If you’re waiting around for someone with more power than it takes to stand in a road with a sign to do anything, you will be waiting until your dying day.
Which, to be clear, is exactly what I expect will happen. Impeding society is seen as worse than destroying society, so inaction will destroy society. Because on the other side of inaction by the working class, is the massive (and massively destructive) action that we currently facilitate. Which means we are the problem, and our only choice is whether to also be a part of the solution. The solution being the mobilization of the working class. Which naturally takes the form of small actions against system (like blocking traffic and doing PR stunts) when numbers are still small because that is exactly what the working class is capable of doing.
I’m sure I’ve already triggered enough lemmies so I’ll go ahead and add, that non-activists calling for activists to destroy infrastructure are not wrong - but they are harmful, not helpful. If they believe in the statement and if this is their true criticism of activists, then those individuals would become activists following their own ideas of what works. But people who are actually activists understand the enormous challenges in such a task while living in a modern security state, and more importantly that the culture is still too non-activist and anti-activist for these actions to catch on meaningfully. Society does not see itself as the problem here. The truth is that the people crying about traffic would be crying significantly more if their consumerism is in the slightest way impaired. They only want to be against the problem, without actually be against the problem.
I hope you all understand what this means mechanistically even if you disagree about where I place my values and judgment: Our families will all be coming to an untimely end. Those of us who are still alive when the cascades begin, will die. If you’re my age and nothing takes you out early, you will die due to climate change caused by our industrial society. If you’re rich you might live a few extra years and die in a bunker.
If the working class at large were willing to choose degrowth, as individuals have, then they could do something.
With a critical mass other types of action would also become more feasible, as I touched on.
I stand by the thesis that they won’t mobilize, but that if they were to do so then they would be able to make a difference. Even if they only destroyed infrastructure in a failed rebellion.
If you’re waiting around for someone with more power than it takes to stand in a road with a sign to do anything, you will be waiting until your dying day.
Which, to be clear, is exactly what I expect will happen. Impeding society is seen as worse than destroying society, so inaction will destroy society. Because on the other side of inaction by the working class, is the massive (and massively destructive) action that we currently facilitate. Which means we are the problem, and our only choice is whether to also be a part of the solution. The solution being the mobilization of the working class. Which naturally takes the form of small actions against system (like blocking traffic and doing PR stunts) when numbers are still small because that is exactly what the working class is capable of doing.
I’m sure I’ve already triggered enough lemmies so I’ll go ahead and add, that non-activists calling for activists to destroy infrastructure are not wrong - but they are harmful, not helpful. If they believe in the statement and if this is their true criticism of activists, then those individuals would become activists following their own ideas of what works. But people who are actually activists understand the enormous challenges in such a task while living in a modern security state, and more importantly that the culture is still too non-activist and anti-activist for these actions to catch on meaningfully. Society does not see itself as the problem here. The truth is that the people crying about traffic would be crying significantly more if their consumerism is in the slightest way impaired. They only want to be against the problem, without actually be against the problem.
I hope you all understand what this means mechanistically even if you disagree about where I place my values and judgment: Our families will all be coming to an untimely end. Those of us who are still alive when the cascades begin, will die. If you’re my age and nothing takes you out early, you will die due to climate change caused by our industrial society. If you’re rich you might live a few extra years and die in a bunker.
The mobilization of the working class isn’t going to do jack shit and arguably never really has in modern history.
The working class still needs water, gas and electricity and will still burn coal to get them easily whether the ruling class is there or not.
If the working class at large were willing to choose degrowth, as individuals have, then they could do something.
With a critical mass other types of action would also become more feasible, as I touched on.
I stand by the thesis that they won’t mobilize, but that if they were to do so then they would be able to make a difference. Even if they only destroyed infrastructure in a failed rebellion.
In the end it is a moot distinction, I guess.
Okay, so the ruling class won’t stop burning fossil fuels and the working class either can’t or won’t stop either, so what’s the solution?
There isn’t always a solution.