3 ms·

Why do something "to make a difference" if it's literally incapable of making a difference (even with every single person doing it).

mpalmer 2y ago
Why indeed
philwelch 2y ago
It’s a sort of luxury disease. It used to be that life entailed so much material suffering that people needed to rationalize that they were suffering for something, and so human beings got incredibly good at that coping mechanism. So good that now that we live in a world where we have material abundance, we cannot believe it, and then we go out of our way to impoverish ourselves just so we can feel good that at least we’re suffering for something. All of us can have high flow showers and toilets like we used to. The world isn’t going to end if we do. Even regions that have water shortages can solve them with technology that’s existed for the better part of a century by now. But if we do that, we will end up standing in our hot, high-flow showers thinking to ourselves—this is wrong, we don’t deserve this, this is too good to be true.
- mpalmer 2y ago
  Tell that to California
  - philwelch 2y ago
    I think if we banned almond milk, California would have no water problems at all. Almond cultivation uses much more water than residential water in CA, so you’d think the first thing they’d stop doing is putting all of that water into almonds just to turn around and process the almonds into ersatz milk. But no, you gotta wear the hairshirt instead. If building things was an option in California, they could just use nuclear power to desalinate water from the Pacific, but let’s be realistic.
pjerem 2y ago
Because you have values ? Do you throw your junk on a street if the street is already dirty ? It’s not because others don’t care that it’s an excuse to act like them.
- rockemsockem 2y ago
  Pragmatism is a good value. Your analogy doesn't work because this has been made easy by trash cans and the effect is immediate, local, and advantageous to yourself vs water conservation which requires sacrifice and water use itself is not inherently bad, it's the results of aggregating lots of water use together that can be bad.

mpalmer 2y ago

Why indeed

philwelch 2y ago

It’s a sort of luxury disease. It used to be that life entailed so much material suffering that people needed to rationalize that they were suffering for something, and so human beings got incredibly good at that coping mechanism. So good that now that we live in a world where we have material abundance, we cannot believe it, and then we go out of our way to impoverish ourselves just so we can feel good that at least we’re suffering for something. All of us can have high flow showers and toilets like we used to. The world isn’t going to end if we do. Even regions that have water shortages can solve them with technology that’s existed for the better part of a century by now. But if we do that, we will end up standing in our hot, high-flow showers thinking to ourselves—this is wrong, we don’t deserve this, this is too good to be true.

mpalmer 2y ago
Tell that to California
- philwelch 2y ago
  I think if we banned almond milk, California would have no water problems at all. Almond cultivation uses much more water than residential water in CA, so you’d think the first thing they’d stop doing is putting all of that water into almonds just to turn around and process the almonds into ersatz milk. But no, you gotta wear the hairshirt instead. If building things was an option in California, they could just use nuclear power to desalinate water from the Pacific, but let’s be realistic.

pjerem 2y ago

Because you have values ? Do you throw your junk on a street if the street is already dirty ? It’s not because others don’t care that it’s an excuse to act like them.

rockemsockem 2y ago
Pragmatism is a good value. Your analogy doesn't work because this has been made easy by trash cans and the effect is immediate, local, and advantageous to yourself vs water conservation which requires sacrifice and water use itself is not inherently bad, it's the results of aggregating lots of water use together that can be bad.