Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym
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Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym
Greer cites this mismatch between preached and personal behaviour for the spectacular failure of env Archived Message
on July 29, 2019, 8:24 pm, in reply to "The Real Problem of Hypocrisy for Extinction Rebellion"
-ironmentalism to achieve even a slowdown in the race to perdition; or one of the major reasons, anyway.
Despite Tom Sinclair's tortuous - and unconvincing - argument, people do indeed pick up on the - fundamentally argument-crippling - unconvincingness of 'do as I say, not as I do', and they don't buy. This is particularly true of the ADEP - the Abused and Deprived Eighty Percent, as they observe the entire life-style of the PTP - the Pampered Twenty Percent. Whilst we live as we do, are they going to take our environmentalist hand-wringing seriously? Of course not!
The argument to be the change you want, and thus to lead by concrete example, seems to me to be watertight: if you want to see a world without all those bad ideas that we can all list easily, then eschew them yourself, and demonstrate how one does fine without them. As well to do it now, whilst we still have some organisational choice, rather than being forced to quit hugger mugger, during a period of horrendous disorder. That sort of money-where-mouth-is behaviour people find genuinely convincing.
To adapt an old jokey rhyme:
"To the man in the street,
Who I'm sorry to say is a keen observer of life,
The word [environmentalist] usually means
A man who's untrue to his [professed principles]'.
(The altered original words were 'intellectual' and 'wife') 
For an apropos commentary from Jim Kunstler and like-minded guest Douglas Hill, hear this podcast:
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-318-yakking-with-doug-hill-about-the-fate-of-technology/
Bottom line: just get used to using and having a whole lot LESS! Do it, already!