like maybe 8% of turn-of-the-century (19->20) communalism had to do with the pure incidental fact of how “the steam engine” mated with “steel” (and later “electricity”) to generate communal experience
Now that I say it like that 80%, the 8% was just for the experience of riding trains and trams, another 28% for the physical environment it created and the rest from other stuff mostly geopolitical
I make these numbers up by throwing stuff out and asking myself whether it’s too high or too low so
but if you were thinking of scoffing, have you ever identified American individualism with personal automobiles and petroleum and pre-computerized assembly line organizational engineering via “suburbanization” or “the open road”?
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