3 ms·

>She's literally a child lecturing the grownups. It fits that "emperor has no clothes"/out of the mouths of babes trope. >The people who back her want to hold

by svara 7y ago

>She's literally a child lecturing the grownups. It fits that "emperor has no clothes"/out of the mouths of babes trope. >The people who back her want to hold her up as someone wise beyond her years. The entire thing is primarily an appeal to emotion. She's telling a story that directs a lot of attention to an important issue, no more, no less. It sounds to me as if you're criticizing her essentially for telling a compelling story. What standard are you holding her to? She's not a politician, CEO, engineer, etc. ... >Greta is the face of the idea that there is a simple and obvious answer that could be readily implemented, if only us sinners would get up off our slothful, gluttonous sorry asses and Do The Right Thing. Your choice of words, not anyone elses. The fact that this is what her words sound like to you does help answer my original question (where all the hate comes from) though (see atoav's sibling comment...). The rest of your comment is basically saying that she makes a complex issue sound too simple. Maybe so, but claiming that something is "too complex" is often an excuse for not doing anything. In fact, quite a lot could be achieved by measures that are relatively simple. A carbon tax would be a great example. If the publicity she's generated can speed up the introduction of such a tax, she'll have done more for our future than most of the experts she's apparently supposed to defer to.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
I've personally paid very little attention to the entire thing. She lost me when she began gallivanting all over the place via plane or whatever to take full advantage of her opportunity to lecture adults on camera and get positive press for doing so. In my mind, her flying all over the world to protest climate policy is in the same category as Leo DiCaprio taking a jet to an award ceremony to recognize him for his environmental activism. I've lived without a car for more than a decade. I walked cross country from Georgia to California and accepted rides while homeless. I took a train out of California to get back into housing elsewhere. I'm an environmental studies major. I don't lecture rich people for taking planes to where they need to be. I also don't make plane trips myself for the express purpose of telling people "You rich assholes need to shrink your god-damned carbon footprint." I abhor hypocrisy. There's not much I hate more than people going "Do as I say, not as I do." I was just trying to take your question at face value and answer it in hopes of being helpful. Otherwise I would have stayed out of this ridiculous theater, which probably would have been the better choice because then I wouldn't be getting ragged on for trying to answer your question.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  That's a huge amount of negative, and highly inaccurate, opinion of someone you claim to have paid very little attention to. Yet you've presented it backwards. She has made a point of never travelling by air. All her journeys within Europe have been by rail. She went because as the schools strikes spread across Europe, she has been invited. She crossed the Atlantic to next week's UN summit, as a racing yacht which was going to make the journey anyway, offered her a place on board. Governments around Europe and the EU parliament have again invited her to speak. So she has. So what to do, tell them all to piss off?
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    A. She's a child. She cannot possibly be engineering this without the aid and approval of many adults, starting with the cooperation and permission of her parents. Pretending that a legal minor has this much agency is a lie on the face of it. If she were having sex with all these adults, everyone would call that statutory rape (and worse). Everyone would decry "How can you blatantly use a child like that?!!!" But her being used politically seems fine to most people. B. The Pope should be tending his own flock and cleaning up his own mess. Him using a child like her to further his own political ends makes me go "Gee, I wonder why Arch Bishops and the like seem to think using children to meet their sexual needs is A-okay!". The Pope owes her an apology in my mind. I don't harp on this stuff in part because I'm not Catholic and I have a grudging respect for the work he has done to clean up the mess with the Catholic church, but I was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of years and I was very protective of my own special-needs sons. I have seen her described as autistic. Why are her parents allowing this? I don't get that. C. The internet exists. Video exists. If she is so much more holier than thou, she could create a website (as her primary means to share her message) and she could do her testimony at these events she is invited to via video conferencing/prerecorded video. When you want to be the face of a moral argument, it isn't enough to not be guilty of X. There needs to be no appearance of impropriety. If you have to explain to people that gallivanting all over the world is somehow totes different here because it was by train and other vehicles that "were going there anyway," instead of saying "I refuse to complain about traffic while being traffic," then you are diluting your message. Gandhi did a lot of things for which I think he deserves criticism, such as sleeping with naked girls to supposedly prove to himself he could resist temptation. But he succeeded in his goal because he walked the walk on things pertinent to his message concerning how to get economically free of England. He wore very little and wove what little he wore. He didn't argue that other people should burn their British clothes, but he needed to dress appropriately for a world leader so he needed to be an exception. I could probably find other things to say here, but I'm very much regretting saying anything at all. I've paid very little attention to the whole thing because the whole thing strikes me as bullshit theater using a child as its political puppet, so none of it sits well with me, not as a mother and not as an environmental studies major who has endeavored to live by my beliefs instead of lecturing the world to shrink its carbon footprint while I do otherwise. I may never get much press. I get that. But I'm comfortable with the choices I am making for myself without trying to hold other people to a standard I can't be arsed to try to meet because, well, you know, my message is so important or something.

