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> My point is about recognizing the individual influence one has How is that not essentially zero, in most political circumstances and for non-extraordinary in
by asark 7y ago
> My point is about recognizing the individual influence one has
How is that not essentially zero, in most political circumstances and for non-extraordinary individuals? That's my point.
[EDIT] and further:
> That is again a rather condescending spin you are giving to it.
I think I'm giving it a pretty fair shake by acknowledging there's any laudable purpose to actions of personal behavioral choice on large political problems. There is, but it has little to do with effecting change, if that's the part that's important.
- madez 7y agoWe are one in many. That means we just share the influence. Many issues are not binary, and often the individual contribution to a problem can be canceled out completely by individual change. The influence may be small compared to the sum of all, but still the responsibility for the individual contribution lays completely with the individual. The comparison must be between the individual cost and the individual contribution to the problem and it's solution, not falsely to the complete problem on the scale of the society. Even when the problem is binary, the argumentative position becomes much stronger by individual change. For example, if Europe became fully carbon neutral, it's stance would be much more powerful when it comes to these questions compared to if it continued to build new coal power plants and told other countries to stop doing that.