Among the Greatest of Man’s Inventions
The automobile, assuredly, is among the greatest of man’s inventions. Prior to the advent of the automobile man was limited — severely limited — by the distance his own legs could carry him (or the distance the four legs of his companion could). What a parochial existence to spend (at least) the overwhelming majority of one’s days within only a handful of miles of one’s home. Now, liberated by the automobile, man may enjoy the freedom of travelling tens or even hundreds of miles. Should he so desire, he could even have breakfast in one state, lunch in another, and drinks and dinner in yet a third. Man now sees the world with expanded horizons.
Certainly, air travel and the Internet deserve some sort of mention — for they, too, have opened worlds that were theretofore closed to the common man —, but nothing can truly compare to the ubiquity and convenience of the automobile. Historically, all but the most select of men would have to limit their interests, their cares, and their attention to their immediate proximity. Now, because of the automobile, the common man can, like the academic or the cosmopolitan, expand the circle of his concerns to the wider world. No longer must man reserve his concern for the concrete and the physically proximate; now, he can care for the greater mass of humanity and those who are physically distant — he need not limit himself to his ‘neighbor’. So, too, can the common man expand the pool of his personal interests. He need not look exclusively to the daughters of his own when seeking a wife; instead, he may venture abroad and choose from virtually endless options instead of from merely hundreds (and the daughters of his own now have their own expanded options anyway). (If modern luxuries like the Internet have given him more exotic tastes, then air travel can sate such desires.)
Man’s historically parochial nature has been irreversibly and irremediably altered by the introduction of the (relatively) affordable automobile. Surely no one would go back to the stifling and limiting past of travel by foot and horse. A whole world of women, wine, and experiences awaits the man willing to drive but a few hours. No young man would ever willingly relinquish such a world of potential.
The concerns of those few who notice the slipping age and rate of marriage can be assuaged or dismissed by pointing out that greater options take more time to experience and assess. A handful of years is a small price to pay. Women are certainly still marriageable at forty — even fifty. Only the most backwardly traditional would advocate for taking away freedom.
We should, in point of fact, make it easier to obtain an automobile — better that every man should have his own. And why not every woman, too? He has his options, and she must have hers. Why should she depend upon the means of her suitors? The equation is simple: More automobiles = more freedom. Surely no one can object to such an outcome or goal, for surely the opposite of freedom is slavery. A young man needs the freedom to make his own choices, forge his own path, and experience his own life, and surely no good father would be such a tyrant as to deny the same to his daughter. In all likelihood, he found his own wife (at least the first one) due to her father’s laissez-faire approach to parenting. Surely liberty and freedom grow greater with time, and things shall continue to improve in the coming years.
It is a beautiful thing, human progress. Ever upward, ever onward. Shedding the backwards and limiting beliefs of the past and reaching forward into a future of infinite possibilities. And man, by his very nature, will virtually never willingly give up any freedom once he has become accustomed to it (and he becomes accustomed so very quickly), and so progress naturally entrenches itself as it goes and has also an inherent directionality. We have only to start upon the path and the outcome becomes inevitable (absent heroic countermeasures, anyway). If the increments are sold as progress, then the consequences can be sold as success (or excused as justifiable costs).
And so let us use the automobile as an eternal reminder of the utility of seemingly minor technological advancements. The difference between travelling twenty miles per day and travelling a hundred miles per day (or even per hour) is the difference between ‘my neighbors’ and ‘humanity’. With patience and a bit of creativity, almost any outcome can be achieved in the name and by the means of progress. In just a few generations (or so) we went from the average man calling a certain physical (i.e., real) place home, and neither intending to nor actually leaving that place, to a significant chunk of children leaving their homes for foreign climes for school and considering virtually the entire world as a potential place to live — at least for a time. Such great progress in such a short amount of time.
What need of there is ‘neighbor’ when one has ‘humanity’? We do not need to reject commands — ‘love your neighbor’ — if we simply redefine the terms.
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape