NOTHING ISn't NOTHING

trickster highways

RAB 0018922

The purpose of this essay is to explore and link between the trickster perspective and a specific social movement of local politics. The term "trickster hermeneutics" of Gerald Vizenor is chosen to keep the scope reasonable and to stay on topic for this Introduction to Cultural Theory course. The political movement is the opposition to highway expansion, specifically towards the mega-project Gateway expansion in the Lower Mainland. The structure of this essay is to wobble back and forth between the good and the bad. In between, readers will find their own direction that is the way forward? Or, beyond progress, a sustainable path: are permanently useful roads possible?

Projecting Gates

The Gateway expansion is a plan to widen the Highway #1 from nearly Langley - straight through - to East Vancouver. It involves the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge (that is making a twin version of the bridge to double the lanes). The architects of the plan concede that it will not dramatically improved regular automobile traffic flow. It is being built primarily to facilitate container truck traffic to the Port of Vancouver. That is where the "Gateway [to the Pacific]" part comes in. The thing unsaid by the planners is the timing of this project. It is related to the 2010 Olympic Whistler Games. I see the Eagle Ridge roadwork, the plan to dynamite a more convenient pathway through West Vancouver to Whistler, as part of the same project. It is also the same project as the RAV (Richmond Airport Vancouver) Skytrain line. The bureaucrats do not see it that way. They would like these surprisingly similar mega-projects to be grouped separately so that dissent and division against them is muted and divided.

The common thread is that these are mega-projects related to the "world class city" idea of the Olympics. These are going ahead despite local popular will. All of these are billed as major transportation infrastructure upgrades. Yet, none address the primary cause of our transportation problems: the private automobile. All of these projects fly in the face of environmental studies and recommendations made by the adopted GVRD policy, the Liveable Region Strategic Transportation Plan (LRSP). The highway expansions do nothing to provide alternatives to the private automobile. The RAV Skytrain project is considered the least effective and most expensive of the recommended alternatives. It was chosen because it does not displace automobile capacity, as would cheaper streetcars as LRSP recommends. In fact, the LRSP is being edited from history to suit the current government agenda of expansion. The plan is ignored and summarised differently now, the GVRD website newly features a container truck image above the document. (GVRD)

The plan is to spend about $4 billion dollars or so. I don't know the exact figure. The Gateway Project in the Lower Mainland is supposed to be $2 billion and $1 billion for the rest of BC (highway expansion in the interior I would oppose if I knew more about it). The money for West Vancouver and the RAV, another $2 billion combined. Overall, it's probably more than $4 bazillion for my definition of the Lower Mainland "Gateway" mega-projects. One big pot of gold at the end of the freeway, drive-thru only!

Huge financial figures are absurd. $4 billion dollars divided by roughly 1.5 million people is about $2666.66 each. That's five pretty decent bicycles each! In 2000 there were about 1,172,866 licensed cars in Greater Vancouver and the rate of increase was approximately 63 cars/day. Since then, the rate of car ownership expansion has dropped slightly to an increase of only about 50cars/day presently. That's very roughly a subsidy of $3000/car. The thing about cars is that if you count 50 cars you are only counting 51 people. That's a lot more steel moving capacity than warm bodies.

It's an expensive project no matter what, and these things go over budget as a matter of course. Have you heard the one about the government project completed on time and under budget? Me neither.

It may be privately completed using a Public Private Partnership (P3) as is the political correctness of our time. The RAV is already being built P3, and there are corruption issues suggested in that case already. Private cars on privatised roads for privatised people. Even if they do put a toll booth on the Port Mann Bridge, as proposed, it will probably generate an amount roughly equivalent to the interest on the $2 billion debt (My own rough calculation based on current low interest rates). The costs of road maintenance may not even be covered. Certainly, the intangible costs like environmental consequences and increased health burden will not be accounted for. And, as studies show very clearly, increasing road capacity increases overall car traffic, especially trips that could be taken by modes other than automobiles (Alvord 42). Newly constructed highways in the USA tend to get full up with new traffic congestion in about as long as it takes to build them: 3 to 4 years building, 3 to 4 years before capacity. Then, back to the same gridlock. Onward Progress!

