G-d and electric cars

sunday i got up and went to kaleo (in my pickup). after kaleo they had “the outlet”, which is a meeting they have for new people who are interested in finding out more about the church and how they can become more involved in the activities of the church. i’m not sure where that will lead for me, but right now i’m trying to stay cautiously open to possibility. my tendency to be an outsider instead of a joiner, along with my experiences with ecclesia, have made me resistant to readily identifying myself with any organized church.
to be honest, i tend to feel like an outsider everywhere, but as my life has progressed i feel more and more at odds with average american church culture. there are just too many differences between us in the way i think, the views and interests i hold, etc. i used to feel like maybe it was my purpose to bring some more complexity of thought and views to the culture — to broaden their cultural perspective — but after years of fruitless labor and feeling overwhelmed by being around and in it, i’m tired of trying. to me, christianity — as a religion, as a theology, as a way of viewing the world — is much bigger than (or even at odds with) the culture they have set up and defined as “christian”. it is frustrating and disheartening to try and work inside a system that just doesn’t make much sense to me.
that said, kaleo is currently the closest thing i’ve found to a cobbling together of some of the things i do like about various churches and denominations throughout history. like a lot of life, being a part of a church requires some compromise because nothing is perfect — unfortunately, the compromises i’ve chosen to make in life have mostly turned out rather poorly.
this doesn’t mean my personal religious beliefs have weakened or fallen apart, as i don’t place them in the hands of the people who make up the churches around our nation. kind of like i don’t put my beliefs about women or marriage in the hands of tamara (my ex-wife). however, if things continue to deteriorate, i just may end up following through on my occasional threat…to move onto the family land and live a completely isolated life and write manifestos. maybe it’s what i’m meant to do… okay, enough of that tangent. if i’m going to become a crazy, manifesto-writing hermit, i don’t want to have spoiled it by explaining how i was going to do it.
in the afternoon i met the potts (on my motorcycle) at amazon grill.
later i drove (in the element) over the potts’ house. i helped jack move over and/or set up all of his domains on my server, plus we watched who killed the electric car?. it’s a really interesting documentary about the creation and disappearance of electric vehicles by the major auto manufacturers. maybe i’m just cynical, but even though i wasn’t really too surprised or shocked, it still made me shake my head and wonder “why?” at times. before the movie pitched it, i was already discussing the probability that the oil and car companies were both actively pushing to keep the american consumer hooked on internal combustion engines. it really makes sense. electric cars were a reality — they were manufacturing them, leasing them, improving them, building an infrastructure — and it was too real, too fast. they needed more time to diversify, more time to find new revenue streams, more time to maximize their profit from the current infrastructure. so they killed them and destroyed them. to provide distraction, they talked about the negatives and pitched an exciting new alternative — hydrogen fuel cells! which are of course a number of years out, not an already realized reality. of course, the movie obviously has an agenda — but i think the actions of the auto companies (especially gm against the ev1) is bad enough that there doesn’t need to be much spin to show hidden motives were at play — the cards on the table just don’t add up at all. i loved the battery researcher — stan ovshinsky — and his wife in the movie. they seemed like a cute couple, and he seemed like a really cool guy. i think the movie is definitely worth watching, even if you think the movie creators are trying to spin the situation.
watching the movie reminded me of the couple of times over the last few months that i’ve read or seen something about tesla motors. i tell you what, if i had $100k to spend on a vehicle, i would certainly consider being an early adopter with one of their roadsters. how cool to be a part of that group? from the few things i’ve read and seen, the ceo, martin eberhard, appears to be intelligent, well-spoken, and insightful. (see this msnbc interview) and i think their strategy of creating a first vehicle that people with money will be excited about and support, thus providing a foundation for the company to build and expand on, is a good one. i hope tesla is able to create a market for themselves.