Tim the Unrelenting vs. The Relentless Road

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Sally here. Tim is driving. A lot. He drove from 11:20 am Monday until 3:20 am Tuesday before he stopped to sleep. We stopped only for gas/pee breaks for 16 hours straight. This is what we used to do when we were kids. Sometimes it still seems to make sense.

Our bed in the back of Betty is seriously cozy and comfortable, even when parked in a well-lit convenience store lot. Window quilts cover drafty windows and black out curtains enclose the remaining side of the bed. Darkness and visual privacy allowed Tim almost 3 well-deserved hours of quality sleep. I had slept on and off a few hours during the first leg of our trip, when Tim the Unrelenting negotiated snow and ice from Whitehall, Montana to Buffalo, Wyoming. And just when he/we thought the worst was over, it wasn't. After Buffalo the winds began. And the construction zones. And only rarely maybe 10 miles of peace. Then more winds, a snow squall, and wet pavement or the chance of unrecognized black ice.

Betty is tall. Driving her requires constant focus when there is wind. Only at 10:30 am after entering New Mexico have we finally hit a patch of road where Tim can finally turn on the cruise control. CC for a tall guy is a godsend. He can stretch the gas pedal leg and relax and move hip joints.

Our experience so far about traveling in Betty, our mini-RV... The DOWNS: It's slower. It's trickier. In wintertime it's particularly stressful. For us it requires a driver (Tim) with the ability to go into hyper-focus for hours at a time as we drive long distances. It requires the passenger (me) to surrender hours on end of control of the vehicle to the driver. I'm willing. Tim was hit in a head-on collision in 2004 by a dialysis patient returning from an appointment who should not have been driving. Tim drives so he has his hands on the wheel and what modicum of control that offers. And today, I write. The UPs: We can sleep REALLY well in our own bed, wherever we go. Better than a hotel. Really. I can comfortably prepare and then we can then eat fresh, healthy organic meals as we drive. (We will eat out tonight in Lubbock, Texas before we hit the campground because.... how often are you in Texas with access to authentic chile rellenos?) Another plus for an extended trip: Betty holds spaces for us to stow our stuff. Our itty-bitty home-on-wheels sports a tidy and organized vibe. We enjoy the peace and sense of control in the random world of travel in the context of a larger and irritatingly unpredictable world.

The jury is out about all of this. It's our first trip with Betty. AND we really love our newly renovated, extremely cozy and functional home. And we appreciate tremendously the bubble of our small town in the midst of Big Sky country.

Driving HWY 25 South through Colorado was a shock for me. Emerging from that small-town bubble into urban Colorado stunned me. Where we live the Big City is Bozeman, Montana. With 56,500 people Bozeman is the 762nd largest city in the US. Smile. And another Smile.

Denver, with 738,000 plus people is the 19th largest city in the US. And that statistic is wildly deceptive. The actual Denver metro area has a population 2,890,000+ people. Denver is a BIG CITY. Bozeman just became a modest town by comparison.

Strangely, but perhaps not, I found myself considering Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum's push for The Great Re-Set as well as China's implementation of the Social Credit Scoring system imposed via individual cell phone, from a different perspective.

When populations get that BIG and that DENSE, it's conceivable serious HELL could break loose lacking adequate inner or outer controls in place governing the individuals who make up those masses of people.

Malcom Gladwell in his famous book, The Tipping Point, wrote about "channel capacity" regarding groups of people. Whenever a grouping of people gets larger than 150, individuals tend to get lost and disconnected. They become vulnerable to alienation, isolation, and therefore, to acts of anti-social despair. That doesn't happen often in smaller groupings. GoreTex corporation, according to Gladwell, took channel capacity into consideration to structure their growing business. They limited the size of divisions to under 150 employees and divided divisions when numbers got larger than that. In smaller groupings there is less need for top-down controlling and complex hierarchy. Management becomes simpler, based more on functions of planning and implementation than on sheer power. In smaller groups individuals can and do take more responsibility and accountability. People experience enhanced support for individual creativity, contribution and satisfaction. People have the opportunity to know everyone by name in their division. No one gets lost. No one sneaks off and starts acting out of their shadow side because people are around and take notice and care. Sub-groups are visible and accountable. Inherent safeguards exist in smaller groups that go missing in groups larger than 150.

The Denver metro area is pushing 3 million people. Opportunities abound in work, living, and social situations for many people to find themselves lost in the crowd. People get isolated, alienated, disconnected. It is not surprising to have large forces in our world emerging, as well as being unveiled, in a grab and push for centralized, complex hierarchical controls.

This is the value for me of traveling outside my bubble. As we travel today, as I survey this landscape of prairie in New Mexico and panhandle Texas there are times as far as my eye can see there is only one set of buildings I can be sure is actually a residence. Thousands of acres and only one identifiable residence. That's also the frequent case in Montana and Wyoming.

Things have changed immensely in US history. In 1900 urban and rural population numbers were approximately equal: 50% lived in cities, 50% lived in rural areas. By contrast, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, only 6% of the US population lived in cities while 94% of the population lived rurally. The situation now is that 83% of the US population lives in urban areas with 17% living in rural areas. Almost a complete reversal from our origins.

The significance of that change is not only in the percentage of people living in urban versus rural living conditions. The change is in huge population change. In 1776 the TOTAL population of the US was about 2.5 million, less than the current Denver metro population. In 1776 the largest city in the US was Philadelphia with 40,000 residents, followed by NYC with 25,000. The total population of the US has grown by over 330 million. Our population is 133 times BIGGER and the majority of those are living in cities away from vast swaths of land, away from the presence of livestock and the wildness of the non-human world.

In the last few years I've had a growing appreciation for the profound contribution that the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights represented to the potential for human growth and development. Without the freedoms guaranteed by these founding documents to enact our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness there was, for most of human history no true choice in much of human experience. Monarchs, the Church, feudal lords, etc. imposed their will on the general populace. Only with freedom and WITHOUT hierarchical authority, are we called to fully engage in moral human development. When others control and dictate what we do, how we think, what we pursue during our lives, we are not put to the test to choose.

How do "we" grapple with all of this? My experience is that people ARE capable of huge moral development and, with that, huge personal fulfillment, huge meaning, huge acts of voluntary "goodness." Does granting freedom in the way the framers of the original United States did still apply? What is happening with increased magnitude and density of population? Have we reached a scary tipping point where we need brilliant ideas and heart that honor the human channel capacity of our brains' ability to know and stay connected to others? That channel capacity might be a bit overworked for an individual moving alone to the Denver area where that human channel capacity is exceeded by 16.5 THOUSAND times. What happens when so many people get lost, alienated, isolated, and addicted to everything under the sun by means of entertainment and the ever present effects of digitally available hits of dopamine? Cuirrent and coming times seem to call for exceedingly creative measures to address such challenges.

The above are things I will talk with Tim about when his focus is refreshed and his attention is free to engage after this first long trek from Montana to Texas. With luck we may have conversations with some of you about such things as well on this trip.

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