I can only imagine leisurely reading or taking a nap while taking the train to work.

Instead I remember driving 2 hours round trip, back and forth to work in a never ending state of alertness and aggravation, inching forward on the 5 for what feels at once like hours, blending into days; time becomes irrelevant as I no longer know whether I have spent more time moving forward or standing still. I haven’t even passed Encinitas yet.

I am trapped within a tiny metal cage fighting against other drivers trapped in tiny metal cages for the meager five feet of space in front of my car while sinking deeper and deeper into alienation from others. Human decency becomes irrelevant on the road, when being late to work could spell the difference between a paycheck and unemployment. The freeway is a distillation of the logic of late capitalism; the atomized individual, in “free competition” against the thousands of other atomized individuals just trying to survive in a world in which the very existence of the other is an affront to your progress in this constant game of one-upsmanship. All while billionaires fly private jets to conferences on climate change, telling the rest of us to buy electric vehicles, to stop using straws. We never chose to live like this. As if our individual choices of consumption alone could make a dent in the all-consuming machine that is international capital.

The clarion call of a horn suddenly jolts me back to alertness. “That’s not how you merge!” I yell into the void. I look to my right, as some galaxy-brain genius decides to use the shoulder to cut in, wringing out a measly lead of an additional two, maybe three cars ahead. Amazing job, well done — I’m sure that made your day so much better. I once had that attitude. Each drive to work was a ruthless struggle, in which every car passed was a minute saved, and any other car that cut in front of me had launched the most grievous assault on my dignity which must be repaid in full. Other cars — their drivers are no longer human, they become their objects, mere obstacles to be passed. But what victory can there be for an alienated driver, who must repeat this same drive day after day? All anger, all ambition become meaningless. For the sake of my sanity I learned to become numb to the inanity of it all.

We drive our own ferry across the unending river of motor vehicles every weekday only to labor for the very tokens we need to ferry ourselves back to the land of the living. At the day’s end, I return to my own ferry as the sun casts low shadows over the world, the last fleeting rays of warm yellow light a welcome change from the cold white fluorescent bars I was fleeing — only to return again the next day. The setting sun drenches the sky in brilliant yellow and red, a final desperate display of light before retreating against the blue and gray of the night sky. Trapped in traffic, all I can do is gaze through my water spot-tinged window as a temporary relief from the harsh red glare of the undulating stream of brake lights in front of me. I take a photo, imagining what it must be like beyond the thin film separating me from nature. A life lived half-asleep inside an iron box.

After a full day of work I finally arrive home, yet another hour of life cheated from me by my commute. I am exhausted, not even because of work, but because of the drive. The commute is a void within time itself as measured by the clock. It is time not spent at work, so it is unpaid time. Yet it is not time that we spend willingly for ourselves, so it is wasted time. Whatever it is, we remain numb and tired. Too tired after work to seek fulfilling challenge, we retreat into Netflix and Reddit, and the endless scroll of social media. Eventually, as I scroll past post after post on Reddit, I come across the same images that I scrolled through from the previous day. Another day over, another cycle completed. Rinse and repeat.

Would a public transit system really be able to solve the problem of the commute? I doubt it. However, it would make things at least a little bit better. The commute is merely a symptom of the larger system of capital that we are all a part of. It is an expression of the material conditions of production in our society and reflects our cultural attitudes towards ourselves and others.

Driving a car in America represents freedom. It is the promise of individual mobility, the American Dream, the proof of adulthood. The car becomes an extension of one’s individuality, since conspicuous consumption is now the only recourse to self-expression available. Personal freedom, empowerment, and choice are inscribed upon the banners of its advertisements. But the truth of this freedom decries a different reality. The true reality of the commute is the traffic jam. You are free — only to the extent that you must contend against other drivers within a limited space and live so much of your adult life confined to a cage. The elation of getting your permit at 16, the hope for a future unbound by authority and the excitement at having the power to hang out with your friends, later turns into the reality of the commute at 22, the “end of history” and the beginning of the never ending cycle of work and the constant stress of being in traffic.

At least in San Diego, traffic only gets worse every year, but real public transit options are nowhere to be found. Why is that? Are we so averse to the idea of giving up our mythologized freedom of the individual that we cannot see that a public transit system could actually liberate us from our actual bondage to traffic? We need to begin to explore the potential power of freedom that can only be realized by a people who exist in community with one another, rather than confining ourselves to the “negative freedoms” of the neoliberal individual subject. How can we even begin to imagine building a society beyond what currently exists — beyond capitalism — if our city planners’ best solutions to traffic are limited to simply adding more lanes to the freeway?

One hundred years from now, perhaps San Diego will no longer exist, replaced rather by a single, all-encompassing freeway with lanes extending from the coast to the mountains. Individual drivers are all that remain of the population, no longer in need of workplaces (since everyone works remotely) or homes (since homes were destroyed to make room for more freeway). Only the rich have the luxury to afford self-driving cars and personal Premium Commuter lanes. The gray smog and hazy fumes have irreversibly tainted the atmosphere and keep the temperature at a constant 105 F, making outdoor activities impossible. Entire lives are lived on the road; a people without origins or destinations, they live and die confined to their vehicles, served only by roadside fast food vendors and electronic entertainment systems tailored specifically to each person’s individual tastes. The perfect neoliberal subject. Complacent. Numb. The eternal traffic jam of a capitalist future.

Oh wait, I was actually just describing LA.