You can never behave freely by your own design, even if that would best serve your interests, or resign to get off grid entirely. Might as well amass facts, report issues, and shame blameworthy. Messages to forgive self and seek comforts in consumerism hold appeal, though only happiness you’ll ever possess comes from helping those who have less. Grabbers and harassers later regret transgressions once plurality comes full circle. You can’t outrun evil you do forever. Desires among those you deprive drive a desperate divide from which you can’t hide.
Don’t expect Clark Kent or Lois Lane to settle score; step up yourself or suffer losses. Heroic alien and maverick scout, neither met dealings so corrupt that journalism itself lost clout. Lois was never taken seriously, even as a fictional character, too slow to recognize Clark was Superman in disguise. Neither will you be, despite jumping through hoops of logic online like a nazi corgi until you break free. Must have patience, neither succumb to fatigue nor try to match blitzkrieg of agitprop traitors, drug dealers, tax collectors, and weather tormentors through April Fool’s, Albert's Bicycle, Fees Due, and Frost Free Days.
Don't know what the mean planetary biological speed per capita might be. Can’t imagine it was ever estimated. Algae, bacteria, fungi, plant life forms, single celled organisms, and viruses only coast along with medium, don’t individually propel themselves, or simply stay put, but when factored in would astronomically slow rate overall, since they account for largest biomass on planet. Oceans account for 80% of life on Earth. Amoeba, certain bugs, paramecium, and the like move very slowly. Entomologists estimate 10 quadrillion individual insects, many ants and beetles, though numbers and species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Inchworms and snails seem speedy versus an average thus derived.
By the time you move up food chain to birds, lizards, and vertebrates excluding humans, you get bursts up to 70 mph (cheetah) on land, and 150 mph (peregrine falcon) in aerial dive. Despite this range, 0 to 150 mph, averaged among a quintillion organisms, mean probably wouldn’t exceed one inch per hour, about 0.0000158 mph.
Riding at 11.0000000 mph, average among planet’s one billion bicyclists given bad roads and steep hills, you notice rust breasted robins and some flying insects match your speed, pass you outright, and remind it’s time to wash off winter and wax your steel steed. Competing with drivers up to 5 times faster, same creatures become road kill and windshield splat. Without motors, bicyclists go as fast as dogs, horses or other organisms, so move harmlessly amidst nature and stay ecologically safe in contrast.
Your walking gait, a mere 3 mph, makes for an easy target. Bicycling multiplies that between 3 to 11 times, so closer to overall motoring speed of 25 mph, given traffic competition and controls in cities. Racing on empty highways tops out at 60 times faster, though land speed record under highly controlled conditions is currently Mach 1.02, ~763 mph. Aviation lifts off where salt flat limits, then rises beyond Mach 5, where space flight launches up to escape velocity, ~25,000 mph, 7 miles/second, the top speed any human has ever travelled. In practicality, to reach another planet would take at least 10 times that. Solar wind, should you successfully harness it, would do at 1,000,000 mph. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached 433,000 mph. Solar power has its uses after all; panels and windmills don’t cause cancer, but petroleum fuels surely do, in fact, its chief cause alongside cars, cigarettes and coal.
Buzz of engines and hiss of tires threaten violence to bicyclists pedaling slowly in relative silence. Even worse, trucks drag chains, a reckless habit which apparently causes wildfires according to US Forest Service, though probably not as many as flicking lit cigarette butts out car windows. Thoughtless behaviors a root cause, who considers consequences of billions of dollars in lumber lost, carbon released to atmosphere, firefighter deaths, habitat destruction, and species extinctions? Automotive convenience and impatience not only kill, but result in net losses over hours gained. Are you willing to pay big and risk lives just to avoid an earlier start? What’s your hurry?
Nation’s sixty million cyclists ought to unify against automotive plurality. Rude drivers edge pass then squeeze against curb to keep cyclists from passing them, as if saying, “If I can’t go, neither can you.” Race past to sit in next traffic knot, yet worry about having a cyclist ahead? Bicyclists are never in your way, virtually never injure anyone except selves. Just the opposite, motorists are road hogs and sole threat to all other road users. They chose a wide conveyance that creates its own obstacles, unlike shoulder-width cyclists who’ve sacrificed speed for slip through sweet deliverance. Says something about disrespect for code designed to protect, not restrict, bodies who propel self. Instead, pass cars on left, or use sidewalk when necessary. Horsepower corrupts; horse's asses in high performance hot rods, transportation aberrations, have been corrupted absolutely.
Focus is on blame whenever a writer uses “you”. “We” means “I” assume some of your culpability. When blameless, neither “I” nor “we” is appropriate. YOU ought to be harmless, drive right, repent ways, straighten up, take responsibility. All this precludes creeping along in passing lane, speeding past in slowest lane, and weaving across every lane. Road design and traffic flow set a narrow range of low/high limits; violators who endanger everyone drive as if inviolably entitled to sling an iron ton on one's own kamikaze run. Unwelcome automation tries to control such fools who abuse rules.
Society’s plea for political correctness, deeming no one blameless, instead enables offenders and sticks it to law abiders. Policies and regulations that defend right wing posturing yet hold professors and students hostage for imaginary hate speech and possible minority slurs serve conservatives to discredit reporters, restrict individuals, and stifle opposition. Movements can be impeded but not stopped. Speed of change matches how many and much state oppresses.
Incompetents think their demands exist in a vacuum, unaffected by rat race of rival requests. For your part, to fulfill duties with efficient skill has never been enough or even sensible. You're supposed to absorb abuse, shut up, suck up, and take no credit. You, lowly serf with eyes averted, ask for nothing, die on cue, and provide those of higher status with a human shield or spare body parts. Whose wet dream do you serve? Go home, eat dinner, police own yard of debris from neighbor's neglected dump, and prepare for another day of indentured drudgery. Neither refuse to give blood nor stop for lunch, because a thousand applicants with no clue want your spot though you’re drained of blood, sweat and tears a lot.
Setting an efficient precedent condemns self to a personal hell, limits chances of help, sanctions them to drive you until burn out, and satisfies their schadenfreude while you sizzle and squirm under undeserved pressure. Your abilities, achievements, client relationships, job training, and track record are meaningless to bosses who possess none. You're a headcount filler, salary liability, short timer, substitute performer until nephew finishes school. When you handle every emergency and impossible deadline, you perturb managers, who set you up to fail and want you to quit once crushed so avoid pittance of unemployment insurance.
Speed - key to a profane trinity including price and quality - meets everyone's baseline but yours. Yet clients must forfeit one, never get all three, so cheap garbage and sloppy pretexts prevail. Haste leads directly to fatalities, injuries, losses, and waste, but who cares as long as profits accrue? Mankind’s future and your wellbeing don't matter. Leaders debate why planes crash and suicides occur, justify expressways and plutocracies, and lavish taxes they collect from you on privileges in which you’ll never participate. Those they hurry, prod and whip get ever further behind until crises climax, heads roll, and innocents get blamed. When camel they rode pell mell dies in center of desert, so will they; small compensation, some might say.
“We can roll all night. Oh, Slow Ride. Take it easy. Slow down, go down, got to get your lovin' one more time. Hold me, roll me, slow ridin' woman, you're so fine... Slow ride, easy.” - Dave Peverett, Foghat, Fool for the City (1975)
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