Jambos and Dogbites

First there was the wheel. Then the wheel duplicated and had somewhere to be, so we got the lane. Then city planners duplicated the lane, and have been adding more lanes ever since. During this whole process we've seen nothing short of a humanitarian crisis over who with wheels gets which lane.

The lane demonstrates itself here as our limited resource, always getting its space filled with traffic, while simultaneously growing shorter ahead until we turn off to a different road, giving someone else with wheels a space to zip into. Someone who was behind us now takes the moving place on the asphalt as part of the current (or lack thereof) of metal, rubber, pumping blood, and industry that we once were.

After the creation of the lane, because it was more complicated* to evolve the lane, they upgraded the wheels, and they upgraded the things that go on the wheels to be safe enough to contain a family of seven, or two, but sometimes one. But it doesn't matter how big the group is contained in the thing, because when the other things with wheels look at it all they see is the one. They see a locomotive, driving in its peculiar movements, moving colorfully forward, running out of track. They see the Jambo.

[*Insert backlogged court-seized evidence: paper-clipped to demographic information on best neighborhoods to slap an economic apartheid freeway down in the middle of, twenty six pages of guest list to last year's city planners cocktail party, twenty six pages of guest list to that same year's Car Company investor's cocktail party, substantial private jet fuel receipts, substandard private driver pay stubs. Insert no records to a party for people making as much money from well kept roads.]

A Jambo is the entity that exists as the connection between the humans inside a car and the deathtrap itself, a living decision making machine. Other onlooking Jambos perceive its personality and end up feeling in themselves a deeply rooted awe, wondering how they might decide (or might blink and do it without deciding) to kill each other in the event of a horrible (or nonexistent) accident.

It's dangerous to be the human part of a Jambo. Take, for instance, the heart of all these pieces that make a Jambo as a long history of death and explosions. Then add to this heart the numerous decisions made to recast the explosions as less deathly. Bombs on wheels, they called them, a term lost to time and safety upgrades.

To obtain the amount of credibility currently held by the car industry, it took time and effort, lots of work. Jambos are forged of steels from the earth, something used originally to make frightening things like weapons and currency, and from the steaming ground up they built their reputation. The first Jambos had quite a problem convincing human society that they were more than just a safety hazard. A lot of learning had to happen for all groups involved.

Jambos now, on average, seem capable of preventing enough death to deem automobiles generally good. Such life saving decision making skills come naturally after even a few months spent being a Jambo. As the Jambo spends more time experiencing life, it learns more lessons and cumulatively has to make more decisions on the fly.

Gasses to gasses and rust to rust; this entity was born of agency.

Decision making is only a fractal of the bigger Jambo picture. The Jambo doesn't only make them, it consists entirely of decisions-- Why did the car owner choose this color? Why did the driver choose to operate this thing that a manufacturer had decided to create the functions of? What past experiences made the owner decide to brake so far back? Why did the owner decide to drive this specific road? A Jambo consists of moving parts deciding how to move, present themselves, feel, function, and react in space. That's a lot of pressure for a set of tires.

But why make so many decisions as a Jambo? Why must one press on in this manner?

Jambos strive to be the best Jambo they can be. Perhaps it's to survive the inherent danger of heavy machinery or to get places more efficiently, or for some Jambos maybe it's an outlet for the internal human piece's big personality. Furthermore, it is possible that all deciding as a Jambo is encouraged and directed by those who are benefitting from the Jambo's forever financial output. Nonetheless, a Jambo wants to be the greatest Jambo for the individual application of its shared communal purpose, so it is worth the pressure.

In order to self actualize and be capable of making the best decisions, a Jambo must learn. It is the Jambo way. This learning is always occurring, sometimes as a big lesson or as a little one, or as a combination of many. Each Jambo is learning a different lesson, whether obvious or not to the others around it. Jambos tend to forget that they are part of a flock that learns. This lack of consideration for where a Jambo is along its path to enlightenment is where the problem begins, and the most important Jambo lesson.

In an incident of road rage, a projection of omitting knowledge is put on another's Jambo mistake by the misguided Jambo who perceives themself a victim. It's typically punishment on someone with a racing heart because they already almost died. The mistake is judged wrongly; what goes into a Jambo decision is not always known to the other Jambos.

If a family of seven is plugged into the vessel for example, the Jambo trends toward a more diversified mind with a more polluted set of motives that influence how the car moves.

Here we have a car that may be driven slower than usual due to the driver's heightened concern for the safety of their family. It may swerve because one of the humans inside may throw a human shoe at the driver's human head, so the driver turns around to yell at the youngest part of the Jambo. When the driver turns around, the Jambo's driving eyes point in reverse and see what's going on behind the car, where a sports car is zooming up from the abyss.

