- Re: All kinds of hypocrisy for Greta Thunberg as she crosses the Atlantic in a billionaire's boat Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on July 30, 2019, 8:53 pm, in reply to "All kinds of hypocrisy for Greta Thunberg as she crosses the Atlantic in a billionaire's boat"
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It reminds me of the church's approach of encouraging people to look exclusively at their own sins - atoning for these and confessing them in detail to a power figure who will of course violate the trust if others in power are threatened. Modern environmentalism and other forms of liberal guilt seem to have followed on from this tradition with the obsessive focus on personal responsibility for environmental and social ills. Reduce +your+ carbon footprint, change +your+ shopping habits, atone for +your+ privilege by donating to this charity etc etc. Well sorry but it doesn't f*ing work, and in fact I'd argue it's +designed+ not to work. While we're all gazing at our navels the ruling elite continue to plunder the world 10,000 more times destructively than the average human being, and what's more they have deliberately rigged the economic system to make it so the rest of us can't live any other way, whether we want to or not. Also: I've tried being the change I want to see, and in some ways it's been great but I can't think of a single person who has followed my example and it has created a barrier between me and former friends who either idealise how I've chosen to live or who feel threatened by it (or resentful when I ask them for lifts because I don't drive but still would like to go places in this public transport-deficient country). Maybe they think I think I'm better than them, maybe it brings up uncomfortable truths about their own choices, maybe they don't like being reminded about their crappy physical health, whatever. Past a certain point it's Not Spoken About and I think that's a key reason for the sense of isolation and embattled attitudes of so many of the people I've lived and worked with in 'alternative' circles. On the farm I'm currently working on, after they got permission for a semi-permanent dwelling for an agricultural worker to live on site with their family the village clubbed together and paid to have ditches dug on all the roadside commons just in case any gypsies or travellers got any ideas as well. It's quite a good metaphor for the broader social response towards any move to a sane & sustainable way of living: they say that's what they want, but they really, really don't. I think we need to forget leading by example and look to other ways of basically forcing change. 'Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible--it's to dismantle those systems.' - Lierre Keith cheers, I |