Be welcomed in this session and thank you very much for joining me. My name is Anthony [inaudible]. I'm going to say to you that it's absolute pleasure to be making this recording, imagining that someone will be listening to it. In this case, you. I'd like to tell you about my setup. I'm in this very quiet, empty room and it feels quite meditative, quite lonely in a good way. Join me, let's see where this takes us. Let's start by thinking about how exactly, where exactly our root is. The imaginaries we have today about mobility, where do they come from? Perhaps inevitably, I'm going to talk about private car. As a young adult, one of the things I got for myself was a pretty good car, really, and I was very proud of it. I must say that that car had a very important role in my life because when I got it, I felt that it had actually magical properties in the sense that I acquired a piece of metal and suddenly I was a better men. I was a more successful person. I was attracting, it looks like these really crappy new-age things about how to attract power and live the good life by means of positive thoughts. Cars do that to you. If you get the right car and you really get that connection going and things get really in place, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful magic. The question is, where does that magic work? You could say, Oh, because car actually allows you to go places. No, can't be. All those things you feel, all that empowerment you experience is much more than just having a mobility means. The question is, why? Why is that symbol so strong? The same could be said about motorbikes. I personally don't have a fascination for motorbikes, but some people do and they talk about very similar things. Having that machine really does something very deep to them. It's a bit like becoming more than yourself because you can use the machine. Another thing I'd like to mention is when I live by the sea, that moment and there is this beach where I can easily go to, when I see cargo ships arriving to the port, when you look at those massive, gigantic vessels, you can just feel, Oh. With all those containers on them, it's just incredible. How is it possible that we achieve this level of mastery of a technology that allows us to carry so much tonnage right to the oceans? It's beautiful. I have some binoculars and I look at those machines and all the maneuvers that's necessary to make them come into the port, just amazing and I'm not the only one. I find myself looking around and there are always people looking to the ships too. The question is, why do we feel this fascination looking to those gigantic ships? Just because they're big? I don't think so. Similar stuff happens when you're driving in a motorway and there is this gigantic trucks passing When you have one too near from the tail of your car and it feels wrong, it's too big, too much of a roar coming from that engine to be near me. A bit scary, bit impressive and something that they make you feel when they pass by gigantic wheels, that stuff. But again, I insist it's not because they are the missions that you see, there is something more that makes them feel so intense. What is it? Finally, I don't know if you probably didn't have the experience, I hope not, but I actually had experience of being just by a military tank and those machines are scary, are really scary. Some incredible that the sense of fear and respect, disgust and fascination you have for things like that, which is comparable really to what you feel when was outdoors and suddenly a jet plane, military fighter plane passes over your heads in low altitude and that sounds disrupts the entire landscape. They're things you feel and the question is, why do you feel those things? Why are these machines so powerful for us today? Is just because they are actually powerful or is because something that they trigger on us? I think that to actually get an accurate meaningful answer for this question we need to think about life. This is where we necessarily have to become a little bit philosophical about this. I think they're three fundamental, basic perspectives on life that humans have engaged with across history and geography. The first one is the circular. Circular presupposes that life is a repetition of itself. What it is today, it is as it was and it's as it was going to be. Just more of this endless cycle of life that keeps turning. This gigantic wheel that rotates around itself and repeat things in ways that are apparently different that if you have the wisdom to understand that, you will see that is no more than a repetition. In that conception, in that perspective about life, what is key to understand is that why is individual, is that the one that can see the repetitive characteristics, the patterns, and can ride on them. It's a bit like a surfer, the person learns how to surf this cycle and that's a good life, the life of the individual that knows how to serve repetition, to explore the easy expression of something that is meant to be. Because it's simply a manifestation of a very fundamental set of principles that are unchangeable. This makes you put your eyes on the past so that you can understand these patterns and you can leave them in the appropriate way. Another conception of life or another perspective of life is the linear life but with afterlife. The idea is that the present moment, the present life, is essentially a way for you to gather from capital, perhaps is that, but that capital is going to be enjoyed in the future, potentially only after you're dead. But in less spiritual perspectives of these, this is the same way of thinking about life. What happens is that you believe that the present moment is basically an opportunity for you to save, or free to capitalize so that you can enjoy in the future. When you'll be older, when things will be different, then you will be. It assumes that disruption, for example, I'm working and then I enjoy my retirement or I'm living and I enjoy when I'm dead. Or I'm young and I will enjoy when I marry. There is this important disrupting so it is after that disruption that things will be very meaningful in the sense of, "I will be gathering, enjoying the experiencing what is important while now I should be austere, I should be strategic. I should be careful, I should be respectful of what is to be." So the focus is on the future. There is always this sense of great respect for the authority that rules what is to come. It can be God, and it also can be your employer or whatever, whoever has the authority to control what happens to you later. But then there is a 3rd conception, which I think is clearly the one that is dominating today, which is the linear life without afterlife. This idea is that you are alive, you're doing your thing and what's going to happen is that there will be a disruption and after that there is nothing, nada, just emptiness. You should pay attention to the present moment so that you can enjoy the present moment. Enjoy while you can, enjoy it while it lasts is this idea. The linear life without afterlife has three ethical imperatives that flow almost immediately from the idea that there's nothing else later, it's all about right now. The first one is to reach, you should reach as much as you can. Reach