|  The powerful physical phenomenon of Eyjafjallajokull volcano has had equally potent social and philosophical effects. Not least, it's brought into focus the astounding level of our dependency on air travel in a world where fossil fuels are fast running out while people grow increasingly disconnected from the landscape and from one another.
We enjoyed Seth Stevenson's OpEd in the NY Times encouraging slower forms of travel: “Airplanes are a means of ignoring the spaces in between your point of origin and your destination. By contrast, a surface journey allows you to look out on those spaces, at eye level and on a human scale...”
This is but an echo of Ivan Illich's 'Energy and Equity,' where he warned: "The habitual passenger is caught at the wrong end of growing inequality... His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. Addicted to being carried along, he has lost control over physical, social, and psychic powers [... and] has come to identify territory with the untouchable landscape through which he is rushed." |
