What's with the title of this blog?

First and foremost, why am I "The Pedestrian?"

There is one answer to this question, with a few reasons behind it. First of all, I should say that I'm not a "purist" when it comes to my title. I benefit mightily from the presence of Uber and Enterprise in my area, which allow me not to own a car myself. I don't seek to remedy that situation, though, so I've judged myself worthy of my chosen name.

The answer to the question above is that I am "The Pedestrian" simply because I do not own a car. I have a few reasons for this state.

Firstly, I graduated college last May, and currently enjoy a fair amount of student debt. This debt is nowhere close to crippling, or even burdensome, but it still leaves me in the hole to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars. Since that's so tiny, compared to most collegiate post-mortems, I have a real chance of paying it off in the fairly foreseeable future... if, that is, I focus on it as an immediate goal. So my thought was, if I am already thousand of dollars in debt, is now the right time to take out a necessary auto loan to purchase an asset that could be totaled by someone else's lack of attention at any given moment on the road? I opted for "no."

Secondly: I'm not much of an environmentalist. I think that global warming is proving to be not quite what climate doomsayers were anticipating fifteen years ago - namely, much at all - but I thought pollution and waste were sins before Pope Francis made it cool. Does that make me a "climate hipster?" Hmm. Regardless, I live in Los Angeles, which has seen firsthand how ugly and damaging car pollution can make the world. Along with the realization, noted above, that I could in no way afford a car in the first place, I also realized that I could certainly not afford the kind of car that wouldn't pollute my surroundings. Buying a Prius might be for liberal secular Americans what joining the Third Order of St. Francis is for Catholics, but the thought behind hybrid cars is reasonable and sound. This is even more true for electric cars- but it is comparatively more expensive. Since, then, if I were to purchase a car I would like it to be a no-emissions or low-emissions model, and since all such treasures lie decidedly out of my price range, I was doubly encouraged to go without.

Thirdly... I think there's something to be said, philosophically, about the effect an automobilized lifestyle has on the mind. Lifestyle is a function of mobility. Without taking the idea too far, I think it's possible to say that people have less and less attachment to places, now that they can be in so many of them in such a short time. Think of this: back in the day, when people rode around on horses and in carriages, and twenty miles was a day's journey, the average soul was far more likely to have roots in a particular community and with a particular set of people. This sense of "rootedness," of belonging to a "place," is really the genesis of patriotism. If the scope of your life is bound by how far you can walk in a day, or how far the family horse can trot you, you are going to have, unavoidably, an intimate relationship with your land and neighbors. This intimacy leads to knowledge, which leads to love and honor. Only by knowing things can we love them, and only by being close to things can we know them. Walking the bounds of your land is how you fall in love with it. When you can drive hundreds of miles in a single day, however, that sense of rootedness vanishes fast. It's no longer possible to understand and appreciate the entirety of your surroundings, because your surroundings are no longer dictated by your natural reach; they are an effect of your dramatic mobility. Now, in itself, the ability to move ridiculous distances in a short time is no bad thing. It has facilitated modern American life as we know it. However, insofar as your are no longer able to gain intimacy with your environment, because your environment has expanded past all recognition, you will not have a sense of belonging, and that sense of belonging you lack will not give birth in your soul to all the delightful particularities of culture. Culture, insofar as it is possessed by highly mobile people, is usually fairly utilitarian and abstracted, structured around convenience as much as possible. Anyone who has driven along a major interstate in America can appreciate what I'm saying: the oases of fast food chains and gas stations that cluster around exits in the Mojave Desert are exactly the same as the fast food chains and gas stations that cozy up to the asphalt in rural Mississippi. Can you imagine two more different places in America, with two correspondingly dissimilar cultures? Yet, for all the traveler can tell, they are carbon copies of each other. Whatever was particular about them as places is no longer evident when jetting through in one's Ford Explorer.

I do not reject the automobile. It is a glorious invention of man. What I do reject is man's reordering of his entire life around the capacity of his car to cross the country in four days. Integrating the wise use of mobility with one's daily life is possible, but unless one wishes to sacrifice culture, rootedness, and the dignity of place, one should think hard before choosing a life that requires a car to function at all.

So, I have chosen to be a walker. I'll be the first to say it: sometimes, this way of life, intentionally limited, proves... well, limiting. Constricting, even. I'm accustomed to travel, and many of those I love the most are furthest from me. But I think the psychological value of seeking to really belong to the place where you live and work outweighs the cons that distance imposes.

What's this blog about?

Why am I writing this blog? Isn't it true that too many people publish too much already?

I think that this boils down to the old argument between quality and quantity. I don't think it's at all a bad thing that there are so many people writing online and making their views known; that sounds like an eminently democratic state of things. Quantity isn't the problem, necessarily. The problem surfaces when people spit out whatever comes into their heads, vitriolic or otherwise, and post at great length. The qualities of libel and cruelty are what make so much internet writing so wretched.

This is all to give some noble pretensions to the pages you're reading. As far as I'm able (which is pretty far,) I'll avoid libelous posts and cruel writing.

That's all very well, you say, but what will you be writing about in such a genteel manner? If it's noble but uninteresting - like so many characters who have gone unnoticed in history - what's the point of reading it?

Well, ideally, the point will be to try for nobility and interest. A few people have achieved that, lately and other-wheres, so there's hope. There's no specific subject for this blog, other than My Life Observed, so any number of topics could wind up on the table. This is an election year, so I'm likely to talk about politics, and I love Pope Francis and the Church, so I'll talk about them too. I enjoy reading, fiction and non-fiction, so books will feature here as well. I enjoy the saner philosophers, so they'll probably surface now and then. (To find out whom I believe the saner philosophers to be, stay tuned!) Unavoidably, I'll also provide you with heaps of introspection- none of it prurient, most of it digested.

If this sounds like an agreeable prospect to you, then forward let us go!