“Not enough people are making the effort. So what’s the point of me even trying?”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard this line of argument. The Prisoner’s Dilemma has been articulated since at least the 50’s, and I’ve worked with juveniles enough to be accustomed to such short-sightedness. The argument doesn’t surprise me any more.
This time, we were talking about power. The power of privilege. The power of education and experience. We were talking about power, because no matter how privileged my conversational partner is, she feels that she’s powerless in the world at large. She lives in a western society, is well educated, has a well paying job, and is at the end of a long, successful, and prestigious career. And yet she argues that she is powerless to affect real change. To provoke social development. To help create a sustainable society. No matter how much she wishes things were different, she feels helpless.
For what is the point of struggling to make adjustments to your own life and living, if you legitimately don’t believe that other people will? Why bother when you’ll be toiling ineffectually by your lonesome?
From a collectivist standpoint, the argument makes sense. If just one ant on the hill tugs left, when all others are tugging right, what does the effort of that solitary ant matter? It’s not like the single ant will make a difference for the whole population. It can pull and pull and pull, swim against the current until the cows come home, and yet it will not have made a single lick of difference for the whole group.
Which is what many everyday consumers and citizens complain of when you ask them about their own initiatives to push society away from doomed consumerism and toward sustainability. What good can they do on their own, so why not just make life easier for themselves and theirs while they still can? I bet you, without having had the opportunity to grill the likes of investment bankers and industry moguls, that the one percent will echo that sentiment. That there’s no point of making an effort, because no one else will, and any effort you make leave just you behind the herd.
The argument makes sense if you only consider the problem from a collectivist point of view. Real change requires the whole group’s commitment (or at least a sizeable majority of it). And just look what happened to, for example, Macron when he tried to raise the diesel and petroleum tax for his countrymen. The collective isn’t willing to make the effort. And most leaders aren’t willing to drag their collective into desperately required change, because they will be burnt by the spoiled masses.
But what happens if we untether ourselves from the collective, and instead of focusing on the effort we focus on the desired results. What if it’s not an issue of “but what’s the point if no one else makes an effort” to “what effort do I have power over to accomplish the documented goals”?
I’ll tell you what happens. We become unhindered by our pessimistic perception of the herd. The answer to the question “what can I do to move us toward sustainability” will no longer be sullied by the inaction or turgidity of your peers. It will become painfully obvious what you, lonely little you, will have to do (if so on your own) for our collective goal to become achievable. It’s sort of like… the chicken and the egg. Sort of. Instead of giving up on getting eggs because you don’t have a chicken, you’ll start trying to get hold of one of them chickens so that you can get your eggs. Yes, it’s not a brilliant allegory, but that’s all you’re going to get.
It’s a great paradox. What we have is a collective problem. Society needs to be changed. Consumerism needs to go. Uninhibited economical growth needs to go. Ideologies and institutions that have formed and founded modern civilization need to be torn down, have their foundations picked apart, and the ground upon which they stood salted like Carthage. The fundamental bias of western civilization needs to change, that is absolutely daunting. But as long as we think of this collective problem as a collective issue, any solutions will potentially be too cumbersome to get done before our limited window of time to do anything about it is past.
Ghandi is often misquoted to have said; “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Though he never exactly said that, he did verbalize the same intent but with a whole lot more words. Regardless of paraphrasing, or historical editing, it’s a smart sentiment. Naturally, the fossil fuel industry et. al. carry a heavy responsibility, and wield a lot of power, in the efforts of turning human civilization sustainable. And suffice to say, they don’t seem eager to make the change. Which makes it all the more important for the rest of us to not just sit around and wait for them to get their shit together. If we resign ourselves to that, we’ll still be waiting while the oceans boil. So while we cut in line and stop letting the planet traitors slow down the process any further past the point of no return, it is time to stop asking what possible difference lonely little you can do in your perceived powerlessness, and instead ask ourselves what ever we can do with the power we actually do have.
One simple thing, e.g., just off the top of my head; don’t throw your fucking garbage out your fucking car window onto the side of the fucking road. Easy start.
/Sebastian Lindberg 29/12-2020
WastedWords 