Quote:
Originally Posted by Finnegan
It's pretty simple: because the fun is in the doing, the actual driving, the engagement and skills required. The Z4M is a fun car but only because you can operate it--it's not fun by simply existing or if it drove me around. What makes it fun is the demands it makes to drive it well and the rewards from doing so.
How many of us who truly enjoy the act of driving like being passengers? Playing golf or watching golf? Watching poker or playing poker? Drinking a fine wine or watching others imbibe? Being at the Grand Canyon vs. watching it from an armchair? Cleaning and jerking 250 lbs or watching a robot do it?
It may be some time off but the never ending banging of the drum to accept passivity, or merely acquiesce to the idea that new is always better, or that any activity must be 100% devoid of risk from those who would profit by such notions greatly disturbing. Remove the profit component and it's still disturbing. Humans exist, improve, achieve, experience by doing, "be" and "are" not by being inert lumps of passivity and inaction, but by participating and acting. Requiring absolute safety and absolute levels of mandated risk avoidance is in itself a major risk from my point of view. It's an assault on freedom. Falls are the second leading cause of death. Maybe we should make self-moving chairs a mandate. (Silly but it's the logical extension of the "eliminate all risk make safe" argument.)
Is that rather philosophical? Sure. But I see an existential threat to that which defines humanity in the overarching incessant drive to make us passive/inert. I prefer activity in all areas of life to sitting in an armchair. Even if that means some level of risk. Life, being actually alive, entails risk not some false bargain of absolute or close to absolute safety.
The future is that which we create. I prefer a future where we are actors in the play rather than being relegated to only being permitted to be members of the audience.
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This is exactly perfect. Eloquent. Thank you, sir.
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."