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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 561
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WCL 561 June 2007
Ideal world citizen locomotion
One strong contender for the ideal form of transport for world citizens must be cycling. Bicycles do not pollute with harmful toxins nor even with noise. Cycling is less gradual than walking, less bumpy than riding on camel or horse-back. Speed may, within limits, be adjusted to the needs and whims of the cyclist. And it is healthy, recommended highly by those physicians who have examined the question in detail. Perhaps only swimming can compare with these advantages but roads are much more likely to be available for reaching desired destinations than a suitable water-course.
There is a respectable pedigree to cycling world citizenship: in many resects H.G.Wells, one of the giants amongst past world citizens, was born in time to be one of the early cyclists. Not only did he become a regular and enthusiastic cyclist, but he did much more. In his classic 19th century novels, such as The History of Mr. Polly, Kipps and Tono-Bungay, his heroes were inevitably cyclists and in The Wheels of Chance Wells wrote the classic cycling novel, composed in and for the people of the golden days of the sport and pastime.
So much for the mainly positive side of cycling. What of the negative? That is to say the negative side of not cycling, of the alternative ways of transport that we indulge in to excess and that world citizens would do well to restrict or restrain for the sake of humankind. We are in danger of rushing into a future by means of modern transport that will deliver us, more or less, helpless and hapless victims of our own scientific power.
Have industrial transportation systems done the human race much good? Some inventions, such as submarines, have had almost entirely evil effects. Others, such as aeroplanes, have enabled us to travel much faster and further than ever before but particularly to kill more of our brothers and sisters, more quickly than ever before. The consequences of such rapid and dangerous travel, even for peaceful purposes, have been enormous: one private place after another has become public, usually to its own detriment and many of them have effectively been transformed or destroyed. Nor, with population numbers still rising exponentially, is there any sign of improvement.
More money, but neither more peace, more safety, nor more happiness, have resulted. The internal combustion engine, installed in motor-cars and available for easy individual travel, has proved a most seductive devourer, first of victims of speed and other causes of fatal accidents and then of villages and ancient towns. Whole countries have become hostage to the cars, trucks and other motorized vehicles that flood through towns and cities. The later consequences, with the quest for oil that powers the engines, have culminated in war after war and are bidding fair to bring us into another and even greater global conflict.
Would bicycle travel do anything of this sort? And even at this late hour, we can see that shifting individual travel in large measure from oil-powered vehicles to human-powered bicycles would have immensely beneficial effects. The examples of a few countries, like the Netherlands and pre-capitalist China, have shown how successful such policies can be. A human world, rendered fit for world citizens instead of nationalist zombies, would be well advised to turn back to the gentler and more pacific cycling.
All this leaves unsaid what for many is the greatest of all arguments for cycling - sheer pleasure. World citizens seek a world in which human beings can enjoy life, not deny it in pursuit of power. Cycling is one of the purest ways of transport for giving and getting pleasure, from the exultation coming from freewheeling down long hills, to the easy happiness of a simple traversing of flat terrain on a sunlit day. A heady push against a stiff breeze and even climbing to a mountain pass can give immense pleasure, sometimes greater in retrospect than in the doing of it. And as for rain ... life cannot exist without water. Every day must have a little rain.
John Roberts
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