5 ms·

First of all, that is amazing. But you are obviously the extreme exception (at least from my observations of other humans in America).

kakarot 9y ago
Unfortunately, you may be right about my lifestyle being exceptional in America. That doesn't make me feel good. A lifetime of living on/underneath the poverty line and having guardians that couldn't keep a job or car or house of their own has helped shape my perspective on what constitutes as a "comfortable" life. I would like to travel more later in life but I will try to be as conservative as reasonably possible in my transportation methods. I knew that a career in software/tech would allow me to live this way, but it's much more difficult to maintain this lifestyle in non-technical career paths. Couple that with forced societal and parental expectations to "get the car, get the job, get the house, get the girl" and incentivising propaganda, and it can be pretty tough to see any other option. Poverty in America continues to rise and we may find the next generation to be much more environmentally conservative than us, not only because they weren't riding on a financial investment bubble like their grandparents but because they will expect to see the results of our environmental selfishness in their lifetimes. But as for what we can do to educate Joe Schmoe, who is knee-deep in his mortgage and car and child support payments, who has a daughter in private school because the local school is terrible, who has no time in their work schedule to prepare their own meals, who takes an ocean liner cruise every two years because it's the only thing keeping them from killing themselves... well, I have no fucking clue. And that isn't good, because this is the average middle-class American. And we need the middle-class involved in environmental change because they have resources others do not and have greater capacity to adjust their consumption habits. Telling Joe Schmoe about how we live conservative lives, and how he should be more like us is only going to make them more resilient to changing their minds.

kakarot 9y ago

Unfortunately, you may be right about my lifestyle being exceptional in America. That doesn't make me feel good. A lifetime of living on/underneath the poverty line and having guardians that couldn't keep a job or car or house of their own has helped shape my perspective on what constitutes as a "comfortable" life. I would like to travel more later in life but I will try to be as conservative as reasonably possible in my transportation methods. I knew that a career in software/tech would allow me to live this way, but it's much more difficult to maintain this lifestyle in non-technical career paths. Couple that with forced societal and parental expectations to "get the car, get the job, get the house, get the girl" and incentivising propaganda, and it can be pretty tough to see any other option. Poverty in America continues to rise and we may find the next generation to be much more environmentally conservative than us, not only because they weren't riding on a financial investment bubble like their grandparents but because they will expect to see the results of our environmental selfishness in their lifetimes. But as for what we can do to educate Joe Schmoe, who is knee-deep in his mortgage and car and child support payments, who has a daughter in private school because the local school is terrible, who has no time in their work schedule to prepare their own meals, who takes an ocean liner cruise every two years because it's the only thing keeping them from killing themselves... well, I have no fucking clue. And that isn't good, because this is the average middle-class American. And we need the middle-class involved in environmental change because they have resources others do not and have greater capacity to adjust their consumption habits. Telling Joe Schmoe about how we live conservative lives, and how he should be more like us is only going to make them more resilient to changing their minds.