2:01am September 29, 2014

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WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

…Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

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Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Changes Does Not Equal Political Change (via america-wakiewakie)

Also been saying this for years.

We need to stop acting like your average person (I use the US as an example because my primary experience is with that) is responsible for this shit. Like, oh, we could fix all our problems if Average McAverageson from Nowhere, USA would quit taking such long showers, quit driving so much, turned off lights she’s not using and buy only organic, fair-trade stuff she can’t afford when she stops at a grocery store on the way home from her job that doesn’t pay her enough.

I see a lot of very well-intentioned, principled people saying things like “If people only cared where and how their goods were made!” “If people only valued these things more!” “Pollution and climate change is an example of the tragedy of the commons - people are just too selfish to be trusted!”

And they don’t realize that the economic oppression of workers in other places is directly linked to that of workers here, both are locked in and forced to participate. they don’t realize that most people do care, aren’t interested in taking up more of their share of resources, and would make this happen if it were in their power as an individual. Finally, that the “tragedy of the commons” garbage that gets used to encourage capitalistic thinking and discourage people from being social- and community-minded is actually wrong and not an accurate example of how real people behave. that individual use of resources, the same thing that gets touted as the Reason For All Our Problems, is a drop in a bucket compared to corporate use and abuse of these resources.

Maybe someday when we’ve thrown off the corporate yoke and gotten their sticky fingers out of our natural resources, individual choices will make a difference. But right now that’s nothing compared to the real source of the problem.

So, it’s not us. We’re not an irredeemably greedy and awful bunch of people, even though we’ve been taught to value greed and selfishness. We’re all being robbed. It’s just that most of us don’t know it.

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