That’s an utterly pointless suggestion; the context here is normal transport and the practise of everyday kung fu.
I’m not touting my exceptionalism here. I’m bemoaning the fact that despite driving a car is the most dangerous thing most people do, and that they do it so often, very few people actually seem interested in becoming any good at it. They’re apparently not interested in reducing the carnage, let alone time and petrol wasted sitting behind incompetoids paying insufficient attention (a Japanese study found one bad driver could cause city-wide gridlock).
People really do suck at judging risk, and it’s no accident IMO. It’s just another avenue for manipulating anyone who doesn’t think for themselves; politicians, insurance companies, advertisers etc all seek to create unrealistic perceptions about all kinds of things. Schools often seek to instil far more respect for authority than spirit of enquiry, and so on. Motivate them with fear.
As an anarchist, my core message is think for yourself. Keep it up long enough, and you discover that most people are effectively fuckwits in thrall to those who would control them. Following the herd is so much simpler than evaluating everything in your own terms… and the muddier the waters, the harder it is to see a way out of the murk.
So no, I don’t see myself as anything special. I just see the majority of people as almost subhuman, in one important respect: they haven’t stood up and claimed ownership of their miraculously powerful cognitive hardware and their role as equals, along with the attendant responsibilities of global citizenship. They’re effectively functioning as a botnet serving the wants of the few.
I seem to have wandered off the subject, but IMO pretty much everything comes back to this situation. I can’t see much improvement happening in any avenue until more people start thinking for themselves.
