Dear Republic,
In their definitive treatment of this issue, The Onion News Network declared the American Dream dead over ten years ago, but it still seems to somehow linger on thanks to one Canadian Substacker writing about his experiences in the highways and oil fields of the West.
-ROL
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I cross the border into Blaine, Washington on a Monday morning, a northerner in a foreign place. I have heard whispers of this strange southern land from my countrymen; there are those who castigate our neighbour with self-righteous diatribes, and those who dream of one day joining with her. I have heard of larger portions, free soda refills, and something vaguely referred to as the “American Dream”. And so, I journey onwards in my tiny Hyundai Venue to investigate this country for myself. The road, as it happened, was the perfect place to learn. My first intuition, while driving through Washington State, while Springsteen, Survivor, and The Killers play in the background, is that the automobile, the open road, is so deeply American...
But is the open road uniquely American? Every other nation on earth has access to the motorcar, with roads to drive, just as in the United States. The motorcar is not even an American invention, as credit for the first automobile generally goes to German inventor Karl Benz in 1885.
And yet... Car culture seems deeply American. American art, literature, and music is obsessed now as ever with the motorcar and the highway. To the American, the open road has a uniquely spiritual quality. This, I will argue, is hardly accidental. The automobile and the open road are American not because the United States invented them or has a monopoly on them, but because they represent deeply American ideas about life, man, and freedom. In America, there is a profound harmony between content and form—between the foundational ideas underlying a civilization and material conditions. when we identify one, we can trace the contours of the other.
It is not so much that one is downstream of the other, but more that the content and form mutually inform one another. The material conditions—including technology, infrastructure, and aesthetics—influence a civilization’s ideas and values, and these shape the material conditions in turn. The automobile washed up on the shores of North America when this continent was yet youthful. America came of age with the highway, whereas once Europe adopted the car, that civilization was already wizened and grey, unable to undergo a symbiosis with such a new technology. The open road, therefore, left an indelible mark upon America in a unique way.
I travel onwards down Interstate 5 south and begin to observe the other drivers on this bustling thoroughfare. Each car is a unit. I travel behind a black Honda for a long stretch, his pace matching mine evenly. I start to feel a great camaraderie with this fellow traveler, until suddenly he turns off, vanishing behind a cloverleaf intersection. Each car has its own aim—or a unique license plate, from Washington, a different state, or even a different country, as with mine. Each car possesses an identity. I pass through the gridlocked traffic of Seattle and observe the drivers stuck on the mired highway. They are checking their emails, singing along to the radio, chatting with friends. We are driving on the same stretch, and yet, we are trapped in our own insular solitudes. The thought is freeing, but also saddening...
The highway belies a deeply seated individualism in the American consciousness. On the highway, each man is a discrete unit. Prior to the automobile, long-distance transportation was seldom undergone alone. Trains, ships, and carriages were never individual operations. Transportation was always a collective matter, in which man identified with the collective and bound to them. As man relied upon others, he could not have conceived himself as an atom. The automobile forever changed this.
Suddenly, man could go wherever he pleased without relying on others. Instead of being boxed in with the same lot of passengers, there were boundaries separating him from other travellers on the road. Whenever the family travelled, all piling into the old beat-up station wagon, they travelled as a unit. The idea of the nuclear family was both part and parcel of the automobile.
We can only speculate about the exact causal mechanism at play; perhaps the car instilled in Americans the notion that each man is an island, or perhaps the automobile, representing an atomized society, led Americans to embrace it with vigour. Both are likely true to a degree.
I travel down the west coast, swim in the Pacific Ocean, and then cut inland for a stopover in Portland, Oregon. During my time here, I hear the word equality pour forth from the mouths of men. In advertisements, political rallies, casual conversation, there is a deep fixation on equality in all its forms. For no other nation that I know of does such religious zealotry attend the quest for equality...
The automobile arrived at the same time as mass-manufactures. The assembly line, after all, was invented by Ransom E. Olds—of Oldsmobile fame—at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1908, Henry Ford unveiled the Model T, an automobile which was, for the first time, affordable for the common man. Before then, the automobile was a luxury for the higher classes only. By 1940, however, a majority of families in the United States owned a car. In the 1960s, car ownership surged once more, with more than 70% of families owning a car.
The car, once widely distributed, empowered individuals indiscriminately and fostered the ideal of equality. Each man was not only a discrete unit, but he then possessed all the means necessary to determine his own ends. The automobile and the assembly line were fundamentally democratic inventions. Men’s worth became not a matter of degrees, nor demarcated according to class or any other social convention, but absolute and evenly distributed. Again, the harmony between content and form, between the automobile and democracy, is readily apparent.
I push eastward, driving at a relentless pace, passing through the Cascade Mountains, which open up to great wide valleys and open grasslands as far as the eye can see. Here, the traffic thins out. Past the dizzyingly packed interstates of the west coast, I am left alone with my thoughts to ponder this vast expanse before me. There are no limitations on my movement. A Tom Petty song plays over the speaker; I see an American flag boldly flying. Something deeply welled within me rises to the surface and everything aligns—in a flash of insight, I become unflinchingly certain that I am free...
