Mastodawn

Stephen May 18, 2024

Talked to a very smart person this afternoon who reminded me: climate fatalism ("it's too late") is a soft form of denialism.

Everything we do from here is worthwhile. It counts, it makes a difference. No matter what damage has been done, we can still make things better than if we had done nothing. We can still look after the world, look after our friends and family. Action has results.

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uoou (moved to @[email protected])May 20, 2024

@stephen I think this is underpinned by a pessimism about humanity I see in younger people a lot, they’ll say things like “humans are shit anyway”, “the planet/universe will be better off without us”, “all we do is kill each other anyway”.

And I absolutely see how they got there, growing up in the world they grew up in. Being hyper-aware of all these immense problems and abuses while being more aware than any previous generation, I think, of how little power they have to do anything about any of it.

Doesn’t help when their mass movements quickly get either shut-down or co-opted and corporatised, and elections are an ever-descending spiral of ‘lesser of two evils’.

I think first we have to get people to care about humanity, in the abstract, and that’s really hard after 60 years of neoliberalism. But worthwhile, I agree. The other path is dangerous.

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Ian Langham

@uoou @stephen the only path forward is for us to all care more about each other. I know from personal experience those kids feel like that because they spend an extraordinary amount of time hearing that what they need is not important and no one cares, 'just get over yourself' and hearing no when they genuinely are trying and still need help. Being on the edge of survival your whole life makes you unavoidably cynical. Liberals are just as bad as conservatives about this.