First … Yes … Oooofff!
Second … it is really embarrassing and always was just how easily we were scammed into thinking everything will be fine and stay the same if we just all virtue signal a little.
I honestly wonder if increased culture war angst at the moment (if it is really increased) is a side effect of this play from big-corp.
Slightly more deeply, it’s interesting how much the idea of marshaling individuals on the basis of “doing the right thing” is some kind of dogma. Obviously it’s democratic and can get some things done. But everything?! The things that require systemic alterations??
I’ve quizzed a few activist types about this with a simply numerical question … how many worthy issues are there and how many people doing something significant for them are necessary for anything to get done … and then how many issues is the average person actually capable of caring enough about to do something, even if you can convince them to?
Now it may turn out that the world truly could work this way except that we’re all apathetic consumeristic monsters. But these questions completely flabbergasted those I asked … they truly hadn’t thought about whether their system of change was in anyway a good system of change. Why? Well because, IMO, virtue signalling is a helluva drug. If you’re doing the right thing, even though it may very well be hopeless, there’s a certain kind of apathy that sets in around whether it is too hopeless and whether there are better approaches.
It doesn’t matter … because you are doing the right thing.
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I didn’t expect such a thoughtful answer to this post, but totally agree on all points. What makes these problems so intractable is that we as humans are innately utterly unequipped to deal with things at such a macro level, and our institutions also aren’t up to the task, at least in the timeframes required.
2020s: Stop having kids because they’ve got no future.
2020s: dude stands talking to himself it’ll be over soon
That song hit me like an absolute truck the first time I heard it. Now it just makes me tear up slightly.
Not much the average person can do when shipping companies burn bunker oil, and oil corporations pollute vastly more than anyone else
Yeah, how corporations managed to convince people that it’s people’s fault and we should be the ones changing something, not the corporates, is beyond me.
Are you familiar with The Crying Indian?
The thing is that the corporations aren’t doing this apropos of nothing. In the end it’s us the consumer with our demands for cheap stuff or pension investments or low cost food that is driving the corporate behaviour.
I don’t think there’s a single person now who can claim they haven’t known about this coming for a long time, and yet none of us has done as much as we possibly could to mitigate it.
We’re all culpable.
See, this is exactly what I was talking about.
Oh yeah, just realised I was making your point for you
Except there’s no way for consumers to select based on climate impact at the moment. We can’t see the carbon footprint of the products we buy on the shelf and there’s no market mechanism rewarding companies providing products that have a low carbon footprint. We either need much heavier taxes on fossil fuels at the original point of sale, or mandated carbon footprints on product labels.
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Depressed? Why kill yourself when the climate can kill you? 💀
/s Please don’t kill yourself or pollute the environment.
‘20s: yeah, it’s probably too late. Sorry kid lmao
But at least we generated record profits for shareholders