The Jambo attempts to merge out of the fast lane to let the sporty one through, but doesn't complete the job because of a telephone call that the human in the passenger seat just received from the pregnant eighth member of the family, who has suddenly gone into labor. Now functioning as part of the Jambo, the pregnant eighth influences the car's decision to slow down and prepare for an illegal U-turn from the fast lane to head back to the hospital. The sporty Jambo passes near on the right and zooms off into the abyss. A human hand sticks out of its window with a middle finger on it, a hand that should've remained on the wheel for the upcoming sharp turn, just out of sight.

Because of an inadequate system of unevolving lanes, the family Jambo quickly decided that it had to break the law. Nothing bad happened to them in doing this, but the unconfirmed fate of the affected sporty Jambo cannot be said the same for. Each Jambo here was learning a lesson. One was learning to drive less recklessly [defined as too speedy, uncontrolled, inconsiderate], while part of the other was learning to act in accordance with the flow of traffic before making an unexpected movement, and another part of this one was learning not to throw a shoe at the driver on the freeway, and another part was learning to present telephone news less frantically to a driver who had just accrued light damage to the head, along with at least five other secret lessons that surely influenced the decision.

For these Jambos, choices were made in the process of learning that will not be made so frequently in the future. When a Jambo sees another Jambo doing something that seems risky, there is no need for either Jambo to get upset as the catalytic offense was unlikely directed as an attack.

A fellow Jambo's behavior is rarely something to become furious about, because all Jambos are utilizing the best of their present state to act on the same intention: to move forward. Or backward, if reversing of course.

A Jambo exists in the present moment as a bubble of combined interior and exterior experiencing. It once was occupying the space behind it and it soon will do the same in the space ahead of it. Identical sentiments can be made for the Jambo to the left, and the Jambo ahead. All together, they move nowly in a swarm with the shared ultimate plan of going.

A motorcycle is a Small Jambo, and is to be protected as it is in the most danger. It is also the fastest and is to flourish in its unique liberation.

A semi truck with three loads of cargo is a Big Jambo, getting paid to be a Jambo that transports loads of commodity across the lanes of the nation.

An ice cream truck is a Chilly Jambo, singing through the neighborhood, reaching its arms of tasty influence into the sidewalk where tiny vulnerable humans swarm to trade its chilliness for the same thing that the Big Jambo makes its trek for.

But something is wrong.

Something is wrong in the lanes, an outsider. Something exists in our scape of Jambos that is so horrifyingly unJambo that all Jambos might reduce their speed and bunch up into a hoard. This soulless antagonizing unit used to be a Jambo, long before it went through a series of evil grinding surgeries to erase itself and become the predator that it is now. It's wrapped in armor and painted for the state. It's given an evil steel jaw to chomp on all who go, and the permission to use it. This is the Dogbite, enemy of the Jambos.

A cop car drives with nowhere to be, sneaking up the onramps to where the Jambos run free with the promise of movement then down an offramp back to their streets to make an uneasy Jambo or two putter to a stop at a favorite piss-yellow light, then back to the freeway again. It never runs out of track because it owns the track, traveling in a closed circuit, sucking its thorny tail.

A self sufficient battery of modern technology, never more than profiting robot. The vast population of the Dogbite, only ever circling like a shark in its self-claimed territory all day long, is armed with the intention and means to inflict lessons on the unsuspecting Jambos who've decided allegedly wrong in a moment.

Whether the inflicted lesson is removal of the Jambo's human part from the Jambo, removal of a small sum of the Jambo's funds to live on, or even just the fear that comes with being pulled over, it is still a punishment on someone who likely finds the interaction irrelevant to their Jamboian going. The lesson that a Dogbite offers to a Jambo is rarely teaching, often unneeded, and always an unnatural blue & red foreign body in the blood flow of traffic.

A Jambo learns many lessons, but never is it afforded in good conscience to learn to live fearlessly.

If a Jambo lives for the purpose of moving forward, and to get where it needs to be so it can make funds to continue existing as a Jambo, a Dogbite exists to halt the Jambo in its tracks, with a monthly quota on mandatory fund confiscation. There are more elements to the institution from which the Dogbite is born, but would be redundant in this essay and can be found in more specific detail across Vocal+.

In short, the human element at the center of a Dogbite is barely human, existing in the pedestrian world as an entity with a polluted yet fervent understanding of why it exists [defined as: to serve and protect]-- yet it continues to grow in power because that's all it is. A Dogbite is power over a Jambo. A Dogbite is unnecessary additional pressure on a Jambo already trying to maintain life.

