I strongly disagree.
In a lot of ”very complex” issues, the answers are really simple, and we all know fully well how to solve them.
This is particularly true of the large existential problems we are facing. With climate change, for instance, we have known the solution for a long time: stop burning fossil fuels.
What to do about it has been clear, straightforward and simple all along, but not easy – it would have taken sacrifice to achieve it. We’d have to live more simply, do away with consumerism and have to put things on hold while we find sustainable ways to do them. And we probably would have had to take enormous risks to our own lives, to stop those that wouldn’t aggressively cut down on fossil fuels voluntarily. Without any guarantees of success.
Even transitioning to a solar punk utopia would have been hard, including for those on board from the start.
All while the alternative to the solution is to to have long warm showers at will, enough cheap food that we can get really fat and still throw half of it away, intercontinental air travel that costs less than a bus pass, and so on.
It’s not because we have talked too little or that the discourse hasn’t been good enough that we can’t seem to solve it – our most brilliant minds have talked endlessly for a generation about climate change and how to address it. It’s simply because quitting our fossil fuels addiction is a bitter fucking pill to swallow. And pointless if you do it alone.
The same goes for the ”slow” slide into fascism all over the West, a.k.a. the steady concentration of wealth in the hands of dumber and dumber financial elites. (Not that it’s a separate issue from climate change.)
If you want to beat it, whether peacefully or not, you eventually have to accept that your next meal won’t be guaranteed and that, you might get beaten, arrested or even killed – hungry, tired and cold.
As our American friends have showed us, on this matter, the stakes of disruptive protests are not very appealing – it’s better to continue going to the office, get that paycheck that keeps the lights on, holds off the bank from taking your home and lets the fridge stay full, even if that means paying taxes to and serving those you protest in the weekends and in social media posts.
Tackling these issues does not require exceptional individuals, but a lot of ordinary ones working together, accepting that it’s probably gonna suck really bad. Even so, there is already an abundance of extraordinary people out there, notably Greta Thunberg (of this thread fame).
And yes, it does also take talk to bring those people together, but that talk won’t get you around the hard parts.
Thank you for this thought through response. I’ve been meaning to get back to it sooner, but I have been very tired after work and not feeling I have the bandwith the matter deserves. I’m afraid this might not be the evening either, but I found it rude to not respond at all.
One caveat I’d like to enter into the wider discussion is that the distinction between “acting” and “talking” is often more tenuous than either of us have acknowledged thus far.
Either way, to the point where you say we differ most, i.e. “but first people need to realize the switch is even there”. From my perspective, what I fail to understand is when you would consider that condition met. Should action be deferred until there’s a perfect consensus or at what point do you envision that enough people have come to that realization? Do you consider people embracing ideas like this to be likely to happen, considering real world conditions? Both genuine questions, not rhetorical.
I too am a believer that it is perfectly possible for humans to live good lives outside of the (selectively available) exesses of the fossil fuel paradigm. But I also think it’s evident that paradigm will only come to an end through either a decisive and global shift of our collective lifestyles and economies or through the looming risk of societal collapse. At this rate, my frustration is that collapse will come knocking before we’re done talking. I’m not as optimistic as you, that we can figure it out, let cooler heads prevail and do things perfectly and achieve a smooth transition. I think it’s worth considering that we might stand to lose a lot, whether we commit to change or not; one thing that sometimes get glossed over about fossil fues is that they’re damn near magical in terms of what they have enabled us to do.
Maybe we mostly differ in outlook, not predominantly in what we hope for. Because I sure do hope your more optimistic takes prove right.
My apologies for the jumbled and poorly proof-read stream of concioussness, I really need to go to sleep now.