bibo
@biboofficial
am i going to get yelled at
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5vr5-WVgAM6Ih6?format=jpg&name=large
https://twitter.com/biboofficial/status/1412982293963018247
Western leftists: eat less meat, that is individual choice and it matters greatly!
Global south: burn less carbon, pls, the ocean is drowning us
Western leftists: :pit: :pit: :pit:
Any attempt to place blame on the individual removes blame and responsibility from the legislator which is literally the only way the world could be saved.
While it is morally right for people to consume less it is completely and totally impossible to solve the problem by telling individuals they should consume less. The only thing it achieves strategically is legitimizing the individual responsibility argument to a part of the masses.
So no, the tweet is stupid and the fact that it has gone viral is only really harmful.
The solution will not come from billions of people all individually choosing to reduce their usage. The only solution will be via legislation forcing billions of individuals to reduce their usage. Any attempt to pass things to the individual harms the goal of getting it done via legislation, the only way to stop it.
...this is kinda how I rationalize eating meat. Looking forward to when it's not cheap and everywhere and probably ideally not anywhere, but for now, gotta eat.
I mean, I think people should do what is morally right. I'm not making an argument for NOT doing what is morally right.
The point however is that making this argument is tactically disadvantageous. We absolutely must focus on getting legislation to solve the crisis because it's the only thing that will. We will never get enough individuals to do it. Doesn't mean individuals shouldn't. Just means that arguing for the individual responsibility side is consequentially stupid and people shouldn't do it.
The tweet is morally right but strategically ignorant.
Perfectly encapsulated the majority of struggle sessions on here
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Please god no, keep reddit esque circlejerking out of here.
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That's right and if you get your way and turn this into a reddit clone, none of those things is very likely to change!
Western leftists love their little circlejerk, especially when it doesn't challenge them personally.
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Yeah this reply is very reddit
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@cttm_, FYI. This seems alot like what we were discussing a week ago.
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Pinned by who? Mods? Power users? Sounds like a good way to keep reinforcing this site's overbearing insularity.
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:very-intelligent:
Why are you so sure that the tweet is making a strategic point rather than a moral one? Like, that seems like a weird dichotomy to invoke in this case. I don't really see a reason to do so.
If it's on Twitter and getting literally millions of engagements (like this one) then the consequence of that is that a section of the masses reading it are taking it on board as an argument for personal responsibility.
The MASSIVE support this tweet has received will convince some people that it should be the individual's responsibility. This is harmful.
The point is morally correct. But what I am saying here is that making the point at all is strategically wrong whether or not it is morally correct. It is consequentially harmful. The only point that should be made, and hammered, over and over and over and over, is that we NEED the legislator to MAKE individuals reduce their usage of carbon and consumption levels, as well as needing the legislator to do the same to a whole bunch of companies and industries. It must be hammered. It must be hammered home that NO AMOUNT OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY WILL SOLVE THIS. We need the state to enforce rules or it will not happen.
Would this be true if the tweet was about meat consumption rather than carbon emissions?
I don't think so. The meat consumption issue requires on-boarding more people to the position that there is a problem with meat consumption.
People are already on-board with the fact that there is a climate problem. What people are not on board with is the solution to it. There is only ONE solution to it, and support for the opposite solution literally means the problem does not get solved. Legislation vs personal responsibility.
The meat consumption issue isn't at the stage where you can argue about personal responsibility or legislation to solve it yet because not everybody is on board with it even being an issue in the first place. You're in the climate-change denial stage still and must advance past that before any arguments about how to solve it can even be considered strategic.
This is giving me something to think about. Thanks for the engagement!
Always think in terms of pre-requisites that you need to achieve a goal, then break down those pre-requisites into the pre-requisites to achieve those pre-requisites.
If your goal is, for example, animal liberation. What do you need for that? Presumably legislation. Ok, so what pre-requisites are needed before we can get legislation? Well you need everyone to agree on what the solution is. Ok, so what pre-requisites are there to people agreeing that a solution is needed? Well you need everyone to agree that a problem exists. Ok, so what pre-requisites are there to everyone agreeing that a problem exists? Cultural awareness maybe(I'm not sure). Ok what pre-requisites are needed for cultural awareness? Organisations to lobby people and build that awareness. Etc etc etc.
Eventually you break it down to a strategic action that should be taken NOW and followed through.
Other future actions are fine to discuss, but they're just theoretical when you're in the wrong stage of the movement. The strategic actions to take currently comes from knowing where in the current movement you are. I believe that for the people wanting to pursue changes in meat eating and animal rights in the world to achieve their goals they probably need to work from organisations dedicated to that goal in the first place and build a cultural revolution around it.
