The Prius--Status Symbol For the Weak

Rob Lyons from Spiked Online wrote an excellent article a few days back entitled, "An ego-trip dressed up as an eco-trip"

Rob looks at the successful Prius and wonders why Honda, who were pioneers in the hybrid field, haven't achieved the same success. He comes up with some answers that now seem very obvious to me:

The answer is, partly at least, because they look the same as regular Honda cars. Honda made a conscious decision to keep the look of their regular models so that buyers would not be put off by hybrid cars that looked too new or exotic. But as MSNBC reported this week, that is no good for many eco-motorists who buy distinct-looking hybrid cars precisely to show off their green credentials.

As such, green living has become a currency by which you can prove you’re an intelligent, caring kind of person. Eco-living may prove to be as superficial as any other passing fad...

But the Prius fad is also a symptom of the deeply conformist nature of green living, where it seems the chosen ones are desperate to show their piety, just as the religious bores of the past did. From their pulpit in the front seat of their energy-saving eco-car, the enlightened can lecture the rest of us about our sinful ways.

And when it comes down to it, that's really what much of the green movement is all about--lecturing us on how to live our lives.

I'm sure that many of the owners of Prius' were sold on the idea of a hybrid car simply because it's a green status symbol. Just like *scoring tickets* to an AlGore lecture somehow makes a person an expert in global warming, the Prius is just another feather in the cap for people who actually believe they are better than you because they drive a certain car.

In reality though, if a Prius is a status symbol to a certain group, may the Lord strike me dead if I ever decide to join that group. The Prius is a car that's good on gas, there is no status symbol attached to it...other than the possibility that the person driving it has their head firmly implanted up their ass.