Local Politics

Some, in my community, are too exclusive, wanting toll booths. They want roads catering to private automobile traffic to be taxed with such a user fee in order to disincentive driving. While I follow their economic logic, I think it can make enemies. People see cars as an extension of themselves and their freedom. They find such mobility controls to be Orwellian. By itself this is not much of a solution.

Traditions of Trickster Hermeneutics

Trickster Hermeneutics is a system of looking at the world from a different paradigm, one that has emerged from indigenous cultures rather than originating from occidental settler cultures. Gerald Vizenor describes his theory of this in his essay, "Manifest Manners." However, trickster mythologies are in fact a worldwide phenomenon, often associated with indigenous and folk beliefs. From Japan, the Kappa (cucumber) is associated with a trickster gendershifting creature with power over life and water. Hiromi Goto wrote an excellent novel entitled Kappa Child that explores this theme in the Canadian Prairie. European folk stories, too, display versions of tricksters. The narrator Puck of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream is a version of these folk myths translating even into the "highest" Anglo-Saxon colonial culture.

Vizenor's theory is one of survivance (survival + resistance) in the face of a history of colonisation and genocide of aboriginal cultures. He proposes a break with the Imaginary Indian to live as Postindians. Postindian Warriors! He talks about the dominant culture as "Manifest Manners," a deliberate wordplay on the American imperial decree of Manifest Destiny. He looks at the power of humour to reveal truth. A truth of the moment or a long-standing underlying truth? He employs pastiche, to reveal the facade of the myth of the tragic noble savage / evil primitive savage binary. The truth in humour originates in the tribal consciousness, which is something hard to replace. He also focuses on the role of silence in revealing truth. He distinguishes between simulation of authenticity and feigning in humour, to dissimulate and reveal truth.

connection

The reason I associated this disparate consciousness with this desperate social movement is because I think that one has to teach the other a lot. In fighting the good fight, activists may fall into the trap of viewing the world by the same paradigm as their opponents. From within the hegemony, it may not really be possible to win in such a world that is owned by the capitalist captains of Western expansion.

Expansion is a never-ending theme in The West. The American Frontier Thesis (Turner's Frontier Thesis) noted this 100 years ago. The novel and movie, about modern business ideology: The Corporation (Bakan), describes a similar unquenchable thirst for new frontiers of expansion.

trouble and problems

This is a difficult topic because I am writing about what I wish I had the power to change and I do not. I wonder if writing will sap my energy or if it will help me to act? Tricksterism comes from oral cultures.

The Gateway Project expansion could become an us-against-them issue: fighting the Goliath. Provincial and Federal Governments are unified to ignore the opposition of the municipalities and the citizens. This project is justified by an abstract greater good of economic benefit. My opposition is motivated by a visceral reaction to the prevalence of automobiles dominating my life, and the wish to not see that proliferate further.

The money spent, the act of building this freeway, and the once built impact, will make alternatives hard. Alternatives that we all agree we need for more universal mobility, such as bicycle infrastructure, pedestrian safety and public transit. These will be near nigh impossible. I won't say impossible because nothing is. If we lose this one I'm going to have to try and promote bicycles afterwards anyway. Four billion dollars and who knows how many tons of moving steel boxes with only one passenger each! When will it end?
me

I'm straightish white-ish male-ish - Anglican by birth. My appropriation of the pedagogy of the oppressed, as I see it, in trickster hermeneutics is quite a risky proposition. I don't believe in copyright and these cultures have a heritage that, arguably, is founded on intellectual private property values. Am I liberating these ideas, using them as radically as I am? Or, am I taking them into my own, owning them, usurping them, extending colonialism into entirely new realms? Maybe I'm wrong about lots of things and oppressing the NDN with his semi-truck in ironic ways?

No, I can be a trickster too. I've grown up influenced by idealising irreverent comedians such as Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Bill Hicks and CBC's Dead Dog Cafe. I try to blur boundaries. I try to do that with my Art. Only racist ideologies define people so exclusively according to genetic heritage. I've read some NDNs or Post-NDNs, and know a few.

bicycles

As an urban cyclist, I get the self-righteous penchant. Cars are a real physical reality to me and a threat to my life. However, I have a choice more than others, or do I? Our capitalist society often dismisses oppression in the name of justifiable economic privilege. I choose to ride a bike because I firmly believe it is responsible, on many levels, and is beneficial to all around me in comparison to driving. Riding a bicycle is actually safer to the rider than being the driver of a car, according to traffic statistics (Ross D. Petty). It doesn't always feel like this and statistics do not protect individuals.

stupid cars

The central issue of this topic is one close to my heart as a cyclist: car culture and car ideology. Cars are seen as inevitable and necessary in everyday life. They are marketed (with a little irony) as the product that will bring sex and freedom to the individual. Cars have become such an accepted part of everyday life that questioning the need for highway expansion is a kind of heresy.

