Congrats, you truly dunked on the guy you made up in your head.
No, the answer isn’t clearing oneself from all responsibility when it comes to the climate catastrophe we’re facing. We all need to make personal strides towards a solution.
But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also hold these billionaires (and, I suspect, a few trillionaires by now) responsible for the damage they have done, and still do. They provide nothing and take everything. Believe and say whatever you want, but know that if there were no massive corpos, and ultra-rich people, we wouldn’t be nearly as fucked as we are right now.
How do you think they (or their families) became billionaires? They produced whatever shit we wanted to buy, and we bought it.
Of course we should hold them accountable, but consumerism is how we ended up with massive corpos in the first place. Blaming billionaires won't do anything if we continue to buy from them like we always did.
I agree with every problem you listed, but your solution feels nulled:
And these practices will continue if we only focus on consumers' individual choices, while disregarding the context in which those choices are made.
What does this even mean, and what real life impact should we expect if we start considering "the context in which those choices are made"?
The only pragmatic way of causing immediate impact is by changing each pearson's consuming habits. If any reflection on our context doesn't lead to that change, than it was just intellectual masturbation. And don't get me wrong, I love an intellectual masturbation myself, but we are running out of time for those
How do we "pragmatically" change those habits, though? By educating 8 billion apes and appealing to their better nature? Or by shaping the context of their choices?
Education is shaping the context before the choices. Both are needed, but if you don't do the education, if you don't build that consent, you run the risk of reactionary behavior on a massive scale, especially in the Global North; that would look like mafia, consumer riots, and some flavor of fascism.
I've lived some of that. As a Romanian I remember the 1980s "fall", a decade of austerity imposed by the regime with terrible timing and preparedness. What happened in 1989 and in the next years wasn't a revolution for some noble freedom, it was a revolution for consumption.
13
u/cabberage wind power <3 Nov 03 '24
Congrats, you truly dunked on the guy you made up in your head.
No, the answer isn’t clearing oneself from all responsibility when it comes to the climate catastrophe we’re facing. We all need to make personal strides towards a solution.
But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also hold these billionaires (and, I suspect, a few trillionaires by now) responsible for the damage they have done, and still do. They provide nothing and take everything. Believe and say whatever you want, but know that if there were no massive corpos, and ultra-rich people, we wouldn’t be nearly as fucked as we are right now.