Yesterday evening I pulled into my favorite Shell station to refuel the TCH. As the pump shut off and I started to return the fueling hose to the pump, a total stranger that was across the ally from me on the other pump island started yelling at me with lots of four letter words that cannot be printed here.

The thread of his assult was that his fuel bill was too high for his Lincoln Navigator, and somehow I was the reason. Hybrid drivers were screwing up the status quo and driving up the cost of fuel, slowing him down on the road with their gutless cars, and causing him so much stress that his wife was leaving him....

I didn't know this guy at all -- total stranger. That prompted me to start wondering what really set him off. Was it an irresponsible hypermiller -- unlikely given the location and the fact that all local thru-ways at that point are at least two lanes in each direction, and more often, three. Did he resent the fact that I was saving money and he wasn't, either by luck or good judgement....

and them it hit me! A most likely reason is guilt. Here is an affluent American (new Navigators are not cheap!) persuing his version of the American dream sterotype of larger, faster and more expensive (he with the most, biggest and fastest toys wins) -- and he knows that he should act socially responsible regarding global warming, fuel conservation and traffic overpopulations. My presence, and that of every other hybrid, is pointing out his own selfish social attitude.

Unfortunately our American social structure and the measures of success used by most of our peers encourage the development a "me first" attitue. Taken to its upper extreme, this becomes something like "social responsibility is for everyone else, I'm different -- I deserve to be treated as a exception", or worse, "the laws are for everone else, I deserve to be exempted".

The resistance to new, more efficient technologies such as hybrids is more than just resistance to change. It represents changes in the goals that many have been pursuing for most of ther lives -- and thus presents them with the realiziation that much of that pursuit has been in the wrong directions because the target has changed -- is still changing.

It is the ignorant among us that will eventually destroy us all.