Car traffic in Lisbon and the fantasy of the liberal
In the 1980s, when seatbelt requirements began to be enforced in several US states, many protested what it means to be a force for your freedom. In the first of this century, a private company of view in many centuries, as a company, too, of a public hygienism.
The impulses are always the same that the State decides to condition by environmental legislation, with an impact on safety or public health in Portugal, as happened when discussing a bill that limited the amount of salt in bread. We know what happened afterwards.
There will be porting or another libertarian motorist who will still find himself entitled to a stupid death, like someone who still grumbles about having to get up to smoke a postprandial cigarette and who swears he started making bread with salt to taste a cigarette taste before the home fashion that fostered it, but the revolt long before there was data on the beneficial effect of any of these measures.
If freedom is an essential value, how can one explain that it is defended in such a punctual, ephemeral and capricious way by those who are most opposed to the power of the State?
The progressive’s fantasy is not in the future. For communists, an idea of a new man resists any empirical evidence because the USSR, North Korea, Cambodia and Cuba, all failed, do not have or have had truly communist regimes. As communism would have to be fulfilled, fantasy is saved.
The conservative’s fantasy is diametrically opposite, as it is based on the idealization of the past. But conservatives also resist the confrontation with empirical experience and it will be useless to try to convince him that a hundred years ago only the high elite did not live in Portugal much worse than they do today.
Traits, obviously, but to underscore the liberal’s fantasy is less caricatures than the previous ones. And the explanation seems simple to me: as the liberal acts in the present, it is so ingrained that it is hardly noticed.
The liberal’s fantasy is not dismantled by ending the idea of free will; without committing the imprudence of trying to determine whether the free will is real or illusory, remembering only that believing in this idea is fundamental for the functioning of any model of society.
The liberal reveals himself to be fanciful especially when he understands his worldliness as an emanation of a singular thought, independent of circumstances. The liberal is a caricature, I admit) to ignore as conditionals or that shape your worldview, you accept or all accepted and preferred natural life choices that prefer free and are not allowed from the ultimate meal by the conditional. death.
This illusion, which is the love of freedom, has a noble side, as it attenuates the tragic dimension of existence and maintains the citizen as autocratic temptations, but there is a lack of awareness of the pure prohibitions and restrictions against us that shape power, a Pavlovian refusal. of any new interdicted potential. And the moment the interdict is approved, it tends to be all fatally forgotten, if the previous interdictions and the incidence in the present are not projected to occur as essential.
Livre’s recent proposal for a 10 km/h reduction in the speed limit for cars circulating in Lisbon was met with much criticism, especially an intervention by Sousa Pinto in a televised gathering. Encouraged by the laughter of his colleagues on the panel, the deputy greeted us with a diatribe, against the activists of the activity who “are always active” and are boring “by nature”.
This was the substance of Sérgio Sousa Pinto’s intervention, limiting himself to surfing a new wave of indignation, always provocative, especially when the sacrosanct right of car circulation is at stake, soon also defended by the eternal Carlos Barbosa, president of the ACP.
We know that the steering wheel spurs on man’s aggressive instincts and that great resistance to the loss of rights, but defenders of status quo Limit comparison speed with technicians versus reducing technicians.
Will the increase in travel time be offset by claims, noise reduction and time reduction? It is a unique question to ponder.
I don’t even have a strong opinion on the subject and agreeing with the time should not dispense with a careful cost-benefit assessment. But I won’t be surprised if Pavlovian reactions without the substance we’ve seen in recent weeks turn out to be as ephemeral as many other new bans have been. It tends to be that way with growing pains.
Vasco M. Barreto
He’s a biologist. He was born in Lisbon, grew up in Olivais Sul during the 70’s and 80’s, lived for a few years in Lumiar and then moved to Paris, where he got his doctorate, and then to New York. He is married and has two daughters. Trees planted. Book on the way.
Lia Ferreira
Born in Lisbon in 1974, he grew up there and did his artistic training. He is a painter, illustrator and portraitist. Mother of 4 daughters, she leads her life in Art.