this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Yep! And their short-sighted greed is going to drive us right to the brink of annihilation. We’re staring down the barrel of environmental collapse and our leaders are generally either old enough they assume they’ll die before it gets “that bad,” and the others stupidly think money makes them immune to the destruction of the biosphere. Anyone under 50 right now is going to live through some incredibly dark times. We are all dogs in a car with the windows closed and the heater on in a Texas parking lot. Business as usual is going to get really ugly, really quickly, really soon.
The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows
The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death
The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles
It went like this:
The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair
The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze
I said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever
We woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
For sure it's the valley of death
I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood
except you are human and not a dog and you could take care of the problem with any kind of weapon but you chose not to do anything out of convenience
I wish this were true but good guys with guns are pretty easily stopped by megacorps with security staff
And the politicians with police.
number of people in the world > megacorps and security stuff
Sure, but that's not the end stage of the thought experiment. It's not really even the start. How exactly is this larger group of people supposed to enact any viable change? I think we could agree that seems unlikely to be possible in an unorganized/uncoordinated manner. The solution to that is to get organized and coordinate, right?
Well what does that look like? That could take nearly as many forms as people you ask to agree - so you'd need an idea that enough people would fall behind to still out number. Once that is achieved... What? If the goal of the burgeoning group is violent revolution, they won't get very far into the planning phase before being scooped up by security forces in some form or another. If the goal is nonviolent revolution, such as refusal to work, the system is constructed in such a way that those you would need to participate have a lot to lose, and little ability to withstand a protected protest/encounter/whatever, vs, presumably, a group that could easily outlast all of those things, as well as their children, and their children's children.
That's not to say nothing can work, but I think it might be just a bit reductive to suggest that things are as simple as suggesting it is total apathy in those who would need to unite to accomplish these goals that explains why the goals aren't striven towards.