Gotta downplay the idea of responsibility and instead suggest toolkits of action, of which uncoordinated individual actions are helpful but insufficient.
If we only crap on individual action, we'll just end up convincing libs to stop taking any action.
I can't see any way to promote toolkits of action that don't come off as pushing individual responsibility though and any success made with individuals will just end up convincing legislators that actually individual responsibility can succeed "see it's working with x".
I'm not entirely averse to a potential strategy, but a benefit analysis is needed compared to negative affects it can cause towards campaigning for a legislative solution. If there are any at all then it's fundamentally bad.
The people who are "trying to reduce their waste/footprint" already know their lives produce unnecessary waste and emissions and are trying to "do better". The tools we should give them are to join ecosocialist organizations and to organize actual, targeted campaigns that are not limited to individual "consumer choice".
At the same time, we should not purely crap on individual action, which is a necessarily doomed (but not worthless) attempt to make one's life more consistent with one's knowledge of the impact of production and waste in items they purchase. That is a good sentiment, at its core. A lib doing that is doing infinitely more than an internet socialist that doesn't even do anything irl. And they're developing an understanding of how deeply waste and harm are tied to production, they just aren't going to easily discover our frameworks for understanding.
That's why our role should be to build and direct action (i.e., be constructive) , because they're prime targets and we don't actually need to alienate them too hard first. They're very close to seeing the necessity of deep changes to how production is organized.
And the easiest thing we can do is to suggest joining ecosocialist groups and to suggest that their current methods, rather than pointless, are merely insufficient.
Kinda confused by the claim I do nothing irl.
Again, I don't disagree that it's morally right to do. But I don't see how anything you're suggesting has a point, it seems like time wasted that is not going to actually achieve anything.
What we need to achieve: Legislation that forces people and companies to reduce their consumption and change their processes. Outcome: World is saved.
What you're suggesting does: Gets a few people to reduce their consumption, a nice feeling of achieving something but ultimately not what we actually need. The massive majority will change nothing. Outcome: World burns.
It feels very much like the ONLY thing that we should spend energy, time, money, and emotional effort on is the goal of legislation. We have a finite amount of time and labour to put towards anything, the thing that finite time and labout should be spent on should be on the only thing that matters. Fighting for legislation, and opposing anything that might remotely harm the goal of achieving legislation.
I didn't say that.
The thing I suggested was to try to redirect their interest in activism towards more effective collective action by joining an organization, ideally ecosocialist, without simply crapping on their individual action. Aside from being pointlessly alienating, it's generally just not going to jive with their lived experience. They know it's not worthless, but that is the implication they'll take from being dismissive towards their actions. It's important to understand and spread understanding of insufficiency, not worthlessness, when it comes to individualistic actions.
In addition, individual actions can be a way to gain attention to issues precisely because they're baby steps and have a direct personal tie-in. The BDS movement is based, in part, on this. We don't say, "we'll end apartheid by not eating Sabra hummus". They say, "loudly boycott Sabra hummus to apply pressure to companies directly profiting from apartheid", which has the additional impact of bringing attention to that apartheid. Talk to people going into a store, they generally have no idea about any of this.
Legislation supported by whom and under what leverage? These are fundamental issues of capitalist production, effective regulations will cut deeply into profits, and the disconnect between public sentiment and legislative success is pretty massive, particularly when it comes to the interests of the ruling class.
We actually need revolution and a reorganization of production, but we can use attempts at legislation to push the envelope there and maybe get some harm reduction. Maybe. But to do any of this, we need to build a movement that coopts end integrates individuals that want to take action, something that is stymied by the implication of pointlessness to individualistic action. It's not pointless, it's insufficient. If I were to take that purely negative strategy towards folks in this thread, I'd be implying that legislation is pointless, because of course reformism will be insufficient on the face of a problem inherent to capitalism: the need for constant growth and extraction.
You're describing false catharsis, which is indeed exactly what we want to subvert. Simply dismissing "consumer choice" rather than just acknowledging its limitations and dangers is a wasted opportunity that could even be counterproductive. Because they know there's a material - if potentially insufficient - impact to their actions, many will just ignore you. Worse, they may associate socialists with dismissiveness or not caring about the environment. Opportunity lost and for a bad reason. But maybe you get lucky and convince them - now there's a new danger of doomerism, because they've been hit with a one-two punch of thinking their personal actions are pointless and that they must now take on seemingly insurmountable challenges: the entire bourgeoisie and modern industrialized production. They need an on-ramp.
I like this sentiment but I need to emphasize that there is no "we" when it comes to having leverage for passing legislation. We aren't organized enough for that. We need to increase membership in our organizations, create rallying cries to increase membership and provide activism on-ramps for them that include education about these topics and our preferred approach to them.