The_Terrible_Humbaba

Mate, it's about context, time, and place.

When the talk is about personal responsibility and some one comes in all mad that people aren't currently criticizing the government and corporations, implying it's not a "grown up conversation", then that shifting blame and trying to skirt responsibility. You don't have to convince me the government is bad because I already agree; it's the other people in this thread who are having a fit at OP and being condescending because of the mention of personal responsibility.

Alright, I'm only going to address your first paragraph because ... THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT IS BEING DONE. Like, wtf are you talking about?

Any time a post or comment says something about personal responsibility, in comes some one getting mad and complaining, trying to shift all the blame away, just like in the comment I replied to.

Meanwhile, the opposite never happens. I've never seen some who talks about personal responsibility who doesn't also agree that governments and corporations are responsible.

Me and OP were not the ones to go into posts criticizing the government and corporations, and get mad and act condescendinly while saying that that it's all about personal responsibility and you shouldn't blame corpos and govs. I talk plenty of shit about them, I bet so does OP; the difference is that we don't pretend like personal choices by everyday people doesn't play into it.

As for the first part of your comment, I'm not fully sure that I understand. From the context of the conversation, it sounds like you disagree with me and are saying your plan is "food shortages will happen and civilization will begin to collapse, and that is how things will change"; and I'm not saying that won't happen, but I am saying it would be morally reprehensible not to try and do something about it before it got to that point. If anything, the possibility of that happening is all the more reason to try and raise awareness to the problem before it gets that bad, so I'm not sure why you are disagreeing.

As for the rest, it sounds like you're overanalyzing both what is just a simple metaphor, and what is a two strip comic panel. To overanalyze and counter your own analysis, the rise of the water is usually caused by heavy rains, which is what the "water droplet" part of the metaphor is referring to; and the comic strip is meant to be an oversimplified and funny way of saying we should raise awareness to the problem and convince them to take action - whatever action you prefer; it's meant to be absurdist. It is not literally saying "you should tell your friends climate change exists". And if your preferred solution is forming a guerrilla, then that is what the comic is telling you to talk to your friends about. You can't form a guerrilla on your own; or, if you do, there's no one to protect you or keep the fight going when you get taken to prison/killed.

And if for some weird reason your friends haven't heard of climate change, then yes, that quite literally would be the start, unless you want your friends to think you're a loon and call the cops on you.

But even then… its three droplets against hundreds of thousands moving in the other direction. And all the individual droplets know that.

Exactly, and that's why you raise awareness by talking to people. If you get 3 friends and I get 3 friends, we now have 6 friends. And if each of those manages to get another 3 friends, then now we total 26 - that seems like a much better number to start a guerrilla with. And if you keep that chain going long enough, you'll get enough droplets to change the current.

Sometimes when I have discussions like this with someone, I feel like we are standing in the rain and we both agree with need some kind of roof to shelter us. And then when I say "we should build some kind of support structure, maybe get some tools and materials" the other person turns hostile ^(or^ ^politely^ ^disagrees,^ ^but^ ^90%^ ^of^ ^the^ ^time^ ^they^ ^turn^ ^hostile)^ and goes "No! What we need is to build a roof!". Like I'm not even necessarily disagreeing with whatever your proposed solution is - a roof, voting, boycotts, blowing up pipelines, forming a guerrilla - I'm just saying that to get the solution you need a solid foundation.

If I'm so close, then help me cross the gap. Just in your other comment you said you wished "we could have grown up discussions", and now that you have an opportunity to have one and educate people you instead chose to go with a childish condescending jab with no substance or value behind it. Almost like everything you say is just virtue signaling BS fluff so you can throw blame at other people and avoid having to make changes in your life.

Apart from the fact that "taking action" is still not a concrete plan and your comment is still void of any real substance, are you planning on taking whatever "action" alone? Are you going to be a one-man army? Because otherwise you need to raise awareness and bring people to your side.

By "action" do you mean voting? Are you going to do it alone?

By "action" do you mean blowing up a pipeline? Are you going to do it alone?

Who is electing your government? Who is feeding the corporations by buying their products? If you think your three friends not caring, and my three friends not caring, and OP's three friends not caring is all inconsequential and there's no point in changing their minds, then how do you envision change happening? That is a geniune question; do you actually have a plan of action, or is it just "the corporations and governments are the ones who have to do something"?

Like the saying goes, "no individual drop of rain sees themselves as responsible for the flood", or something along those lines.

Governments and large industrial and commercial organisations are overwhelmingly more responsible for climate change than individuals like you and me

Right, but those governments and commercial organizations are supported by individuals like you and me; they do not exist in a vacuum. It doesn't take a long conversation with an average person to realize they do not want to make the necessary changes to their life (either directly, or indirectly through significant change in the system) to fix the problem.

If most people were actually in favour of strong action to make significant change, then most democratic governments would be more in favour of more significant action as well, because at the end of the day most of them just want to be elected. But even in countries with a parliamentary system and multiple parties, greens barely have any power, and people keep choosing governments that either do nothing, or just the bare minimum.

For a small example of what I mean, just look how many people go out of their way to show up on vegan/vegetarian threads to talk about how much they love meat and won't stop eating it - despite the fact it's one of the largest contributors to climate change. And this is on Lemmy too, which is a lot more left leaning than the average social media platform, and even more than the real world. Then add in how many people are pro-car, especially gas, or how many people are addicted consumerists and can't stop buying things they don't need in plastic packaging; and for some more sprinkles you can also add all the "environmentalists" who campaign in favour of shutting down nuclear plants despite the fact that a) it's the second safest energy source b) even with nuclear, by 2026 fossil fuels will still be responsible for over 50% of energy production.

If anyone wants to be a grown up and have a grown up discussion, then they need to stop shifting blame around and acting like governments exist in a vacuum and corporations aren't selling anything.

If Coke decided to stop producing plastic bottles then Pepsi would up their production and their profits would skyrocket; if a government had the balls to issue laws about plastic reduction that would stop them from producing them, they would almost certainly lose the next election and there might be protests and riots; but if people just stopped buying soft drinks in plastic bottles, Coke and Pepsi would both stop producing them regardless of what the government does.

I would like to add David Graeber to that, and Kropotkin even. I don't mean to start a snowball effect that turns this into a huge list, but I feel like not enough people (especially the average person) know about them; especially Graeber who is a lot more modern.

They very clearly were wrong for painting technology as the problem. The problem is and was capitalism.

Yeah, the post is only true if we start implementing a bunch of copyright laws for the training and use of AI; ironically that is something most anti-AI people support.

Are we really doing the "yet you participate in society" meme?

It does bring up the topic of climate change several times, and yet's still more than the protest that do happen, but you never hear about because they don't inconvenience anyone. There have been plenty of instances of protests vandalizing rich people's yachts, for example, but that doesn't make the headlines and people don't care, so no attention is raised and it's ultimately meaningless.