We’ve all seen the JSO protests in various events. I’d like to think a good number of people here agree with the point they are making while being uncomfortable about the way they make the point.
I for one would not run into the field in Twickenham in the middle of the final. There is no cause in the world that would make me run into a professional Rugby front row.
Putting that to one side, how would you protest to make people really stop and think without annoying them to a point where your message suffers.
Future generations listening to the elders tell stories about the luxuries we had in the long ago Peak Times and all the true and right warnings we had, might wonder why we weren’t blowing up more pipelines or oil company executives.
I’m old and will be dead before the worst of it (probably in a heatwave in the next decade) but young people today are going to see everything fall and I wonder if they’re angry enough yet.
I’m 29 and angry but to a point of hopelessness. Sometimes I have conversations and there’s only me that seems angry so then I doubt myself. Then I wonder even if I wanted to change anything what could I even do, it’d be just as productive screaming at a brick wall.
The countries fucked and at this point I just hope I can keep feeding my family long enough to make it to my grave naturally.
One of the Kennedy descendants was on the radio earlier saying that “the antidote for cynicism is activism”. There’s plenty of ways to get involved and you can chose your level of engagement: Greenpeace, JSO, Extinction Rebellion. We can argue until the cows come home about the effectiveness of activism but CND certainly helped keep the issue of nuclear disarmament at the forefront of people’s minds until the end of the Cold War (and beyond), which I think most people would agree was important.
Perhaps what you should be doing is shaking them out of their apathy.
The only guarantee is that if you do nothing it won’t make a difference. Collective action relies on numbers.
But then what about your kids? You may get out before it gets really bad but they will see flooding and desertification displacing huge numbers of people with knock-on effects everywhere (political instability, wars fought for resources, etc, etc). Will you be able to look them (and possible grandchildren) in the eye and say you did nothing?
And then your family can get stuffed? It’s amazing how many people with this ‘not in my lifetime’ mentality have kids.
Yeah cos it’s me causing all the problems so my family can get stuffed. Good observations.
Also I don’t have kids, I still have a family though.
You just seem to care only so far as it affects you.
If that’s what you took from that it says more about you than me.