Sitting in traffic sucks. It sucks because you’re waiting. Sitting in traffic versus driving for an equivalent amount of time on an open highway. Everyone chooses the open road. The open road is free and full of agency. You get to choose the destination, and you get to choose your speed.[1] Yeah, the road isn’t full of perfect agency; you’re still dependent on roads, highway laws, maintenance, an ability to afford a car, sure.
But, in comparison to traffic? The open road is life to the slow burn of traffic hell. There is no freedom. All the dependencies of driving are now inescapable. You can’t leave your car and walk, because it costs too much money. You can’t ram the car in front of you, because it costs too much money. You can’t drive off the road, cause that’ll mess up your car, and that costs too much money. You just have to wait.
All at once, it becomes evident that there is an indiscernible will guiding and controlling everything. All at once, it becomes evident that we are powerless and imprisoned under the thumb of that alien will. No, I’m not talking about Marx and the alienation which springs immanently from capitalist material conditions. I’m not talking about the alienation experienced by the wandering spirit in the process of Hegelian dialectic. I’m talking about traffic.
A Picture of the Anger Ordained by Traffic
The one thing traffic has going for it, is that it is a shared form of cosmic punishment. Everyone undergoes its wrath more or less equally. It’s the lot we’ve drawn, being born into a society which has built itself on a diet of induced dependency and short term infrastructure. We all go through it together, and we’re all more or less powerless to stop it individually.
And the older I get, the more I’m persuaded that long form board games are but another one of nature’s cruel jokes. You can’t sit on your phone or do something productive while you’re playing a board game. It’s disrespectful. You can’t hold up a long-term conversation, either, because it’s always someone else’s turn. Everyone’s turn is just long enough for the conversation topic to change.
So you wait and live on the bread of jarring breaches of small talk about unrelated topics. Nothing thematic. Nothing interesting. Just waiting over usually elementary games. They all follow similar strategies: double down on risky plays, spend all your resources, place your starting points aggressively. Watch the time go by, watch a pot boil, and watch someone carefully weigh the consequences of one or two moves. Maybe they’re rolling dice, considering who to attack. Maybe they’ll end their turn.
It doesn’t matter. You’re stuck there, drinking diet soda and staring at their furrowed brow like a bumper at three o clock traffic.
1. Who cares about cops? Atlantan’s certainly don’t.