The Evolution of Motorcycle Culture
BEING BIKER
An Illustrated History of Motorcycling Culture
By Alex Oliver
THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF MOTORCYCLE CULTURE
HOW BIKER CULTURE EVOLVED
Besides originating in different places, biking was assumed by people from different walks of life. They had no distinctive features, like class, skin colour or skeletal structure. Yet Biker culture’s convergent evolution has produced people who are socially very much alike, even in a global context: Comparatively, Cowboys, Indians, Mongols and Equestrians all differ greatly, even though they all share the culture of the horse.
Other cultures usually have great leaders, who either instigated particular movements or were elected to higher positions. Although biking has its prominent personalities, they have always preferred to retain an equal status to other Bikers. Pomp and ceremony are anathema to the biking ethos.
Because the essence of biking is mobility, it can be viewed as a throw-off from the universal impulse to travel. Ever since the Big Bang, the universe and everything in it has been travelling. Humans have had to get up and go in order to survive, and travel has been responsible for the creation and merging of many cultures.
Although Bikers live in permanent dwellings most of the time, their culture can be likened to nomadism, because it came together and grew out on the road - and in the many different places where Bikers congregated. It was therefore in direct conflict with the way in which other cultures of the late 19th century were being formulated. During this time, Romanies were becoming less and less welcome on the highways and byways. This made it bad timing indeed to be founding a travelling society. True nomads build their lives around Romany-like trading, or the search for food, sometimes dependent on the seasons. Rather than being governed by life’s essentials, travelling motorcyclists assumed their mobility in the search for the perfect road - and for each other. As biking gathered popularity and found its own meeting-places, it became free from the constraints and patterns of geographically static human relationships. A new cultural genre had emerged through mechanised travel, in the pursuit of leisure. The owners of other self-propelled vehicles were behaving similarly, however, their conveyances eventually became accepted by the authorities and public alike. Not so the motor bicycle.
As intelligent beings, people have surpassed the wheel, because the instincts to create works of art and build functional items became naturally integrated. Through that process, human imagination has woven the sparkling threads of culture around the phenomenon of kinetics - the ornate yet rideable custom bike is one example of this. From racing circuits to the back-streets, biking has become a part of human social history. Voltaire said: “If there hadn’t been a God, we’d have invented one.” Out of a more quintessential need, we invented the bike.
Many cultures pass through time along blood-lines. This is not the norm among Bikers, whose affectation more often comes from an encounter with a motorcycle: at any time of life. It is from here that the apprenticed rider assumes a kind of folk-lore. Even though it can provide gainful employment, no individual or group of riders has ever depended solely on biking for survival. Therefore, social conditions have never enforced biking, as they have done with mining, fishing and other work-oriented societies. Neither is there any compulsion to hand it down, as might be found in a religious or tribal belief. Taking up biking and then acquiring the lifestyle is more a random selection, made freshly by each individual as they pick up the torch. The result of this is a lateral, rather than a consecutive spread through time. Biker culture has spread outwards from various epicentres, and is better aligned with the randomness of nature, than the conformity of civilisation.
Because Biker culture grew by accident rather than by design, there was no need for any rules; yet there is a code of conduct. This is enacted as an improvisation; the guidance of the wise, the code of the road - which is common sense gilded by humanitarianism. It was borrowed from the aeons of travelling that had gone before, yet had never been written.
Just why a biking culture came to exist rests in two basic factors. Firstly, when like-minded people get together in leisure time, which is often creative, they naturally develop a degree of camaraderie. Secondly, biking’s position as a public activity caused reactions - often negative - within greater society. This tested the resolve of early Bikers. Rather than cause it to dissipate, it became strengthened. The commonalities between the groups of like-types and the oppression they faced were what caused their culture to evolve through local, national and international phases into a global entity.
Biking began, not with a social misfit trying to burn out and die young, but with an erstwhile venture into the pure delight that vehicular motion inspires. It is in this condition that every Biker finds an inner-self and sense of belonging, and where Biker culture founded itself.
