2 ms·

There’s only one answer: Every single person has to start taking as much responsibility and ownership for the communities that they live and work in as they ca

There’s only one answer: Every single person has to start taking as much responsibility and ownership for the communities that they live and work in as they can and support others who are doing the same It’s exceptionally simple and it’s exceptionally difficult to the same time. It’s up to you and your mental state and how you view the world, and your ability to overcome your own fears

malfist 2y ago
How does me taking responsibility and ownership for my neighborhood spur investment in alternative energy sources?
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  Specifically, I mean, is this a is this a real question? Are you unaware of the processes of community organization and lobbying? Do you know how canvassing and petitioning work? This is precisely my point, is that these are all thoroughly documented, easy to understand and easy to implement technically, things that you do in order to be part of the community as a group of people who have a voice The key thing lacking is people who give a shit about results that don’t only benefit them and take a lot of work and coordination to do So as a result, people throw their hands up and say it’s too hard. It takes too long. It’s too complicated. The results are too obscure. It’s too unlikely… whatever whatever you can continue to come up with whatever excuses you want to not engage in your community but at the end of the day, it’s up to whether or not you care.
  - malfist 2y ago
    Lobbying congress is so far beyond the remit of "taking responsibility for your neighborhood" it's hard to believe your not being factitious.
    - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
      Like this is literally the first step in the process. You’re supposed to be able to go to your congressional representative and local councils for your specific input. They have a entire staff and they have a process to do this. I have regularly engaged with my elected congressional representatives and my local city Council members at every step along my life to lobby them for things I want. When I was in high school, I lobbied the Webster, TX city Council to build a skate park because we didn’t have one in the 90s. Now there’s a Webster skate park I was elected to the planning board for the city of Cheverly, Maryland where we took citizen input every month and then at our quarterly review meeting so that we could determine what kind of new development would happen in our town I did all of this while raising three kids and having a full-time job, including getting up at night to change diapers and all of that and I even ran ultramarathons in there too, and started a business The fact that you think that it takes some huge effort shows how broken our system is
  - jmward01 2y ago
    I'd argue you are both right and wrong here. What are constructive ways to get people to join in the process. Telling them to do it doesn't work, so how do we influence them to increase that participation? I have a kid, telling him X, Y or Z is the fastest way to get him to avoid those solutions. The only thing I have found that works is to get the real world to tell him or to have his piers tell him. It sounds ridiculous but what about a reality tv show where the contestants try to rally their neighborhoods to effect the most positive change and along the way they show how they did it. A big part of throwing your hands up is not knowing where to put them.
derefr 2y ago
The question of "how do we deal with lobbying from people whose preferences are reactionary / opposed to human progress", cannot be answered by telling those same people to "take responsibility." In their minds, they are taking responsibility — their vision of a perfect world is just antithetical to ours. The answer to such a question, needs necessarily to be an answer for what we, the people who prefer to have nice things, can do — to work around these people, or to achieve in spite of them, etc.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  No, what I’m trying to say is that in fact, the majority of the population is disengaged politically, to the point where they do not even engage in their local civic processes So they are not creating their own lobby groups, putting additional effort into countering these other groups, preventing them from forming in the first place, or any number of things that a community who is engaged does But listen, there’s any number of excuses or reasons why people can’t - despite example, after example of poor uneducated or otherwise downtrodden people becoming community leaders. again that’s why I say it is a matter of whether you have the fortitude to deal with what seems like an insurmountable problem, which is the alignment of human action within a semi closed political system
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    I would have half-agreed with you if you didn't use a such a victim-blaming expression like "excuses". Nobody is "excusing" themselves. People are busy, life is not easy for most of them and they are VERY "excused" to just want to have some chill and relax after their work is done. That's all there is to it, the rest is you trying to paint stuff as black-and-white. I also have to remind you that plenty of countries photograph and make dossiers of people who protest. Clearly, modern forms of protest are needed. "Taking responsibility" is such a hand-wavy thing to say that offers zero courses of action.
    - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
      At the end of the day, people make whatever choice they’re gonna make for how they spend their time If they spend their time entertaining themselves, then they’re not going to spend their time shaping the world into what they think it should be So the people who are going to shape it the way that they want it, are going to continue to do what they want and you’re gonna have to deal with that So you can take it however you like, but the functional fact is that people are choosing not to spend their time shaping the environmental regulations, the types of social structures that are going to prevent these anthropogenic traps like we’re starting to see So the only thing I would say is, great do whatever you gotta do but then don’t complain when things aren’t the way you want them at the macro scale and you’ve got testicles full of plastics, live in ongoing genocide, and have no clean drinking water But don’t worry, there’s always Hans Rosling and his soothing balm of misleading statistics and folk “science” to make you feel like everything‘s going just fine
vitro 2y ago
Yes, think globally, act locally.

malfist 2y ago

How does me taking responsibility and ownership for my neighborhood spur investment in alternative energy sources?