A Dogbite doesn't have to make decisions like a Jambo, it acts based only on what books written by the old first Dogbites wrote long ago say to do in statistical situations. It doesn't have to consciously focus on following traffic regulations or speed limits that were set as a cheapest lane safety evolution, and if it wants to turn left all the way from the right lane it can just turn on the flashing blue and red to immobilize the surrounding law abiding Jambos. Training told them that they can do that, that only they have the permission to, and that any Jambo doing so should be stopped for questioning and probably killed.

This abuse of power is associated with an unexpected side effect- a lack of agency. Believe it or not, the freedom to make decisions is not something that Dogbites have the privilege of. Everything they do is learned in their training and influenced by their preexisting patterns of discernment. (This of course, is not something to be pitied, because that would feed their unwillingness to learn how to benefit the Jambos. The Jambo in them has been erased, so any kind of validation of what they do, including pity, makes them more powerful.) Shouldn't we instead be afraid of this lack of agency?-- Jambos have evolved enough pattern recognition to associate Dogbites with danger. With this information we can act like the prey of the wilderness- running, hiding, disguising, becoming poisonous. Forever we are the smaller creatures, never to live so free range like in a Paleocene before. The option to find beauty and peace on the road is tainted by fear. There are not options in sight to erase this factor. To be a Jambo unchased by Dogbites remains a distant myth, but as we once were occupying the space behind us we will soon be in the space ahead. With progress and thought, and empathy on the road, we can grow past any perceived need for the Dogbite.

In a theoretical parallel world without Dogbites and alternatively the adequate evolution of asphalt and the lane, we would have the ideal Jambo utopia. The funds that Dogbites generated here could be used instead there to create a better system of lanes. In this perfect Dogbiteless, Jambo-run world, there would be a pleasant air of reason emitting from our free agency, free learning, and free experience. We would live without fear in a place where it is encouraged to truly live.

Perhaps even the Jambo would evolve into something less dire, where we wouldn't have to expend this industrial part of ourselves to get to work to generate revenue that feeds the earth's liquid to the deathtrap that we become on our way home.

In Los Angeles, a place known for its traffic, a beloved highway winds from Pasadena to Down Town. The 110, built in 1938 for jalopies and penny-farthings, features countless ten-foot off ramps, sharp turns, and potholes that will dislocate a Jambo's human from its seat. It's a hoot to drive, but its one of the most dangerous roads in the state as it was not built nor upgraded to handle the speed of modern motors. The automotive industry doesn't mind, for it has been built by hands with ulterior motives.

Money wouldn't have to be spent on gas every week, nor on a barely-good-enough new paint job, or to change your oil or replace a transmission-- it might be spent on a fruit to enjoy on a clean high-speed rail, or maybe it's spent on souvenirs for your family of eight at a gift shop you visit while on paid vacation. Perhaps the money decides to go to a fast fashion outfit to catch the eye of the hottest person in the bus. You could go so easily across the sea, just in time to see your high school boyfriend and show him love before he commits a war crime on his agency-lacking hostage. [Defined as: a lesson which the military has failed to inflict on its employees. The boyfriend has not learned empathy, not experienced it, nor has he made a decision informed by it. A military friend of the boyfriend once had empathy, but has experienced in an increasing amount of instances that it's better off not to access it.]

These are all decisions that someone might make if they wanted to feel connected to their environment, in one way or another misguided.

It's human nature to want to belong.

If the lanes had been allowed to evolve with the wheel, and had the Jambo realized that it only existed in the present moment as a module of the current, the Dogbite would not have ever been born. There would be no reason. Those Jambos who had been transformed into monsters would be tooting along peacefully in a world without traffic and fearful hazardous driving, where Jambos commute in harmony, rarely dying from other Jambos, belonging in a world which they haven't inflicted unwarranted fear upon.

It makes me crazy. Diving deeper into a dream, in an even more ideal world where a Jambo is not the commodified personality of a going car, it is the smiling face of a human understanding another human. The freeways are turned into some ginormous public transportation contraption that doesn't cut you off and slam the brakes. It transports your family of seven to the hospital for free, quickly without worry, and without killing you. There would be no need for this big Jambo to be policed, because the people have made their decisions to ride inside of this big bubble where empathy drives everyone to stick up for one another. Any bad thing that could happen would be fought by the effort of a community's shared plan to go somewhere.

In the mean time, while humans wait for things to evolve enough for experiencing both agency and peace, we must maintain our agency driving the roads alongside the Dogbites. In the spirit of the liberation which we are founding, if lanes are to evolve with cars and speed, so should our empathies and that of whom we associate with to raise the future. We cannot put unpaid jailed neighbors to the task of constructing something freeing that they cannot experience themselves, and we cannot construct it to divide a town further.

As Jambos, it is our responsibility to acknowledge where we came from and where we are going, a world of communities. Then driving, we acknowledge the industrial source of our anger when another Jambo is learning a lesson that affects us.