An Illustrated History of Motorcycling Culture
By Alex Oliver
THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF MOTORCYCLE CULTURE
HOW BIKER CULTURE EVOLVED
Past cultures have been built slowly, on factors like how close people live to each other, religious beliefs and even war. But Biker culture represented a new cultural concept. It grew at an accelerated rate, and in more than one place at the same time. Through travel and the media, motorcycling grew beyond the ‘international’ and became globalised. Among other things, it was this rapid spread and growth of a new social identity that created problems, as the world’s collective brain slowly adjusted.
Besides originating in different places, biking was assumed by people from different walks of life. They had no distinctive features, like class, skin colour or skeletal structure. Yet Biker culture’s convergent evolution has produced people who are socially very much alike, even in a global context: Comparatively, Cowboys, Indians, Mongols and Equestrians all differ greatly, even though they all share the culture of the horse.
Other cultures usually have great leaders, who either instigated particular movements or were elected to higher positions. Although biking has its prominent personalities, they have always preferred to retain an equal status to other Bikers. Pomp and ceremony are anathema to the biking ethos.
Because the essence of biking is mobility, it can be viewed as a throw-off from the universal impulse to travel. Ever since the Big Bang, the universe and everything in it has been travelling. Humans have had to get up and go in order to survive, and travel has been responsible for the creation and merging of many cultures.
Although Bikers live in permanent dwellings most of the time, their culture can be likened to nomadism, because it came together and grew out on the road - and in the many different places where Bikers congregated. It was therefore in direct conflict with the way in which other cultures of the late 19th century were being formulated. During this time, Romanies were becoming less and less welcome on the highways and byways. This made it bad timing indeed to be founding a travelling society. True nomads build their lives around Romany-like trading, or the search for food, sometimes dependent on the seasons. Rather than being governed by life’s essentials, travelling motorcyclists assumed their mobility in the search for the perfect road - and for each other. As biking gathered popularity and found its own meeting-places, it became free from the constraints and patterns of geographically static human relationships. A new cultural genre had emerged through mechanised travel, in the pursuit of leisure. The owners of other self-propelled vehicles were behaving similarly, however, their conveyances eventually became accepted by the authorities and public alike. Not so the motor bicycle.
Many cultures pass through time along blood-lines. This is not the norm among Bikers, whose affectation more often comes from an encounter with a motorcycle: at any time of life. It is from here that the apprenticed rider assumes a kind of folk-lore. Even though it can provide gainful employment, no individual or group of riders has ever depended solely on biking for survival. Therefore, social conditions have never enforced biking, as they have done with mining, fishing and other work-oriented societies. Neither is there any compulsion to hand it down, as might be found in a religious or tribal belief. Taking up biking and then acquiring the lifestyle is more a random selection, made freshly by each individual as they pick up the torch. The result of this is a lateral, rather than a consecutive spread through time. Biker culture has spread outwards from various epicentres, and is better aligned with the randomness of nature, than the conformity of civilisation.
Because Biker culture grew by accident rather than by design, there was no need for any rules; yet there is a code of conduct. This is enacted as an improvisation; the guidance of the wise, the code of the road - which is common sense gilded by humanitarianism. It was borrowed from the aeons of travelling that had gone before, yet had never been written.
Just why a biking culture came to exist rests in two basic factors. Firstly, when like-minded people get together in leisure time, which is often creative, they naturally develop a degree of camaraderie. Secondly, biking’s position as a public activity caused reactions - often negative - within greater society. This tested the resolve of early Bikers. Rather than cause it to dissipate, it became strengthened. The commonalities between the groups of like-types and the oppression they faced were what caused their culture to evolve through local, national and international phases into a global entity.
Biking began, not with a social misfit trying to burn out and die young, but with an erstwhile venture into the pure delight that vehicular motion inspires. It is in this condition that every Biker finds an inner-self and sense of belonging, and where Biker culture founded itself.
posted by MRMC at 9:02 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home