“Another generation of nice, miseducated young men, about to waste their careers in a fake science that cares nothing about evidence. This incurious profession pulls its conclusion about the meaning of evidence out of thin air, even when it does deign to notice evidence. Each year students pour forth from universities, a clear, harmful case of education surrendered to credentialism.”
Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead, 2004
Jacobs referred to traffic engineers and planners. There are many parallels between Traffic Engineering and Vaccine Science beyond the coincidence that both are faith based religions that metamorphosed into Godzillas after WWII from swelling pupae in the first half of the century.
In another lifetime, I was a Bicycle Safety pioneer. The crop I encountered in the late 70’s and early 80’s were as sterile as Terminator Seeds, nothing would emerge from that old guard professional class. They were trained and rewarded for not questioning assumptions about wider, faster, “safer” roads, cutting down trees for sight lines and recovery zone scraping to maintain “traffic flow” levels of service. Deaf ears about the economic, health, peace and love benefits of bicycle and pedestrian safety.
Even now, despite overwhelming evidence of terminal damage to individual and community health, wealth and civic enjoyment from their paving projects, that hasn’t changed uniformly. 1 Graduate studies may cover walkable neighborhoods, protected bike lanes, even free transit, but paving roads and parking lots rule.
Both Traffic Engineers and Plague Doctors profess to offer a valuable social tool for the Greater Good, while ignoring the disasters their best intentions caused for the lesser many. These biases permeate society. Car consumers can’t imagine transportation without “free”ways and “free” parking, just as they rely on “free” vaccinations for their health. Both are fragile constructs, yet psychologically embedded, more difficult to dislodge than a triple hooked meme.
Meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe “the smallest unit of an idea that still has coherency” according to Terence McKenna. He also volubly preached about human history as phase shifts with a new one coming along any day now.2 Language is a meme as are catchy combinations of words and graphic images. Sounds and Scents can be packed into memes or stand alone. Memes are shorthand for complex communication.
Memes are not limited to juvenile humor and cute cats or variations on GIFs and Quips, even though the Smartest Cat in the World thinks so. Cat predicts those types of memes will win the war over hearts and minds of the masses. Reminds me of Wovoka’s ghost shirts, gullible Lakota believed would protect them from white devil bullets before Wounded Knee Massacre.
I designed a meme in 1981 intended for Signed Bicycle Routes. My Share the Road message combined with a graphic image of 3’ separation between car and cyclist riding with traffic to educate motorists and cyclists on safest practices. 3
It went viral before that was a meme the old fashioned way, print publications 3 and word of mouth. My original seed was poorly imitated or not attributed as it gathered meme steam. Share the Road went national as Bicyclists Demand in the 90’s, with 3’ passing legislation in most states by now. This sign never replaced the headless horseman meme used by traffic engineers for bicycle warning signs.
New Progressive Bicycle Advocates demand to be “protected” from motor vehicles with segregated lanes, believing they will be safer, like those flocking to the jabs. They will experience Traffic Intersectionality by abandoning our civil right to the common road won through blood, sweat and threats to pioneers. Ride on the Sidewalk, Asshole! would be Traffic Law without us.
Post Modern Traffic Engineers eagerly design separate and unequal facilities for “safer cycling”, just as Plague Doctors slave away to genetically manipulate “safer vaccines” for routine plandemics without questioning their assumptions.
Medical students class time covers nutrition in a day, vaccines in an afternoon. They’re as ignorant as Traffic engineers about real public health. Morbidly obese wellness nurses administer flu shots that don’t prevent pneumonia deaths and cause dementia. Public Health heralds offer them Free, Free from neonates to geriatrics with no evidence for their claims.
Traffic Engineers claim suburban commuters will save time and fuel on the new, wider, safer “freeway” through the heart of a poor neighborhood, with less pollution from jammed motor vehicles. Win Win.
Emergency Room Doctors were pilloried by the Psychopathic Gun Lobby for not Staying in their Lane when they ventured into gun control territory. No doctors stray into Traffic Mayhem, a leading killer and maimer of kids of all ages. They don’t turn signal for Childhood Vaccines, another major cause of ER “visits”- as if they were off to see Granny.
There is a “conspiracy of silence woven around the deleterious effects” of prioritizing private motor vehicles and mandatory vaccinations over healthier, safer, cheaper socialized alternatives. 5
Many who benefit most from the socialism of heavily subsidized roads, parking, fuel, education, medicine and other Illness Industries love to claim “socialism doesn’t work.” It works to prop up unsustainable models that tilt towards technocracy.
Quite a Sea Change from Drive Less or Doomsday to Petroleum Spigot when gas hit $6 a gallon. Imagine the Cyclone in the Coffee Urn if the full costs of driving were dropped on motorists from their insulated socialist economy. If inoculations were free market priced?
Mass media profits from advertising by the Big Three: Legal Drugs, Private Vehicles and Cellular Phone service. Non-profit media depends on the largess of tax dodging foundations funneling trickles of obscene wealth concentrated from those industries and their web of supporting services. They will not bite the hands that feed them.
1 Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, Jeff Speck, North Point Press 2012
2 Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation and Change, Tao Lin Vintage Books, 2018
3 Velorution 2020 my Facebook page wouldn’t link. Features sign and more
4 Bike Forum bicycle policy magazine published by Dan Burden, Summer 1981 edition
5 Free Public Transit And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators, Judith
Dellheim and Jason Prince, Editors, Black Rose Books, 2018
"Morbidly obese wellness nurses administer flu shots that don’t prevent pneumonia deaths and cause dementia."
Gotta laugh at your picturesque turn of phrase.
The full cost is indeed very high. Unsustainable in my view and one of the main reasons why the 'West' is failing.
The new bicycle path here around the harbour is barely wide enough for one bike in places. It also is for pedestrians so that in summer when the pedestrians come back out you can guarantee lots of animosity for cyclists. And if they hop back on the road more animosity as they have their own path don't they? Also the narrowness of the path in places guarantees some dips in the harbour for cyclists.