We are a hive of Jambos raising each other up to go places while we ourselves go places. We experience and learn, we make decisions, we learn from our decisions so we can experience deciding. We all do this in unison. To wish any harm on another Jambo is to wish harm upon oneself.

We Jambos must realize that our anger is for the broken roads that we make our way upon, for those with power who refuse to fix the roads, and for those with power who take advantage of the Jambos' dire place on the broken roads. This is our Jambo home. We live on asphalt and cement, sometimes on dirt or even in water.

[Fuel for thought: If a cyclist or someone on smaller wheels (cement) is a Jambo, is everything on the sidewalk a Jambo? Is a boat (water) a more free Jambo since there are no lanes? What if pirates drove cars on a land region governed by something like maritime law? If someone is Pro-Dogbite while leisurely driving up a mountain (dirt) in their modified military surplus vehicle, what is their definition of freedom to those oppressed by Dogbites far in the south side of the city that they live in and cannot afford to leave for the weekend?]

Next time we bunch up in traffic, let it not be because there's a police car in the crowd and we're afraid, but because we want to have a group hug.

Next time we see an old beater getting pulled over for expired tags, let the glaring blue & red lights be dampened by a forming barricade of other Jambos helping the unfortunate Jambo escape.

Jambos are one. We are made of machines that kill and minds that understand when they see life depart. Together, we have more power than a territorially circling weapon that lacks the human need to belong and the human tendency to experiment with free will.

I'm an experimentalist at heart, which is why I've become infatuated by the phenomenon of Jambos and Dogbites. Once we know what the problem is and give it a name, we can then name a solution. I believe that if we tamper with our potential, we could live on Earth in a way that exists now only to Jambos as an accidental side effect of the consumerism that birthed them, deep within an invisible flowing connection. This beautiful connection that we have formed where we've been placed is our last hope-- we should not erase all empathy stored in it with the road rage. Road rage at another Jambo is the passive acceptance of the Dogbites' rule.

Most Jambos, in a sense of passive being, will tolerate anything if they feel like it's temporary. They will ignore the hidden beauty and power in communal hope, because they're busy with all the going they've been up to, focussing on getting somewhere in one piece and off the road as soon as possible. On the road in that fashion a Jambo never gets to experience life in the present; off the road, the Jambo remains dormant. It's an abuse of purpose.

I got a parking ticket last week for resting my Geo Metro in the clean air vehicle section for less than an hour. The Geo Metro was marketed as a clean air vehicle when it was born in the 90's. It was coined the car for the people that anyone could afford in the whole world, but that dream died over twenty years ago and the car companies have evolved far past that operation [Clean Air Vehicle is defined in Section 5205.5 of the California Vehicle Code by jargon that translates to: a clean air vehicle must be made of new expensive technologies or of the approved new expensive technologies of the model's year]. My car stood out like a green thumb in row of expensive charcoal grey Teslas. I would get a parking ticket every day if I were to continue to park there, and I would no longer be able to afford living as a Jambo. I must park in the dirty proletariat section for now.

The traffic seems worse than it's been before. Just add a new lane, they say. They send construction workers to the sight of a pothole to fill it in for six months. We see them working and believe that improvement is being made, that our agony is temporary. We begrudgingly merge into the makeshift lane around the workers, going below the normal speed limit because fines are doubled in construction zones and speed will be enforced. We are late to our nine-to-five and make fifteen cents less today. This will affect our morale at the pump tomorrow.

In such a cruelly run street with so many lanes, we must take the opportunity to look to our vast left and to our vast right, and know that inside of all those cars exist bubbles of human interaction. It's a Jambo. That thing is alive just as much as you are.

That thing is learning too, big lessons and small, just like you. Right now you are learning a big Jambo lesson-- to have empathy for the other Jambos who are the same exact thing as you.

To learn is to grow, which is something that alive things do.

Neither growing, learning, or living is an available protocol for the Dogbites. None of these are available decisions for the automotive industries that profit off of our stagnation. None of these hopes are happening in the soulless illusion of capital progress that we all believe in as we inch forward toward where the car in front of us just was. At least we have familiarity here.

Even if inching forward is cryogenic going-nowhereness in the face of any long broken road ahead, we can respect that we are in the tire tracks of the person who's been here before. People have died to widen this lane, and people have died on the widened lane because it was still not wide enough. People have died trying to fix the lane, and now it is filled with traffic where we Jambos are sitting at a stand still in the place of these martyrs.

We are together in our inching forward. If the whole world to one's own current mind were to be one's immediate surroundings plus a sprinkle of external influences, a traffic jam experiences all there is to existence. All there is is all that which matters-- a pack of Jambos experiencing going.

Jambo, I love you.