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I use reddit a lot. Have done for years. I find it particularly useful for tips and tricks regarding WordPress blogging software, train travel, the elimination of plastic in everyday life and generally stupid questions about Paris. One subreddit I particularly enjoy is called r/fuckcars.
It mostly discusses things from a non-car centric point of view, pointing out how there are people who devote their entire lives to moving from one thing to another, always in their cars. They are the so-called, Carbrains of this world. People who cannot exist outside their mode of transport.
Anyway, the other day I read about a young American man who wrote to say that he walks from his place of abode to the closest shop in order to buy his groceries. It takes him, he said, 17 minutes. He added that he has a car but doesn’t use it when he doesn’t have to.
He added that he was American but, for the sake of this post, it doesn’t really matter. The world is full of the Carbrained.
So, this fellow is happily returning from the shop when he is tooted by a car. He stops and looks. It is his aunt who frantically gestures him over. She is concerned for him. Is his car out of action? Is he possessed? Why is he out in the open like that?
She also offered him a lift home which he accepted merely in order to let her know that 17 minutes isn’t very long, and he preferred to walk. She was shocked, to say the least. I can only assume that she thought he was having a reductive mental interlude and wondered whether she should rush him to his therapist.
Having read this, I thought about it for a bit then came to the conclusion that, the last 3.2 million years have been completely wasted on some people. Let me explain…*
Imagine the Rift Valley, tall grasses as far as the eye can see, especially when the eye is a long way down given it belongs to an australopithecine. Suddenly, this particular australopithecine (let’s call her Lucy) hears something. She can’t see much but, if she tries really hard and lifts her head high enough, she can see across the top of the grass.
She sees something heading towards her and manages to avoid whatever it is by side stepping out of the way. Lucy quickly realises what an advantage it is to be bipedal.
She practices long and hard, lifting herself, tentatively making longer and longer strides, punching trees with her primitive, delicate fists, crossing rivers with her developing upper limbs that she started calling arms, raised above her head. It took a while and fair few evolutionary steps but, eventually, the descendants of Lucy managed to walk upright, unaided.
It was a long journey that still hasn’t really finished. Yet, for some people, being bipedal is not an advantage; their ability to walk on two legs, keeping their hands free so they can look at their smartphones at the same time as they are walking is wasted on them. In an amazing display of devolution, they prefer to go about on all fours. Or, four wheels.
And now, as I read about people who never leave the front seat of their car, I feel sorry for Lucy, all those years ago, starting something so her descendants could be free to walk on two legs. What a waste.
Not that there were any cars for me today. Nope, I managed to walk upright to the shops then two thirds of the way up Mount Trosa today without the need for wheels.
Okay, my walking stick helped a lot which, I guess makes me tripedal.
* It appears that my knowledge has been surpassed by science. The earliest signs of bipedalism has been pushed back to around 12 million years now, long before either Hominids or Lucy.