The idea that must be attacked is the idea that the automobile is free and sexy, necessary and inevitable. However, as our society has become under surveillance and social control, the ironic myth of freedom via car is a panacea for some that they can't give up. We need to collectively offer alternatives like trains, blimps, boats, bikes, busses and walking in serious supply. These things need to take on the righteous right-of-way that cars now own and the government needs to back that. "Government must help to eliminate cars so that bicycles can help to eliminate government." - Anonymous (Dutch anarchist slogan from the 1960s).

People get killed on highways. Death is real, or is it unreal and broken in Western Christian theology? The repercussions are real, but cars as a sign are well insulated by the simulation of safety. Even if cars are the leading cause of death in Canada for people in my age group, people are not afraid of them. Safety concerns like this are a big taboo. UBC recently did a study to see how they could make survivors of automobile trauma feel more comfortable driving again. Such a goal of this obviously dangerous experimental medical prescription is not questioned.

I'm going to need to explain where I'm coming from in my thorough rejection of the highway, the automobile, and all it represents. Just saying the Autobahn was Hitler's Fordist fantasy is not enough. There are social impacts, health impacts, community impacts, physical impacts! Local problems, global, environmental, air, economy, climate change... Often, I feel like a broken record. Cars make it rain more often on the weekends (Alvord 74). Many people nowadays feel a loving dependence with their automobiles, they think driving is a kind of human right. It's called a "freeway" for a reason. The signified is the illusion of freedom. One could write plenty books about this. I've been casually and not so casually studying the issue non-stop since about 1998. My own convictions are far too deep in this matter to explain in any essay, let alone one that tries to go on from there to application with a unappreciated philosophy.

I think car drivers are trapped. The ideology of automobilia is deep and a paradigm of the most deceptive sort. I've experienced car fetishism. It has taken years to free myself of the personal habits of the hegemony and believe me - it's real work! However, unless there is a collective understanding of these sort of contrary values my efforts become hopeless and lost. I would be nowhere without the support of my cycling communities, I would be isolated and alone. The tribal context is imperative.

Evil?

This is absurd, but, I'll say it now so I can understand it better. I think the never-ending car worship and highway expansion are evil. With this essay I am comparing myself, or rather my perspective on the highway, with the relationship of the NDNs to the settler invasion and colonialism. A very bizarre kind of parallel. Survivance requires that we not get too dramatic, we stay comic and maintain the power of the trickster (Comedy versus Tragedy). This is a double edged sword for it makes our logic more difficult because if we don't see things as black and white we must also see the upsides to highway expansion, and apparently, therefore also colonial conquest.

...The Indians had a legend
The Spaniards lived for gold
The white man came and killed them
But they haven't really gone

We live in the city of dreams
We drive on the highway of fire
Should we awake
And find it gone
Remember this, our favourite town...
- from City of Dreams, Talking Heads.

That sounds horrid, but in real life it is a lot easier than that. The ideas of colonialism, as highway, are merely symbols, and the reality does not resemble the absolute sign. If we step away from the evil parts we see that what brings the highway is a desire for improvement and development, just as a desire for improvement and expansion fuelled colonialism. Still, it is a scary force. It is close to causing erasure and genocide. The expansionist desire causes ecocide. We are not unsure about opposition to conquest, nor are we unsure about opposition to more pavement where none is needed. We don't need to accept clear evils, but we do need to be understanding of the people behind them. Expansionist idealism, mistaken as it may be, is in all of us.

Survivance

There is a real underground. It is where survivance lives. It is not a place, you cannot stay there. It is shared. It is not possible when you are alone, unless you are not really alone, and you are never alone. It lives in the joke. But, it moves on and away as soon as the joke becomes unfunny.
Resistance and survival - that is all we need. Survival is not enough but it is all they've got. Survivance is belief. Survival is total submission. Survivance is laughing. Survival is hate. Flexibility is a good thing. Survival is yet inflexible. You can only die from bending if it is too much - that you bend the memories right out of your head.

fight

I know we do have enemies to fight in this. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots." -- Henry David Thoreau.

