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Civilization was an utter hellhole for a majority of humanity for millenia, they didn't get along just fine. Life mostly sucked, with only brief moments of pros

Civilization was an utter hellhole for a majority of humanity for millenia, they didn't get along just fine. Life mostly sucked, with only brief moments of prosperity and joy for most human lifetimes. Plastic is necessary for food with a shelf life of weeks or sometimes months beyond what it would be without plastics. Throw in antimicrobial properties and the lowered spread of diseases through shopping as another ancillary benefit. To get rid of plastics means increasing the cost of goods and lowering quality of life, most drastically for poorer people. Quickly replacing unnecessary plastics is good, but some plastics are pretty crucial to a high quality consumer lifestyle. I'd like to see a totally self sufficient, sustainable, and accountable lifestyle for everyone on the planet, but I'm also 100% on team human first, and humans living now take precedence over hypothetical humans later. There are too many interdependent factors requiring plastics for me to get on board with "end all plastics now! "

colechristensen 5y ago
We should do the best we can do (we aren’t) but this doesn’t mean reverting to the Stone Age or mass suicide. You don’t need to end plastics you need to use them more responsibly. You don’t need to go after meaningless high visibility targets you need to go after the big ones. You can benefit now humans and future humans without making blind absolute actions, but you have to actually be able to understand what you are trying to accomplish and be able to make compromises based on mixed effects. But people are dumb and the mythology that pervades society is good vs evil and people are thus rather unable to see things in any other way than good or bad. Things are complex, almost nothing is without positive qualities or consequences and whether it’sa person, a vaccine, an environmental issue, or an opinion, people need to start being able to accept that everything has risks and rewards, good sides and bad, complexities that can’t just be ignored for an absolutist option.

colechristensen 5y ago

We should do the best we can do (we aren’t) but this doesn’t mean reverting to the Stone Age or mass suicide. You don’t need to end plastics you need to use them more responsibly. You don’t need to go after meaningless high visibility targets you need to go after the big ones. You can benefit now humans and future humans without making blind absolute actions, but you have to actually be able to understand what you are trying to accomplish and be able to make compromises based on mixed effects. But people are dumb and the mythology that pervades society is good vs evil and people are thus rather unable to see things in any other way than good or bad. Things are complex, almost nothing is without positive qualities or consequences and whether it’sa person, a vaccine, an environmental issue, or an opinion, people need to start being able to accept that everything has risks and rewards, good sides and bad, complexities that can’t just be ignored for an absolutist option.