With individualism and equality comes, of course, freedom. The automobile and the highway present man with a complete image of his freedom. There is, first, negative freedom, or freedom from external restriction. For better or worse, in parochial communities of old, men were constrained by familial ties, by loyalty to their community and leaders, and by the simple lack of transportation from one community to the next. Before the twentieth century, it was uncommon to ever leave the community in which you were born. The automobile, on the other hand, frees a man from these ties. When one can simply drive away from their hometown and never look back, the individual is liberated from his pre-determined place in the social order.
Secondly, there is the concept of positive freedom—freedom to determine one’s own ends—which the automobile engenders. Rather than being permanently enmeshed within the social order, man could become what he intended to be. It was immensely symbolic that highways now led out of parochial communities—man’s identity was no longer determined solely by his place therein. Rather, he could forge boldly ahead on the open road to find a place for himself in the world. Man, possessing the automobile, was now autonomous. The motorcar and the open highway gave Americans self-knowledge of their inherent freedom.
From freedom flows democracy. To a man driving on the wide open highways of America, democracy is the only conceivable system of government.
I enter Yellowstone National Park and the stunning scenery instantly captivates me. Deep gorges, tall peaks, austere forests, and even wild beasts greet me from the side of the road. Chinese tourists stop in the middle of the road to take a photograph of a mere deer. This land was once primal and untamed, and yet now it poses no threat to me. I am perfectly safe, protected from the elements by the exterior of my car. Thereby, the land has been defanged. I am above it...
In the seat of a car, on a paved highway which slices through the land like a knife, it appears that man is above nature. The mountains may pass, though he need not fear their towering heights; the desert may pass, though he need not fear her desiccation. Through his ingenuity, man forged a means of transportation across, in the North American case, a harsh and sparsely populated new continent. Whereas he was at the whim of nature for most of history, the automobile allowed man to gaze upon the beauty of nature as he travelled without loathing her vicissitudes. Man was no longer at the behest of nature, but lorded over her.
The obsession of the Moderns, beginning with Machiavelli and Bacon, to subdue nature, had come to fruition with the advent of the motorcar. It was only then that Americans could draw a dichotomy between man and nature, with the former pushing the latter back into ever-smaller gaps between the corridors of civilization. By severing her with an asphalt scalpel, man could divide nature and then conquer her. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that America is a nation of Cartesians, fixated upon dividing the world into discrete categories. The new dichotomy between man and nature was a product of this ethos. Cartesian thought, funneled through the Enlightenment into America’s founding vision, is reflected in the ardour with which America adorns its landscape with interstates.
The idea of transcendence became more than merely a spiritual phenomenon. With the automobile, man could transcend himself. He could make himself something better and indefinitely improve his lot. With more collective agency than perhaps any other people at any other point in history, Americans in the twentieth century set about shaping the world however they wanted.
But as I drive, I notice car crashes everywhere... Vehicles freshly flung into the ditch, medical attention inbound, strewn bumpers and glass on the side of the road, screaming matches between drivers on the shoulder. This is not like my country. I had never seen the ravages of the road until I ventured to America. In Canada, the road, despite being slick with ice in the wintertime, is safer. In the United States, the road is an opportunity for man to demonstrate his freedom, will all its attendant dangers...
There are approximately 40,000 deaths from automobile accidents yearly in the United States, with millions more injuries. Americans die from car collisions at 2.5 times the rate that Canadians do. This land truly is unique; its roads attest to this fact, demonstrating a distinct national ethos. Travel by motorcar is still, as ever, the most dangerous form of transportation by far, but much more so in America.
And yet, Americans still revere the open road. Perhaps this is not despite the danger, but because of it. The American experience, from the days when it was an uncharted frontier, has always been predicated upon high risk and high reward. Without the risk, the reward is hardly worthwhile. From the boom and bust cycles of its natural resource industries to the high stakes dealings of Wall Street, America is a land in which an “all or nothing” mindset pervades.
All these things together—individualism, equality, freedom, transcendence, and risk—do these not comprise the American spirit? And does the automobile on the open highway not provide a mirror image to the American Dream—that any man, regardless of race, religion, or creed, may succeed by his own work ethic alone? I argue that this idea only begins to appear tangible with the invention of the motorcar and the nexus of highways spanning the continent. The American Dream and the open highway rise and fall in tandem.
On the highways of America, I have glimpsed the soul of this nation. I can’t shake the feeling that there is a deep harmony in America between its guiding ethos and the visible form the country takes. Though I return to my northern hinterland, what I learned in America will always be with me. Many of my countrymen despise, and many envy, the United States of America, yet both these passions hinder clear understanding. It is perhaps a flawed nation—one which deifies the right of the individual, which chooses freedom above safety, and which severs man from his place in the social order—and yet, what some may call flaws have produced the most powerful and successful nation the world has ever seen. I cannot help but deeply admire this American spirit which is so foreign to me.
Philosopher of the Oil Sands writes about his observations and reflections from Northern Alberta. He is interested in oil, automobiles, work, and how material conditions shape thought patterns.
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