Believe it or not, this is the best time to be alive

[hunter]

34. Ugh. I loathe automobiles and airline travel...

... resenting every moment I've wasted driving, or flying trapped in a pressurized aluminum cigar tube hurtling through the upper atmosphere at 450 m.p.h..

When my wife and I met we were both Los Angeles commuters. By some planning and greater good fortune we've avoided that hideous lifestyle since the mid 'eighties.

I resent the fact that I'm not considered adult in many communities unless I have a car and a driver's license.

My own car, (yes I'm a bit of a hypocrite, I feel compelled by community standards to have one) is a big "FUCK YOU" to our automobile culture. The only parts of the car I wash are the windows and mirrors and occasionally the headlights, and I don't repair anything that's merely decorative.

I'd like to live in a culture where people always have time to enjoy the ride. The only vehicles that really need to go fast are ambulances and fire trucks. (In my experience the cops always arrive after the shooting is over, unless of course they are the ones shooting. And I'm always amazed that some people live in communities where the cops will show up for things like minor fender-benders, vandalism, or burglaries.)

My favorite forms of transportation are walking, sailing, and trains that go slow enough that you can open the windows in nice weather without annoying the other passengers. Bicycles I don't like so much because I am a bit of a klutz, with scars. My sister rode her bike across the U.S.A. once, from Southern California to Long Island. She's got a better idea of the actual scale of the continental U.S.A. than most U.S. Americans. The longest trip I've made on bicycle was about 70 miles. I've taken longer walks. Both my sister and I have crossed the Atlantic on slower ships.

I make my own sodas, and I make my own ales, which I don't sell to Spaniards or anyone else.

I'm probably some kind of dumpster-diving neo-Luddite. My idea of fun is finding a broken laptop, repairing it, replacing the hard drive with an SD card, and installing Debian on it. My last major "desktop" computer purchase was a Raspberry Pi, for $35.

What you are describing is still a high energy economy. I'm personally hoping we humans, as we are, never get clean cheap fusion energy to work because then we would literally eat the entire biosphere.