Excerpts from: The Despotism of the Image, byDmitry Orlov

The ostensible goal of this Web site, and the small but enthusiastic community that surrounds it, is to change the culture. We all recognize that the contemporary mainstream culture of over-consumption and unbridled growth is toxic on every level -- physical, emotional, and cultural -- and is accelerating on a collision course with resource depletion, climate disruption, and environmental devastation. We all want to jump off in time, or, perhaps lacking the necessary courage, to find ourselves lucky enough to be thrown clear.

What this means in reality is anything but clear, and the best that most of us manage is some small display of personal virtue -- recycling plastic packaging, bicycling instead of driving, taking the train instead of flying, growing a bit of our own food, eating organic, using energy-efficient light bulbs, investing in renewable energy, and so forth. These are the tokens by which we recognize each other. How such personal virtues are defined is a matter of personal taste: some consider driving a hybrid car sufficient, while others prefer eliminating cars from their lives altogether. Some seemingly necessary steps, such as learning to live without oil-based plastics and other synthetic materials, seem beyond all of us.

It seems to be something of an article of faith that if we all did enough of such things, whatever they may be, then the problem, whatever it happens to be, and however we choose to define it, would in due course be solved, and civilized life would go on just like before. Just yesterday, in company, light after-dinner conversation happened to breeze past the topic of energy, and how the British were lucky to discover coal just as timber was running out, and were then lucky enough to discover oil and natural gas before the coal ran out. And now that they have all but run out of oil and natural gas, "there will be enough renewables to power it all!" was the swift retort. To those of us who have the right technical background, and understand the physical quantities involved, this claim is preposterous, but I knew better than to object.

You see, I realize that it is a requirement of this culture that we all project an image of unbounded optimism and faith in our technological prowess. Anything less is automatically labeled as defeatist, fatalistic, and lacking in imagination. What is meant by this word is not the active work of the intellect, mind you, but the passive, voluntary acceptance of a set of common imaginings, or images. The most important images comprising this artificial reality, the ones at the core of this realm of enforced fiction, are the ones that, on the surface at least, have to do with personal dignity and physical comfort.
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It is possible to erect a virtual mountain of rational, logical, quantifiable arguments against cars and in favor of bicycles. A most amusing line of analysis involves computing their relative effective average speeds. First, compute the total cost of ownership of a car, including purchase price, financing costs, maintenance costs, registration, tolls, traffic tickets, and so forth. Now, include all external costs: road construction and maintenance, damage to health caused by air and water pollution, loss of productivity due to death and maiming in auto accidents, associated legal costs, and, of course, military budgets needed to equip the armed forces to fight for and defend the oil.

Now, take the drivers' average income and hours worked, and find out how many hours of labor it takes to cover all of these costs. Add to that the actual time spent driving. Now take the number of vehicle miles traveled, and divide it by the total number of hours spent both driving and earning enough money to pay for cars. Rather than give you the answers, I encourage you to do your own homework, but I can tell you that the end result of this exercise is always the same: the bicycle is faster than the car, and, depending on one's assumptions, driving is slower than walking.
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It is a common misconception that the main function of a suburban home is to provide shelter, when it is quite obviously and clearly to provide parking. In a car-dependent society, access is controlled by limiting and controlling one's ability to park. Public parking is always limited and often not available, and semi-public parking -- at stores, malls, office parks, and other private institutions -- is limited to those who have money to spend or otherwise have some business to transact there. While the car confers freedom of movement, it is the freedom to move, via public roadways, between places where one is not free but must fulfill some specific social function, be it working, shopping, or some other socially sanctioned activity. Even if you wish to escape the oppressive strictures of society for a while, and spend time in a wilderness area, you will find that, in a car-dependent society, even wilderness keeps business hours, and closes its parking lots shortly before dark.

In short, the only freedom the car confers is the freedom to drive to and from between places where you are not free, and the only true exception to this rule is your own driveway.
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Contemporary mainstream culture of over-consumption and unbridled growth, which we would so much like to change, to save ourselves, or to save the planet, or a little of each, is not now, and was never a rational proposition. It is the realization of dark, irrational, self-destructive urges, which were programmed into us through some evolutionary accident, and which are now, and for a short time longer, being given their fullest expression by the availability of cheap and abundant energy.

Appeals to rationality or good sense are futile, because the motive force is a set of indelible, immutable images, which are imprinted on simple minds and at an early age. These images are easy to ridicule, and although ridicule can be powerful, its effectiveness is restricted to those few who have the capacity to understand it. Voltaire was quite thorough in his treatment of the Catholic church, and yet these priests are still with us today, blessing things indiscriminately and fondling altar-boys, because the average churchgoer never had any use for Voltaire.

A much more promising approach is to create new images, of great seductive power, and still simple enough to leave a deep impression on a simple mind. This is the stuff of dangerous politics and revolutionary change: a path rife with unintended consequences, and certainly one to avoid. All that remains is the possibility of an individual effort to free yourself from the despotism of the image.

As for the rest of the consumers who are sold on the images of death, dignity, and comfort, we can be sure that the free market will meet their demand. Those with deep pockets will receive a truly luxurious death that may include a personal museum of transportation and library set amid formal gardens, while those at the opposite end will only be able to afford death in a brown paper bag, but is that not the essence of consumer choice? We should hope that their culture of death dies with them, and, being numerous and diverse, we should hope that this happens long before our species becomes an endangered one.

© Copyright 2007 Dmitry Orlov, All Rights Reserved.