102 comments on It's Our Turn to Eat: How Politics Works and Why Activism is So Important
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102 comments on It's Our Turn to Eat: How Politics Works and Why Activism is So Important
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So if you know that your mother or sister or lover...has a terminal disease and that nothing you can do will stop her from dying, you would just stay in bed and not care for her as best you can.
Dryki is right. Hope is beside the point, and is as often an excuse for inaction and denial as anything else.
This is the main thing that environmentalists and others have to start wrapping their heads around. We now are in an age of post-hope activism.
You can only have so many decades and years that are the "last chance" to avoid unalterably horrific effects. We have already passed these points. The age of consequences has begun, to paraphrase Churchill.
This might mean not getting out of bed for a few days as the enormity of this grim reality sinks in. But when we rise, our eyes will be unclouded and our fury and determination will burn deep and will no soon burn out.
Hope does not mean that you can make it all better.
Hope means you believe that you can make a difference at all.
If you do not believe that you can help someone you care about who is suffering horribly then you will find it difficult to do anything at all.
Without hope all is darkness and depression with usually fatal results for the hopeless.
And the results aren't likewise fatal for the hopeful?
DOOOM! DOOOM!
Do you hope for a "solution" to the "problem" of peak oil? Do you hope for a return to "happy motoring" and BAU? Do you hope to live forever? I would contend that such pollyannaism serves as an irrational ego defense against intense fear of change and of personal mortality. You ARE "DOOOM"ed, you know, as are we all. Good luck on "making a difference at all." By all means feel free to knock yourself out trying...
"Who Wants to Live Forever?" - Queen (Brian May), A Kind of Magic (1986)
There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams
Yet slips away from us
There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment
Set aside for us
Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever.....?
(excerpted...)
http://bestballads.narod.ru/wma/Queen_-_Who_Wants_To_Live_Forever.wma
As a friend who worked at the State Department for 30 years used to toast: "To our hopeless cause!"
'Every man dies.. but not every man really lives.' Mel the Bruce
or
'After the game, the king and pawn go in the same box' .. what do you choose to make your life until then?
Angry or Dismissive doomerism can be a mental defense mechanism, too. Often seems that it is..
I prefer the term "ahedonistic nihilism." It has a more pleasingly pretentious ring to it.. :)
Yep, we all die.
But before I die I plan on living a bit more.
You can wallow in all the self pity you like, but the abyss won't get any deeper or blacker if you choose to look away from it every once in a while.
Nor will deciding to ignore the abyss make it any less deep and black when you stumble into it.
There's a long distance between obsessing on the abyss and ignoring it completely.
It seems that the people stuck at either end can't see the path between.
Good point! ;)
aunque nos espere el dolor y la muerte
contra el enemigo nos llama el deber
Ah, how I long for the days of oratory - Barack's a vast improvement over George but who wrote this stuff back then, anyway?
I'd forgotten that one. I think that's my current favourite. It reminds me of the ideal T-shirt slogan contest.
Look, I can't save the world on my own. It's going to take at least three of us.
The time is far too late, and the situation is far too desperate for there to be any time for pessimism.
The glass is twice as big as it needed to be.
Any other suggestions? Or is this a campfire topic?
Words outen the mouth do not mean 'hands on the wheel'.
He won on words. He is still using the words. I still see no change.
He gave away out money,,I will give him that tidbit.
Airdale
Just wanted to take a moment and say great post dohboi. So succinctly and accurately put. I agree.
Dohboi,
Right on...but when are we to then awaken? Tear the veil of malaise from off our eyes? When does the mask of 'gobbermint will fix it' come off?
I am still waiting....as the forests diminish, the fish still disappear,the water tables sink,huge jungles of plastic swill still spin in the oceans, empty sabers of our military still rattle and we applaud the spin doctors again and again?
When?
Or are we even past the time when we can finally say "Enough is enough"?
Airdale
Well, the mask of 'free market will fix it' is starting to come off, perhaps others will. I just see no chance that we will avoid being (since we are already) totally screwed before any widespread awakening comes about. The spin will doubtless furiously go on as long as those who pay the spin-meisters still see it in their interest to help delude people. The 'cap and trade' mess is evidence that both 'free market' and 'gov' are still held up as viable solutions. (For the record, I think both could play a roll, but not at anything near the level that their zealous advocates suggest.)
On the other hand, farmers markets are popping up in record numbers all over the place, lots more people are putting in gardens, suburban sprawl has stopped in it's tracks...There are signs that by insight or necessity more and more people are starting to "get it" at some level--though surely almost never at nearly a deep enough level compared to what the situation demands, yet.
Another apt quote on the subject, this one I think from Franz Kafka:
"There is hope! (But not for us.)"
The free market will fix the problem.
The fix will be ugly, nasty, and eat people, but the problem will go away.
Nicely put.
I think it was the economist that said something like: The economy has worked perfectly at establishing a value for everything and it is currently setting the value for most of the public and their work at near zero.
But before you get too high on your horse you might want to consider that the value of economics has proven itself by the fact that economics professors make a passable living at their trade.