will, I’d say that there are three distinct sorts of value that an act of abstinence can have (and usually a given act has some combination of the three in various proportions).
First, there’s the immediate material value – for instance, the health benefits of abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, or junk food. My abstinence from automobiles and our mutual abstinence from alcohol both have this sort of value: there are health benefits to walking and to not drinking, and financial benefits to not spending money on car insurance, car repairs, or booze.
Second, there’s the spiritual value of what the abstinence does for one’s consciousness. Abstinence from alcohol has this kind of value because sobriety increases mental clarity. Abstinence from driving also has this kind of value, because of how it slows down the pace of one’s life and because there’s valuable perspective to be gained from not being engaged in a trance of addiction that pervades one’s society (not watching television has that sort of value, too).
Third, there’s the magickal value that comes from the sustained conscious focusing and exercising of one’s Will. This is where my automobile abstinence doesn’t fall into the same category as our mutual alcohol abstinence. It takes no Will for me not to drive, because I experience no temptation to drive. If I COULD drive, then I’d be tempted to sometimes, and then not doing it would be an act of Will. It would be a powerful magickal act of Will for YOU to give up driving, because the temptation, the sense that “I really NEED to drive, just for this one thing,” would come up frequently, and would be so easy to yield to.
I wish Lila was around for this conversation, because I’d be interested in her perspective, since she kicked a ferocious 20-year tobacco addiction. I wonder if she’d describe that as a powerful act of magickal Will, or if she’d disclaim credit for it on the grounds that she only did it because Yoko MADE her do it. Probably the latter, knowing Lila – but from my perspective it WAS a powerful act of magickal Will on Lila’s part, because regardless of the considerable motivation Yoko was providing, Lila still had to exert her OWN will, day to day and hour to hour, to resist each specific moment of temptation.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
On the first count: I agree, it matters very much where you live. I also live in an area where I can very easily walk to places and can take public transportation as well– and in fact I do. If I am to continue living in this city, and if I am to become a parent, I don’t see myself needing to drive a car to transport my child around.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Segueing into the second count: I do own a car, but I really cannot consider myself as addicted to it. I don’t *need* to drive. I walk to work every day, I take public transportation practically everywhere else. The only times I drive are when the time and convenience become a high priority. I drive to aikido class, even though it’s technically in the city, because it’s far enough away from where I live and work, where the transit system is such that I would need to transfer trains/buses at least twice with a long lag time in between, and its frequency becomes even less late at night when I finish teaching, in an area where I really don’t want to be standing alone waiting for a bus. I drive to my parents’ house in the suburbs because the transit choices are even slimmer out there. But I don’t like to drive on a regular basis, generally speaking.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
As far as abstinence and Will are concerned: I really don’t know how to approach this. Don’t addicts tend to continue with their addiction, despite knowing and experiencing the ill effects of whatever they’re addicted to? So, doesn’t it take a huge amount of Will to overcome the addiction, and therefore the act to abstain not denigrated by its benefits?
Yeah, I really wish Lila were here to chime in. Despite knowing quite intimately people with addictions (for better or for worse), I really don’t understand the concept.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
oh, and one more thing: your summary was on point, but I thought it was the entire post, so I didn’t bother to click through. I didn’t realize there was a lot more to it until I came to your site looking for another post!
September 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Ellipses around the excerpt maybe? Or label it as an excerpt in the post?
[excerpt] …blah blah blah blah blah…
September 19th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Either of those would work. or like the descriptions of chapters in 18th/19th-century novels: “In which I discuss the meaning of life and whether it still equals forty-two”; “A frank discussion on creme fraiche vs. quark”. heh.