Splendid Contradictions

We live in a world of splendid contradictions. longdistance-cargocycling.org donates (again) to artenglück.de, a purveyor of wild flower beds to save remaining bio-diversity. Generous donation for a common cause with funds generated from plenty of cargo cycling trips.

The results of our actions: expensively compensated. There appears to be a requirement to reflect their unintended consequences in the first place.

Oh, by the way, thanks to all MY donors!

Modern Mobility

The action goes on elsewhere. We witness idle artefacts of a busy world, carelessly abandoned, in all cases. Their silence is a prompt to think.

Aerosol Art

Ruptures appear, we hit the wall. No phantasys to shape the future of our World. Too many competing narratives.

Today, we tell ourselves stories that we wouldn’t believe in the future.

Entrenched in bipartisanship, unable to sense the emerging space of possibilities. My bike as a silent observer, an epitomised option for an utopian alternative modernity. Contours of those realities already appear to exist, in pictures.

Towers of a new religion

Towers provide orientation. The world over, the sight of a tower symbolises refuge, identification, safety. Seafarers, worshippers, and even the odd cyclist, rely on their dominating impressions.

A beacon provides physical beams of light, a church tower offers hope for religious enlightment; and following the invitation of the latter, a cyclist might not only find sacred comfort, but also more secular distractions right in the middle of urbanism.

However, I observe an intriguingly new breed of towers, popping up at the fringes of urbanity. Slim, with spiritual symbols of its own, it appears they offer rewards of different sorts. The cyclist, coming nearer, feels like having to navigate a sea of four-wheeled gadgets full of adorers flocking to this symbol of a new religion seeking convenience and speed.

It seems, if you follow the welcome pull of one tower, you have to manage another´s repulsion.

We live in a world of contradictions.

For how long do we want to wait?

How do you take it with financial indetedness? As quickly as possible paid back to the bank? Why not also in terms of climate protection, because our today´s consumerism takes out loans from nature.

“Our knowledge should already be sufficient to save the World.”

R. Klingholz, member of the Enquête-Kommission Demographischer Wandel des Landes Niedersachsen, 2005 – 2007

“Our knowledge should already be sufficient to save the World”, says Reiner Klingholz, member of the Enquête-Kommission Demographischer Wandel des Landes Niedersachsen from 2005 to 2007 (Kurier am Sonntag, 28. March 2021, p. 3), but “crisis appear only if we live too generously.”

Obivously, we are not able to adapt our behaviour to protect the climate. We struggle to address pandemics; if challenges get bigger?

My cargo bike alone does not move the World, but I can induce ourselves to move it!