On the other hand, dialogue and friends can get a lot more done than swimming up stream. I'm well aware that these are situations where people fight and that is the problem; becomes the problem. Sometimes it is worth fighting. Postindian warrior? I want to fight the evil menace. Is it possible? Or, do I create the evil by my contrary position. Many would see it that way, as I must first explain to them all the evils of the automobile, which may indeed be based on science, but nonetheless I create the evil in their minds and then ask them to fight it. For them it is easier to just not believe me.

"It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear." -- Thoreau.

Plus, I want to get into specifics. All this philosophising is hard for me to do with a straight face. Maybe it shouldn't be! I need to get out there and fight. Inform. Educate. Lock myself to bulldozers. Talk to mine enemies and show them the light?

So fight we must, as Postindian warriors. What little consolation and conclusion I have to offer is merely this. Do not fear the ambiguity and the in-between condition we find ourselves seemingly trapped in. It is actually a place of tricky strength. A place free from overwhelming binary logic: drive or die. No! Grow from this place and ride together. The fight is an idea we are fighting, not a people. Hopefully. That would be more constructive, productive fertile, fruitful.

cultural context

There is a culture already. There is this tricky thing called Critical Mass that rides every month, bicycles clotting up the commute on the last Friday of every month. Their tricky slogan is: "We are not blocking traffic, we are traffic." I've been helping to organise it since 1998. There was a car free commercial drive festival last year with thousands in attendance. (Commercial Drive Festival)

The academic world of city traffic planning has come to the unequivocal confusion, many years after their 1950s Interstate roadway expansion (planned directly on the Autobahn model for US military use), that building more and more roads is not the answer. As well, there are geeky groups that compile statistics and are eternally vigilant in their opposition to the automobile. Some of those groups don't like to break the law. But, these sentinels are determined.

There is a culture that challenges the primacy of the automobile. There is Car Busters Magazine, published by some friends of mine in Czech. However, these disparate strong willed individuals are a fairly isolated culture. They literally ride against traffic everyday - putting their bodies in the way of the wall of moving metal. Ambiguously of course, this is also the culture of old women cycling around town like they always have. Strength lies in unexpected places.

Inclusivity is important, that is what my universalism is about, not dictation. Inclusivity is what Leslie Feinberg is about, and I consider her quite a good trickster novelist. Inclusivity makes a good social movement. Sophisticated trickster ideology accepts difference. There are traditions of this. Frederick Douglas was a Feminist, but some feminist movements after him were still racist. A hard edged universal code of rights is not inclusive.

Some of the above groups are made up of the kind of individuals that are so strong willed - centred on the self - that they ride against the flow of traffic. The irony of building a group coalition from these disparate elements is obvious. As well, how do we include more of the mainstream? Sometimes rebels self define their differences and create the divisions on their own. However, as Leslie Feinberg quips to the truism about herding cats: "Haven't you ever heard of a can-opener?"

Silence. What's this bit about silence? I think it is about listening. Our chaotic simulacra is very noisy and I can't find that silence for direction. The tribe is not coherent enough yet. The tribe, is it a more primitive idea than a cosmopolitan culture? Certainly we make our illusion of it to be, the imaginary NDN savage myth. Certainly, it is not militarily safe from our form of government. I feel a community and support, personally. I wish the tribe were less silent most of the time.

Tricks

Where can we go when we do not have an easy cultural context to draw on, a place where a jokes about Hitler's Volkswagen Autobahn will be appreciated?

OK, Trickytricky: why not turn around the tricks of the government onto themselves. What are their tricks? The provincial government drew an "artists rendition" of the bridge with few cars and a pretty train (BC Government). The train is only a vague part of the plan that allows for such expansion 30 years from now. In political terms, 30 years is never; this is part of their simulation. So, could this simulation imagery be tricked into truth?

Education is often seen as one way of affecting change in social views. But, as education is
propaganda in some senses, the automobile industry is self funding and 12 steps ahead. Already, most car advertisements focus on the ecological sustainability of their 'green' brand of cars. Many cycling advocacy groups are focusing on School children.

