Quote (sum182_41 @ Jul 30 2021 10:10am)
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that if we as a society focused on and were outraged by the real issues in the modern age, as opposed to wasting the majority our collective energy on far more trivial battles, we could actually work towards and make progress on the meat and potatoes issues.
I’m not suggesting ignoring X for Y, both deserve attention but the balance of that attention is off. Like I mentioned previously the compass of modern activism needs calibration.
A different example (and different meat and potatoes): 25,000 people die of hunger every day, 10,000 being children. We don’t even have a food shortage, we have a logistical issue getting food to places where this occurs, but instead advocating to lobby financial resources to work towards solving this we spend money and focus our energy on more trivial matters because those trivial matters are more important for us (modern society) to address for some reason. If we focused our attention collectively on the real issues we could do real good for humanity. That doesn’t mean we have to ignore less pressing issues, those issues just deserve a more appropriate level of attention.
Suggesting that we don’t have the ability to solve those problems because they’re harder and therefore our attention should be placed on easier battles I just don’t agree with. I was responding to OP as microcosm of the inappropriately focused activism that will allow the real issues to flourish for the next 100 years as opposed to the next 10. It’s not an indictment of OP specifically but the modern nature of western activism as a whole. My original argument was perhaps more crude but I think it’s abundantly clear what I meant.
Let's be realists here - there are some issues that are so big, that people have been trying to change for tens if not hundreds of years, that have yet to be resolved. Whether there is no appetite by those in power, or otherwise, attempting to solve them whilst putting EVERYTHING else on the backburner is an awful idea.
World hunger could be solved by any one multi-billionaire, or by the US government just taking a SMALL break from its military budget. Neither of those things have happened in any meaningful way. Why? Because nobody can tell a billionaire what to do with their money, and nobody wants to tax billionaires appropriately, because then their country would lose their business. Why the US refuses to decrease its military budget? Nobody knows, but my guess is that because America's ENTIRE IDENTITY is military, guns, obesity, and pretending that they are free/the best.
Child & Slave Labour could realistically be solved with population control. These issues exist because some countries just promote and allow people to have tens of children...and there is nowhere for these kids to go, and the families cannot afford to feed these kids, so the kids need to get a job at a young age and work, or the parents are desperate to make money for these families. It's the same thing we see in the US. The economic groups that have the lowest incomes are the ones with the highest birth rates, which just pushes poverty higher, and starts these kids off on the wrong foot.
Look at that Greta Thunburg woman - everyone thought she'd be some catalyst for real change, and that she was going to be the push we needed on the climate disaster....and then she faded into the background.
People are apathetic and selfish. I think Andy Weir wrote people perfectly - "we (adapt/evolve) to the point that we need to and no further".
This is one of those issues that is realistic and actually quite simple to solve, comparatively. And who knows, these quick wins might turn people on to activism and actually trying to get something done.
This post was edited by Flawed on Jul 30 2021 08:18am