My
student asked me: Why don't you have a car?
---You
are a teacher after all.
And I
was stunned,
speechless,
almost
embarrassed.
Thoughts
tumbled through my mind,
and I
suppressed annoyance at the simplicity of the question.
And,
so,
I
began to explain the expenses involved in owning a car.
Instead
of saying that I don't want to be a contributor to climate
destruction,
which
is what I think.
Instead
of saying that I cannot understand how anyone today can innocently
ask
such a question.
But
later I thought,
that
this was so terribly capitalist:
seeking
individual solutions for a social problem,
because
there is money to make public transport comfortable,
to
make buses or trams or trains frequent,
and
un-crowded.
And I
also thought of the remark Chomsky once made,
that
smoking cigarettes is,
today,
in the
USA,
the
prerogative of those who work in the offices of the universities,
while
students are largely tobacco-free.
And I
saw my student had something in common with
an
office worker in the Land of the Free,
standing
outside in the cold,
working
hard to ingest enough of the drug,
before
she returned to her boring job.
We are all trying to squeeze something out of life,
but,
in the meantime,
we are being squeezed,
twisted,
brought into line,
the life wrung out of us every day.
We are all trying to squeeze something out of life,
but,
in the meantime,
we are being squeezed,
twisted,
brought into line,
the life wrung out of us every day.
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