opportunities, contexts, places, resources, means, tools, experience. Live things intensely because later it's gone. Accumulate is the 2nd ethical imperative. Accumulate experiences, accumulate money, fun, power, skills, credit, sex, friends, property, titles, victories, health, whatever is good, accumulate them. Sometimes even the bad is you should accumulate them because that allows you to then reach more and then to accumulate good things more. The 3rd ethical imperative is to control. Control what? Control your life, you control others, you control your public attention, nature, competitors, the market, yourself, you should control everything. Universe is to be controlled and this makes sense as a very powerful set of ideas, you reach to accumulate, to control, to control, to accumulate, to reach, to accumulate, to reach, to control. You just stay in this idea. This is how the idea of the good life without afterlife is to be achieved. Of course, that these ideas have their antagonists, their opposites, their dark side. If what you want is to reach, you fear to be left behind. If what you want is to accumulate, your fear dispossession and if you want to control, you really don't want to be dominated. This is how we can go back to mobility because mobility does an amazing thing. Mobility allows us to catch up and to join when we're left behind. Mobility allows us to grow and to empower oneself when one is dispossessed and mobility allows us to run away and to escape when we are starting to be dominated. In fact, mobility also allows us to control. Think about the tank, you go there and you control it. You can only control it because you could go there. Let's go back to this representations of contemporary mobility I was mentioning. I think that they're so powerful because they directly relate to the ethical imperatives. If you want to reach as an individual, you should have a car, you should have a motorbike. You should have an individual mean of transport that allows you to be free, to go to the places, to meet the people, to reach the opportunities. But if you're, for example, a company, what you want is to accumulate wealth, money, objects, materials, resources and for that you need to have big ships, you need to have big trucks, and also big planes. If you're a country and you want to control, you need to have tanks, you need to have military planes because that allows you to attack, dominate. You see, I think that we fear and we feel all and we want to have these objects like cars and whatever. Depends on who you are, if you're a person, if you're a company, if you're a country, want to have these things because they directly relate to the ethical imperatives of the linear life without afterlife. Think for example, about European Union and its policies. There's this paper, White Paper Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area-Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system. This was published in 2011 and it read like this, "Transport is fundamental to our economy and society. Mobility is vital for the internal market and for the quality of life of citizens as they enjoy their freedom to travel. Transport enables economic growth and job creation. It must be sustainable in the light of the new challenges we face." Then I interrupt it continues a bit later like this, "The future prosperity of our continent will depend on the ability of all of its regions to remain fully and competitively integrated in the world economy. Efficient transport is vital in making this happen." I hope that you see through these words, how much there is this idea of don't allow yourself to be left behind. You need to enjoy your freedom to travel. You must not be left behind. You must keep up with this race that is going on, and for that, you need to be mobile. Of course, that we have some problems to address, sustainability problems, but still we must find a way of addressing them because mobility is vital. Then there's another document that was published seven years later, also by European Union and European Commission, the title is Transport in the European Union: Current Trends and Issues. In page 1 you can read this. Transport is the cornerstone of European integration and is firmly linked to the establishment of the single market which promotes jobs and economic growth. You probably notice that jobs and economic growth has already been mentioned in the previous document, and is all through European policy documents. Jobs and economic growth is very common. Then he goes, however, transport also generates negative social effects such as accidents, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, noise, and environmental effects. Finally, it says the commission has recently taken several policy initiatives which aim at helping the EU transport sector to become future proof, more sustainable, innovative, and remain competitive in a changing global environment. You see that there is mentioning of the future, but this is a very precise notion of future. Is the future in which you are suppose to be living as you are living now, but it's basically you. There's not an idea that there will be a disruption, that there'll be something deeply altered, modified, and that in the future as if there was an afterlife, you need to prepare for that afterlife noise, is a continuation of the right now. This moment of now is what we are talking about. The problem is that it's difficult to remain competitive, it's difficult to maintain mobility, but we need to do it. That's the fundamental idea here. It's interesting to see that to remain competitive, is used in both cases, because it's difficult indeed. Because you see if all of us, individuals, companies, and countries, we are all about having more, what happens is that as Herten Tozer says, and this is one of the authors I recommended in the list of readings, that if all of us are focused on having more, it comes to a point in which having more becomes particularly difficult. It stops being about having more, and it starts to be about trying not to lose what we have because everybody's competing, everybody's wanting more and therefore, it's really a struggle. We're all struggling with this conception of life. In summary, the dominant imaginary for mobility future's in my view, is defined by our understanding of what is a good life. This good life is formatted at its very roots by the idea that life is linear and has no afterlife, there's no SQL. That it's just what it is now that you should pay attention to, there is nothing else, there'll be a disruption and then it's gone. This takes you to these dualities, you hope to reach and you fear to be left behind. You hope to accumulate and new fear to be dispossessed. You hope to dominate, and you actually are probably terrified of being dominated. Therefore, it follows that terms like competition, growth, market, innovation, efficiency, and remaining, are very important in the policy documents that countries or European Unions produce informed by the linear life, no afterlife, and by the three ethical imperatives, reaching, accumulating, dominating. If we want to think about alternatives, the alternatives will have to fundamentally challenge a number of these things. It's to that that I will dedicate next part. Thank you for listening so far.
