104 comments on My Year Without a Car - (Plus a Request)
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104 comments on My Year Without a Car - (Plus a Request)
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
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I know nothing of your life, and have I no interest in learning more. You have tendency to dictate to others ("change their lifestyle"). Good luck with that: you need to get better to be effective.
Environmentalists have tried the gentle approach. It doesn't work.
What creates social change, both good and bad, is small groups of annoying people demanding change. The majority will never want change, but they'll go along with it to make the small group shut up. A majority of blacks did not march with MLK, nor a majority of Indians with Gandhi, and a majority of Germans did not support the Nazis - at least when they first came to power. All change, both good and bad, is created by small groups of annoying people demanding change.
I'm terribly sorry if our desire to have a tolerable lifestyle for future generations causes you some discomfort.
You are comparing me to the Nazis. I am invoking Godwin's law.
Oddly enough, he's comparing himself to the Nazis (and King and Gandhi).
And, he has his comparison wrong. King and Gandhi used non-violence, respect and communication, combined with a willingness to passively accept violence until their opponents could no longer look themselves in the mirror. They raised the level of the debate, and appealed to their opponents better selves (or their pre-frontal cortex, if you like the materialist approach).
The Nazis used fear, scapegoating, manipulation and violence to reduce everyone to thinking with their lizard brains - a completely different approach.
Kiashu sometimes makes the mistake of thinking that ridicule, a subtle form of intimidation, will help his cause. King and Gandhi would not have agreed.