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
Specifically, I mean, is this a is this a real question? Are you unaware of the processes of community organization and lobbying? Do you know how canvassing and petitioning work? This is precisely my point, is that these are all thoroughly documented, easy to understand and easy to implement technically, things that you do in order to be part of the community as a group of people who have a voice The key thing lacking is people who give a shit about results that don’t only benefit them and take a lot of work and coordination to do So as a result, people throw their hands up and say it’s too hard. It takes too long. It’s too complicated. The results are too obscure. It’s too unlikely… whatever whatever you can continue to come up with whatever excuses you want to not engage in your community but at the end of the day, it’s up to whether or not you care.
- malfist 2y ago
  Lobbying congress is so far beyond the remit of "taking responsibility for your neighborhood" it's hard to believe your not being factitious.
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    Like this is literally the first step in the process. You’re supposed to be able to go to your congressional representative and local councils for your specific input. They have a entire staff and they have a process to do this. I have regularly engaged with my elected congressional representatives and my local city Council members at every step along my life to lobby them for things I want. When I was in high school, I lobbied the Webster, TX city Council to build a skate park because we didn’t have one in the 90s. Now there’s a Webster skate park I was elected to the planning board for the city of Cheverly, Maryland where we took citizen input every month and then at our quarterly review meeting so that we could determine what kind of new development would happen in our town I did all of this while raising three kids and having a full-time job, including getting up at night to change diapers and all of that and I even ran ultramarathons in there too, and started a business The fact that you think that it takes some huge effort shows how broken our system is
- jmward01 2y ago
  I'd argue you are both right and wrong here. What are constructive ways to get people to join in the process. Telling them to do it doesn't work, so how do we influence them to increase that participation? I have a kid, telling him X, Y or Z is the fastest way to get him to avoid those solutions. The only thing I have found that works is to get the real world to tell him or to have his piers tell him. It sounds ridiculous but what about a reality tv show where the contestants try to rally their neighborhoods to effect the most positive change and along the way they show how they did it. A big part of throwing your hands up is not knowing where to put them.

derefr 2y ago

The question of "how do we deal with lobbying from people whose preferences are reactionary / opposed to human progress", cannot be answered by telling those same people to "take responsibility." In their minds, they are taking responsibility — their vision of a perfect world is just antithetical to ours. The answer to such a question, needs necessarily to be an answer for what we, the people who prefer to have nice things, can do — to work around these people, or to achieve in spite of them, etc.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
No, what I’m trying to say is that in fact, the majority of the population is disengaged politically, to the point where they do not even engage in their local civic processes So they are not creating their own lobby groups, putting additional effort into countering these other groups, preventing them from forming in the first place, or any number of things that a community who is engaged does But listen, there’s any number of excuses or reasons why people can’t - despite example, after example of poor uneducated or otherwise downtrodden people becoming community leaders. again that’s why I say it is a matter of whether you have the fortitude to deal with what seems like an insurmountable problem, which is the alignment of human action within a semi closed political system
- pdimitar 2y ago
  I would have half-agreed with you if you didn't use a such a victim-blaming expression like "excuses". Nobody is "excusing" themselves. People are busy, life is not easy for most of them and they are VERY "excused" to just want to have some chill and relax after their work is done. That's all there is to it, the rest is you trying to paint stuff as black-and-white. I also have to remind you that plenty of countries photograph and make dossiers of people who protest. Clearly, modern forms of protest are needed. "Taking responsibility" is such a hand-wavy thing to say that offers zero courses of action.
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    At the end of the day, people make whatever choice they’re gonna make for how they spend their time If they spend their time entertaining themselves, then they’re not going to spend their time shaping the world into what they think it should be So the people who are going to shape it the way that they want it, are going to continue to do what they want and you’re gonna have to deal with that So you can take it however you like, but the functional fact is that people are choosing not to spend their time shaping the environmental regulations, the types of social structures that are going to prevent these anthropogenic traps like we’re starting to see So the only thing I would say is, great do whatever you gotta do but then don’t complain when things aren’t the way you want them at the macro scale and you’ve got testicles full of plastics, live in ongoing genocide, and have no clean drinking water But don’t worry, there’s always Hans Rosling and his soothing balm of misleading statistics and folk “science” to make you feel like everything‘s going just fine

vitro 2y ago

Yes, think globally, act locally.