by svara 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I've personally paid very little attention to the entire thing. She lost me when she began gallivanting all over the place via plane or whatever to take full advantage of her opportunity to lecture adults on camera and get positive press for doing so. In my mind, her flying all over the world to protest climate policy is in the same category as Leo DiCaprio taking a jet to an award ceremony to recognize him for his environmental activism. I've lived without a car for more than a decade. I walked cross country from Georgia to California and accepted rides while homeless. I took a train out of California to get back into housing elsewhere. I'm an environmental studies major. I don't lecture rich people for taking planes to where they need to be. I also don't make plane trips myself for the express purpose of telling people "You rich assholes need to shrink your god-damned carbon footprint." I abhor hypocrisy. There's not much I hate more than people going "Do as I say, not as I do." I was just trying to take your question at face value and answer it in hopes of being helpful. Otherwise I would have stayed out of this ridiculous theater, which probably would have been the better choice because then I wouldn't be getting ragged on for trying to answer your question.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
That's a huge amount of negative, and highly inaccurate, opinion of someone you claim to have paid very little attention to. Yet you've presented it backwards. She has made a point of never travelling by air. All her journeys within Europe have been by rail. She went because as the schools strikes spread across Europe, she has been invited. She crossed the Atlantic to next week's UN summit, as a racing yacht which was going to make the journey anyway, offered her a place on board. Governments around Europe and the EU parliament have again invited her to speak. So she has. So what to do, tell them all to piss off?
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  A. She's a child. She cannot possibly be engineering this without the aid and approval of many adults, starting with the cooperation and permission of her parents. Pretending that a legal minor has this much agency is a lie on the face of it. If she were having sex with all these adults, everyone would call that statutory rape (and worse). Everyone would decry "How can you blatantly use a child like that?!!!" But her being used politically seems fine to most people. B. The Pope should be tending his own flock and cleaning up his own mess. Him using a child like her to further his own political ends makes me go "Gee, I wonder why Arch Bishops and the like seem to think using children to meet their sexual needs is A-okay!". The Pope owes her an apology in my mind. I don't harp on this stuff in part because I'm not Catholic and I have a grudging respect for the work he has done to clean up the mess with the Catholic church, but I was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of years and I was very protective of my own special-needs sons. I have seen her described as autistic. Why are her parents allowing this? I don't get that. C. The internet exists. Video exists. If she is so much more holier than thou, she could create a website (as her primary means to share her message) and she could do her testimony at these events she is invited to via video conferencing/prerecorded video. When you want to be the face of a moral argument, it isn't enough to not be guilty of X. There needs to be no appearance of impropriety. If you have to explain to people that gallivanting all over the world is somehow totes different here because it was by train and other vehicles that "were going there anyway," instead of saying "I refuse to complain about traffic while being traffic," then you are diluting your message. Gandhi did a lot of things for which I think he deserves criticism, such as sleeping with naked girls to supposedly prove to himself he could resist temptation. But he succeeded in his goal because he walked the walk on things pertinent to his message concerning how to get economically free of England. He wore very little and wove what little he wore. He didn't argue that other people should burn their British clothes, but he needed to dress appropriately for a world leader so he needed to be an exception. I could probably find other things to say here, but I'm very much regretting saying anything at all. I've paid very little attention to the whole thing because the whole thing strikes me as bullshit theater using a child as its political puppet, so none of it sits well with me, not as a mother and not as an environmental studies major who has endeavored to live by my beliefs instead of lecturing the world to shrink its carbon footprint while I do otherwise. I may never get much press. I get that. But I'm comfortable with the choices I am making for myself without trying to hold other people to a standard I can't be arsed to try to meet because, well, you know, my message is so important or something.