Most people, save those directly involved, probably don’t think about how a road got built and by whom when they’re driving on it on their commute to work.

The abstraction of the infrastructure we rely on hides a history of work, a chain of labor so complex that it’s hard to even imagine half the jobs that went into making our commute to work possible. A politician allocates some funds, a road engineer makes a plan, construction workers lay asphalt made by someone else carried by a truck made by some others. Do any of these people know each other? We’re abstract to each other, taught to believe an individualism that denies the collective nature of all our labor. We can imagine that in a rush to be first on the road, so many speed into one another, fighting against the very collectivity that has made this very road possible. What a tragedy.