Pedal cabbing and 'spiritual' (r)evolution

(See pg 48 of notepad dated 1-24-2015 to 3-3-2015)

For some time I’ve been telling myself to feel good about and to believe in the eco-spirituality of pedal cabbing, and to not allow myself to succumb to my own petty greed, or allowing myself to buy into the notion that doing this line of work at my age is a sign of failure.

I like believing in pedal cabbing and believing in myself in the sense of a calm, emotionally warm, and sometimes playful and comedic approach, that involves looking people in the eye with goodwill, and not allowing my own cynicism to be a preemptive defense against the occasional rudeness or other disrespect that is bound to happen when being in public for several hours, several days per week. My face is a sort of billboard sign to onlookers, passersby, and prospective pedicab customers.

With emotional openness, I can feel the connection with others. If I shut that off as a defense against the occasional disrespect or even the occasional invisibility when I’m trying to be noticed by customers who want to pay for a ride, I miss out on the enjoyment of random positive connections with strangers. “Former Strangers dot org ” might be a good name for a website.

Genuine belief in my pedal cab work is achievable if I base it on ecology (which includes social issues). So, I shouldn’t shy away from eye contact with other , nor be afraid of nor offended by the occasional rudeness or other disrespect that is likely to happen if I have the self-confidence to be psychologically open to the general public as pedal cab.

In addition to the high number of people I’ll be psychologically open to, there is the perception and idea among at least some people that pedal cabbing is not a respectable way to make money and/or that pedal cabbing is subservient in that it involves strenuous physical labor done while the customers relax. Plus there is the idea that pedal cabbing is ‘backwards’ and that societies that are ‘advanced’ base their transport on the use of technologically complex and powerful machines that travel a high speeds. That’s related to the idea that the faster the machine for transport the better, and that it’s inconvenient and stupid to travel slowly.

But what is it that is intriguing philosophically or spiritually about having a perspective on social relationships and our human connection to nature such that I defy that mentality? Related to that question, is my intention to further bend my mind around solidarity with Dalits (the untouchables in India ) some of whom work as cycle rickshaw drivers, and solidarity with nonhuman (which are also in most or all cases non-consensual) beasts of burden.

Pedal cabbing seems, in my mind and possibly at least a few others’ minds, evokes a complex question that applies to other ways in which human-powered machines are or might be used for meeting human needs.

On the one hand, with a deep-ecology set of priorities, one can see the merits of human-powered machines and human labor while seeing the flaws of high and intermediate technology, due to their ecological effects.

On the other hand, is the view that humans can address ecological problems thru further refinements of high and intermediate level technology ( for these purposes something such as an internal combustion engine or a steam turbine is intermediate technology, whereas super computers would be high technology. Those distinctions likely need to be improved thru basic research for this essay.)

I realize that, according to prevalent ideas about modernity and progress, pedal cabs and other human-powered machines are stigmatized as backward and stupid, or maybe enjoyed as a quaint novelty. It might be useful to think about the following questions. Is living at our potential for human intelligence necessarily a matter of making our quality of life dependent on high technology? Some hard core ecologists have assumed technologically advanced civilization to be irreconcilable with long-term human survival and quality of life, as well as for many other species; whereas more mainstream ecologists or ‘environmentalists’ have seemed to believe that high technology is not necessarily ecologically destructive, if humans set our minds to using it in the best ways.

My own guess is that ecology is not a matter of going back to some previous state of human civilization ,such as anarcho-primitivists say, but is instead a matter of redefining ‘progress’ and using human intelligence more wisely. For example, ecologically sound alternatives to fossil-fuel-intensive industrial agriculture seems actually more scientifically rigorous than the ecologically destructive ways of producing food, fiber, and medicine. ‘Organic’ farming, planned and practiced so as to be successful at meeting human needs in ecologically sound ways requires a wealth of knowledge in scientific fields such as chemistry and biology.

I need to clarify my ideas regarding this, but the widely held idea that ecology is sentimental, unscientfic, anti-progress, anti-modern and even anti-human bothers me. I see that widely held view as deeply seated error, erroneous but so prevalent as to be a part of my own thinking, if I’m not astute in my ecological thinking.

To what extent is the erroneous thinking about ecology as anti-modern, anti-progress, anti-science, anti-human, and sentimental and quasi-religious due to the following : it’s a matter of collective human self-understanding, in that our collective ideas about ‘progress’ and ‘intelligence’ are so wrapped up in our collective ideas whereby we give high esteem to human domination over nature, human domination over other life forms, and human-on human domination, that the majority or vast majority of us assume that we cannot put to use our human ingenuity thru a ecological mentality that is an alternative to the ethos of domination ?

It seems that even though some of us have some concern about those who are affected by such domination, what often happens is that many of us admire, praise and defer aggressors, when it comes to species or socio-political domination– implicitly, if not explicitly extolling the virtues of domination, while having contempt for the humans that are dominated and indifference toward the other life forms that humans abuse.

In that sense, ecology (which includes social issues) seems a revolution in values, in terms of outgrowing our collective worship of domination. Love relates to this. Christianity and other religions may involve the type of love thru which one seeks to rise above the domination-worship that seems so prevalent thru out human history. But to what extent might it be that ecology may be the basis of a new type of spirituality with which humans are more effective at organizing kindness than we have been so far via religion ?

How about a sign for customers that reads, “horses, mules, donkeys, sleigh dogs, camels, oxen, elephants and some of the ‘untouchables’ in India are my coworkers and peers” ? Including myself as beast of burden may not be accurate because I’m pedal cabbing voluntarily and for pay and for other benefits such as a flexible schedule.