us have not known someone who was killed or seriously injured in an auto accident, we relegate this unpleasant reality about the automobile to some nether portion of our consciousness.
The auto executives are probably telling the truth—though a far more complicated and less honorable truth than they would have us believe—when they say that most Americans “don’t want” changes in cars that could make them safer at the cost of higher prices or less “convenience.” Indeed, even the simple expedient of using seat belts and shoulder harnesses is resisted. Though such devices enormously reduce the risk of death or serious injury, it is estimated that they are used by only 15% of drivers.10 This degree of disregard for the most basic kind of protection against being maimed or killed speaks poignantly to the fantasies of invulnerability associated with the automobile and to our need to feel that we are unconstrained.
Cars are also, of course, a major source of air pollution. Here again, we use psychological mechanisms of denial and refuse to really take into account what we have wrought. Consider: In New York City the level of carbon monoxide in the blood of most taxi drivers is so high it cannot be used for transfusions to people with heart ailments.11 When problems of pollution are brought to our attention, we deal with the issue in the language of “tradeoffs.” We have become used to hearing a familiar litany: No one can live free of risks; life spent continually in fear of consequences is dull and not worth living; America wasn’t built by frightened, cautious men; we need to try to reduce pollution, but we must be “reasonable”; pollution control, after all, is expensive, and someone is going to have to pay for it; a certain amount of pollution is a price we are willing to pay for the personal and economic benefits the automobile provides.
These arguments are not entirely without merit. In the abstract they make a fair amount of sense. But are the actual benefits really as great as we are accustomed to thinking they are? Are they enough to justify the very real risks to health, life, and limb for ourselves and our children?
To ride along a pristine country road on a beautiful spring day certainly is a pleasure, and one worth taking a certain risk to enjoy. A slightly longer life devoid of experiences of this kind may well seem not particularly attractive to many people. But is that what the bulk of our driving consists of? Or is it commuting to work along the Long Island Expressway, New Jersey Turnpike, or San Diego Freeway, stopping and starting and crawling along, breathing the fumes of the car in front; or driving along the “strips” that devour our landscape, stopping at traffic lights, assaulted by ugliness and, again, crawling along like thousands of other drivers, each wishing the others weren’t there? Is such a commute so much more pleasurable than a comfortable train or bus? Is that worth endangering your children’s lungs? And isn’t that what most driving—especially most commuting—really is?
We nurture a sense or illusion of freedom that overrides the daily reality. Most days we do not “trade off’ pollution and the risk of accident for a freer, experientially richer life; we trade these off for still another tradeoff, the daily grind on the expressway, another faulty compromise that mocks the supposed rationality of our decision-making. We eat gruel all week and tell ourselves it’s dessert.
It can be argued, of course, that the transportation alternative I am implying doesn’t exist in most places. Mass transit is often unreliable, uncomfortable, or not conveniently accessible. And even where it suits the needs of commuters, it is often not suitable for shopping. All this is true (though often exaggerated). Later I shall consider some of the social and psychological processes responsible for the poverty of choices we face, as well as some alternatives that might potentially be available. For now, though, I simply want to call attention to the difference between our image of the car in our lives (sometimes fulfilled on certain glorious days) and the reality of the daily commute that accounts for so many of our driving miles.*
Tons of Cotton Candy
Compared to the automobile, the mixed blessings of most of the other products of our industrial cornucopia are more subtle. Most other products do not so dramatically dominate our lives. They seem not to have the negative equivalent of traffic jams, and they don’t pollute as obviously as the automobile does, where smoke comes out the exhaust as we use it.
Of course, our panoply of consumer items and the way of life associated with it are in fact responsible for a great deal of pollution—for emissions into the air from the factories that build the items and from the electric generating plants that later supply the energy to run many of them; for toxic chemicals spewed into the soil and water in the process of manufacturing; for environmental degradation associated with the disposal of plastics and the broader problem of waste disposal resulting from the hesitance to recycle which is part of our “consumer convenience” psychology. We are not really the “postindustrial” society we are sometimes made out to be. If we were, we wouldn’t have the kind of pollution problems we do. To be sure, we put a greater portion of our effort and income into services than previously. But we are still a people preoccupied with products, and the state of our lungs and livers clearly reflects this.
If we probe further, we find that the pollution properly attributable to any particular consumer item is not limited to that which results from its own manufacture, use, and disposal; it includes as well an effect on how we manufacture other items: By seeking to maximize goods rather than other amenities such as leisure or clean air, we are required to manufacture each item in the cheapest way—that is, the way that leaves the maximum amount of money available for other purchases. If we imposed stricter environmental protection laws and backed them up with stricter enforcement, this would indeed “cost” us something; the price of the items involved would go up, and less would be available to buy other things. In choosing to aim for a large number of these “other” things, we are also ipso facto manufacturing many basic items in a less pollution-free way than we otherwise might. The new computer gadget may be relatively nonpolluting, but—implicitly but powerfully—we permit the manufacturers of other things to dump more into the air, water, and soil in order to have the money left over to buy it. The larger the array of consumer goods we aim for—and there is inevitably an implicit societal decision in this regard even if most of the manufacturing and buying is done privately—the more pollution we are almost certain to permit in the manufacture of each.
But again, these are the tradeoffs we claim to be making rationally and boldly in the pursuit of pleasure. Whereas for automobiles alternatives can readily be imagined that are potentially more pleasant for many purposes,* it is harder to make a similar case, based on clear experiential negatives, for stereo systems, video games, color TVs, boats, campers, air conditioners, and so on. There are no obvious equivalents of traffic jams here. These all seem to be rather pure plusses in experiential terms—leaving aside for the moment the effects of pollution, waste disposal, and the rest. To question them as real benefits, as something of genuine value to us, seems absurd at first.
But there is an odd phenomenon accompanying the accumulation of these goods. One might label it “the fallacy of the individual commodity.” Somehow, as we examine the experiential impact of all our acquisitions, we discover that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Each individual item seems to us to bring an increase in happiness or satisfaction. But the individual increments melt like cotton candy when you try to add them up. We are not any happier as a nation now than we were twenty-five years ago, despite having a good deal more of “the good things of life.” This is attested to in a number of ways.
For one thing, surveys taken at various times of people’s subjective sense of well-being do not show an increase over time corresponding to the increase in material possessions and comforts. Indeed, a higher proportion of Americans reported being “very happy” in 1957 than at any time in the next twenty years—despite a generally rising “standard of living” in the terms measured by economists.12
These findings for different time periods are paralleled by the results of a major cross-sectional