There is a history in Vancouver of opposition to road building. Mary Lee Chan led a Strathcona protest against Freeway expansion in the 1960s. This story, despite being portrayed at the Vancouver Museum, is still relatively unknown. Mike Harcourt and COPE both emerged from this movement. However, the tradition has been lost and changed, new groups must re-invent. Tricksters like to make up things.

So, I don't have any tricks up my sleeve because the tradition is not so old. There is a - fairly recent - wealth of knowledge about road building opposition from England: tripods and locking yourself to bulldozers; roadblocks. However, such tactics rely on a certain morality of the opposition. I fear these non-violent tactics have become equated with selfish isolation in the mainstream simulation of dialogue. Are we willing to be hurt putting our bodies in the way, just to hope to prove a point? The everyday cyclist relies on the morality of the driver; most will yield rather than intentionally hurt pedestrians. The logic of the ISA dictates that opposing cars is opposing safety. The RSA follow this with violence against 'protesters.' In North America, where live the darlings of the open pavement, the intolerance is more pronounced than in Europe. Cities there have not been literally built around the automobile.

humour

This essay isn't very funny. So, here are some - almost relevant - jokes from the internet tribe. These can substitute for a coherent and laughter inducing conclusion! Tricksters don't always tie things up neatly, anyway. A conclusion is the ending, not the beginning of a movement.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
SOVEREIGN INDIAN: This is the Chickens inherent right as he is indigenous to this land!!!
MILITANT INDIAN: That chicken should block the road, not cross the road!!!
GRASSROOT INDIAN: If the darn chickens need to get across the road, let 'em cross the darn road!
COLONIZED INDIAN: Chiggens should never cross the roads that white men built before the great white father crosses it first. If the white father crosses it, it is good. We must then follow.
AMERICANIZED INDIAN: We must have roads. We must cross the roads that the white man built for us. We have to be thankful to the white man for this. I don't know why you Indians are always complaining. You embarrass us. Chickens are good for us.
REPUBLICAN INDIAN: It's true that that white man built those roads for us. We are merely chickens. We will always be chickens until we learn to build those roads ourselves - for profit.
DEMOCRATIC INDIAN: The chicken crossed the road because he didn't have enough funding.
TRADITIONAL INDIAN: Those chiggens weren't traditional because they were supposed to be on it - not crossing it!
INDIAN GRANDPA: I think he was runnin' away from rezidential school.
URBAN INDIAN: That chicken crossed the road 'cause it was a city, man. You know what I mean?
NEW AGE INDIAN: It was basically because of Jungian dream therapy, drumming, sweatlodges, my shaman, and long walks on the beach, near my beach house.
POW WOW INDIAN That chicken must have been heading to a 49!
EDUCATED INDIAN: I think it has to do with Einstein's theory which basically posits: "Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?"
REZ INDIAN: Whats a chicken?
IHS INDIAN: I really don't care why he crossed that road. We still aren't paying for no stinkin hospital bills.
BIA INDIAN: They crossed it because of CFR 49, Section 11299, gives them the authority to do so, under Department of Interior regulations, in the Executive Branch. They wrote a grant and we funded them. We are very proud of them.
KFC INDIAN: I'll take a leg, a thigh, with corn and potatoes. Extra Crispy, please.
TRIBAL INDIAN COUNCIL: The chicken crossed the road before we did? Fire his family!!!
CASINO INDIAN: That's my favorite slot!

----
A cowboy riding across the prairie came upon an Indian laying on a wagon trail with his ear to the ground. The Indian said, "Covered wagon pulled by a team of four horses. One bay, one black and two grey. The driver had curly red hair with a beard and his wife wore a blue dress and bonnet.
"The cowboy said, "That's amazing. You mean you can tell all that just by laying on the ground with your ear on the trail?"

The Indian replied, "No, they ran me over an half an hour ago."

----
Thinking about cars and global climate change:

It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be .

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.

But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea.
He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"

"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,," the
Meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared.

One week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" he asked.

"Yes," the man at the National Weather Service again replied, "It's going to be a very cold winter."

The Chief went back to his people again and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find.

Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"

"Absolutely," the man replied. "It looks like it's going to be one of
the coldest winters ever."

"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.

"Well" the weatherman replied, "the Indians are collecting firewood like crazy!!"

(These come from http://www.littlecrowtradingpost.com/pagejokes.htm and http://www.funnypart.com/funny_jokes/coldwintercoming.shtml)