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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 sa

by 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
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Yeah sure, so people should not raise kids or have any leisure ever. OK. I'll complain as much as I like, thank you very much, because your rhetoric does not work -- you are outraged and that's visible in your comments, which robs them of objectivity. Paying taxes should lead to my interests being protected. That's the social contract. If that's not happening then history knows of many examples where the leaders were completely blind of the interests of their subjects and received a rough wake-up call (often lynching resulting in death even). It will happen again, it seems. Also nobody thinks everything's going just fine. That's your faulty assumption. It's just that most of us haven't gotten to the point of starting to curse and grab a shotgun to make ourselves heard... yet.

by derefr 2y ago

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
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Yeah sure, so people should not raise kids or have any leisure ever. OK. I'll complain as much as I like, thank you very much, because your rhetoric does not work -- you are outraged and that's visible in your comments, which robs them of objectivity. Paying taxes should lead to my interests being protected. That's the social contract. If that's not happening then history knows of many examples where the leaders were completely blind of the interests of their subjects and received a rough wake-up call (often lynching resulting in death even). It will happen again, it seems. Also nobody thinks everything's going just fine. That's your faulty assumption. It's just that most of us haven't gotten to the point of starting to curse and grab a shotgun to make ourselves heard... yet.