02 February 2011

"You are not stuck in traffic You are traffic."

I noted this down from a bus a few weeks back meaning to post it. Well, I finally got round to it
The reason it struck me was first the astute observation which exposes a persistent problem we have as humans -or at least the post-Enlightenment version of us: we tend to think of ourselves over-against other things. We forget that we are part of the systems we 'observe'; we objectify them and then cannot deal with the problems or issues that arise because we fail to notice that we are actually part of the problem. We are always trying to fix 'out there' -rarely 'in here'. Interestingly, Boulton's God against Religion' notes (following Karl Barth) that this kind of 'disengagement' seems to be the characteristic move, with regard to God, of the Fall.

The other reason I 'liked' the advert was that there seemed a hint of irony about it: 'you are traffic -go and be traffic somewhere else'; the phrase might actually be read to be rather more a call to get out of the traffic participation 'game' in the first place.
"You are not stuck in traffic You are traffic." Spo... on Twitpic

1 comment:

Rev R Marszalek said...

I like this post, as did James McGrath

"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"

 I got a response from my MP which got me kind of mad. You'll see why as I reproduce it here. Apologies for the strange changes in types...