Certainly on some level, the element of danger is an influential factor here, as I recognize feeling most alive when nearest to ruin. On another level though, there is a profound sort of focus that can be attained when weaving through traffic at 90+ miles an hour, where a sense of oneness and ego-dissolution can be achieved; the driver, seemingly, is speed. For proof, just force the car to a sudden halt at such a speed, and you'll see the driver ejected from the vehicle, speeding through the air. An object in motion remains in motion.
Still, to summarize the sensation as one of danger and self-transcendence is inadequate. For the driver it is meditative, wiping the mind clear of any unnecessary thought - like a windshield-wiper to the glass - while simultaneously forcing the brain to sustain heightened sensory analysis as it processes all of the visual stimulation, forcing the mind to work in ways more demanding. The vehicle also, I think yearns to travel faster. Look at a Ferrari and tell me it isn't begging for someone to climb inside it and arouse its kinetic energy a few orders of magnitude.
There is something almost sexual in speeding. The slow moan of the engine, the bucking and bounding of the car as it shifts gears, fingers wrapped tight around the skinny wheel, the subtle rising and falling as it bounces on the natural contours of the road, the intimacy between the driver and the vehicle, the fear of getting caught. Dominant and submissive roles are assumed by the driver and automobile, while the necessary level of command and control exercised by the driver creates a kind of bondage between the two.
Perhaps even more important than any of the things yet mentioned, the act of speeding, is above all, a symbolic act. Speeding exists only as an idea - artificial limits are established by authorities and are then imposed on us with the expectation that we abide. Then, speeding is to rebel, to renounce arbitrary truths and fashion your own - literally to lead instead of follow. It is enough for there to exist an idea of something that stands in the way of our autonomy for us to become covetously disobedient. There is a famous experiment, one which every student of sociology or psychology should be familiar - conducted by Stanley Milgram - in which participants were instructed by 'doctors' to administer electric shocks to a recipient in increasing intensity pending a correct or incorrect answer from the recipient. One interpretation of the experiment is to illustrate how willing a subject is to inflict harm on another person if instructed to do so by an authority figure. What is often not mentioned about the experiment, is how the refusal rate to administer the shock ballooned once a participant was told that they had no choice but to deliver the shock. Once autonomy was threatened, the leaders of the experiment were met with a stark refusal to comply.
But it's not only a rejection of authority, or rebellion once agency is in jeopardy, it is also a rejection of time. Driving quickly is accompanied by the feeling of being capable of accomplishing more, potentialities abound when careening by those driving slowly, as they seem to stand still. If Tom Cochrane is right, and life is a highway, then it would seem speed is a delusion invented to provide us a glimpse of immortality, the idea that we can somehow move faster than death and all of our troubles; foiling fate and escaping heroically over the horizon into the sun set.
Though, really, the true delusion is standing still; always we are racing toward the grave.
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