Riddle me this: What’s the fastest two ways to get people to abandon all reason and often their freedoms as well? Answer: create panic and stir hatred.
For those who didn’t guess, this is another post inspired by my frustration with seeing so many “End of the World” stories, posts and rants in the media and other blogs. My opening premise is absolutely true also. If you get people scared enough about something, they’ll do anything they’re told is a fix, and attack or shun anybody who disagrees. It’s how the Nazis took power in Germany, and it’s a tactic seen almost everywhere in politics and social issues nowadays.
I wish I had the energy to go on the major tirade this deserves. God knows I could spend all day verbally tearing up the extreme left, the extreme right, the environmental movement and other social justice causes. Maybe I will in future individual posts also.
The bad part is that most of the social causes I agree with in principle. It’s the extreme they’re taken to and the lies told to advance them that annoy me AND ultimately hurt their cause. The extreme elements of the environmental movement have been saying life is going to end in 10 years for 30 years. The updated science is always better though.
That kind of exaggeration only hurts a VERY important cause. There are several serious issues related to the environment that deserve attention. Lies only hurt the cause. They give nay sayers ammunition and they make some believers feel overwhelmed and like nothing they do could make a difference either.
I picked on the environmental movement here even though that wasn’t my original plan. There are plenty of other groups out there that deserve a kick in the rear also. I’d be here forever though. With that in mind, let me try to get to the bigger point here.
If your cause is using scare tactics and stirring up hate to get people to act, you should question the cause’s leadership and methods at the least. The cause has given up the moral high ground at that point. You should also thoroughly question the “facts” you’re being told at that point. At best they’re going to be half truths spun for a secondary purpose (like somebody’s personal power and wealth).
Beware of anybody who says they have all the answers and they’re the only ones who can fix all your problems. If they tell you that anyone who disagrees is the enemy also, RUN! In the old days, we called that a cult. Nowadays, sowing fear, anger and division is just business as usual.
It will only stop when the silent majority finds it’s voice and says ENOUGH.
I really feel like the problem with the world is, we focus on the ‘puppets’ we see every day in plain sight and all their ‘wrongs’ splashed across the media to terrify and control us when really, they are just diversions so that no one will focus on the real evils in the world, the puppet masters.
Great read. Like I said, I love your frank and honest voice.
X
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At least you see it. 🙂 I have zero hate for the average person who wants to do right by the environment or some other social issue. They just want to make the world a better place. I do get frustrated with the “it’s all the end of the world” or never been worse mentality though. Folks should be smarter than that. My main complaint is with the people peddling this stuff. Many of them are getting rich keeping people down, scared and angry.
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#truth
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They freak out over plastic straws but say nothing over these countries testing nuclear bombs on a daily basis……. nuff said.
We see very much eye to eye on this subject.
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Considering millions of straws go into landfills every day just in the US, they have a point there, lol. Saying its the end of the world though… *headdesk* Simple witch to paper or metal straws. The nukes… It’ll take Iran or North Korea using a bomb, and then they’ll act all surprised that it happened.
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I just don’t think straws are a big a problem as they make it.. again, weaponizing fear…
There’s far more serious problems afoot that nobody’s paying attention to…..
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Plastic straws are not a problem, and are a good example of weaponizing fear and emotionalism. They make up only 0.025% of the plastic that ends up in landfills. But somehow, a sea turtle got one up its nose. Years later, the video of its removable went viral and people flipped out. Banning straws is all about optics and will do nothing for the environment. Paper straws suck and steel straws are dangerous. For people with physical disabilities, single use plastic straws are vital. Alternatives simply do not work. A steel straw has already killed one woman with a disability.
Plastics in our oceans come almost entirely from 10 rivers; 9 in Asian countries, one in Africa. Ironically, the other source of plastics in the oceans is lost from our ship loads of recylcing being sent to other countries to be processed. It would actually be better for the environment for us to stop most recycling and just send them to the landfills or incinerators. Even in landfills, plastic waste may be the most visible problem (especially bags, which tend to blow away), but they made up a smaller portion of what’s in our landfills. Most of it is construction waste, but factoring for that, it’s kitchen waste that makes up most of our landfills.
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Yep! K..IS.S. solutions…
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My daughter is a climate specialist at the US State Department. The fact is that the “end of the world” scenarios are a bit hyperbolic simply because the “world” will not end, just us and the plants, insects, birds and animals needed to survive will no longer be here. I’ve seen their most hopeful projections and I’ve seen the worst – neither of which is good. The fact is that most of what you’re reading is not “scare tactics,” it is scientists speaking the truth for the first time in years. I’m not talking about Al Gore or other big names but actual scientists, 99% of whom all now agree. The song, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” comes to mind. One need only to look around them, across the globe, to see the beginning of the end. Water shortages, even here in the US, food shortages, we lost hundreds of bird species in this decade alone. We forget that the worse the weather gets, it’s 10x worse for the pollinators we desperately need to survive. A huge amount of our medicine is derived from plants that now are burned up in the Amazon. The problem is that humans refuse to believe this ever could happen. At least, humans today in the US. We once listened to scientists and repaired the Ozone layer. Now, we shun scientists and other environmental groups for speaking the truth once again. It’s now, most likely, too late. And, for the record, if you’ve never seen a seal or sea lion die a slow and painful death from ingesting plastic, such as plastic straws and bags, then you really should watch a video of it or go to San Fran and see it for yourself. If you don’t give up plastic after that then something really is wrong with you.
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Extremism with anything is not healthy. I try to be careful not to engage the wolves fed by the frenzy of social media (some believe without checking all of the facts). Thanks for sharing and providing a sane place for discussion.
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That’s the goal here. 🙂 It’s encouraging that most followers seem to get what I’m saying and trying to do here also.
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I’m old enough to has seen many doomsday deadlines come and go, each put forward with just as much hyperbole from the “experts” as they are today. I have no doubt many of them truly believed the scenarios they were predicting. It didn’t make them any less wrong. The big difference is that modern communications technology means that more people are being blasted with the propaganda, plus we have massive amounts of indoctrination in our public schools. It has become dogma.
You’ve touched on one of the frustrating things. When anyone objects to the alarmism, the immediate response from the alarmist is almost always the accusation that we don’t care for the environment, are in favour of pollution, or want to kill the earth. The straw man, hyperbole and ad homs just get doubled down on.
Another one that seems more “reasonable” is equally frustrating. For example, I recently had a Facebook friend share a screen captured tweet saying something along the lines of, “so what happens if we’re wrong about climate change? We just end up with a cleaner healthier world, anyhow.” Which is complete bull. The “solutions” demanded to fight climate change will increase poverty (with always leads to decreased health) and are actually more harmful to the environment than not changing anything. Quite a few “skeptics” and “deniers” actually do believe that humans are causing at least some climate change (something that can be debated using data and evidence, but is instead pushed with emotionalism). They and pretty much everyone who disagrees with anthropogenic climate change are all in favour of reducing pollution. They just want it to be done based on evidence, not whatever the current doomsday fad happens to be, and with logical efficiency, not with optics driven, feel good programs that will actually cause more harm than good.
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WAY too much to respond to there in detail. You’re going to force me to do my environmental post sooner instead of later, LOL. The vast majority of what you said I agree with. Straws specifically (since you singled that out); to play devil’s advocate, we have to start somewhere, so if not there, where? If millions of straws a day are 1/4 of 1%, we have a major plastics problem. What I will give you is that it doesn’t have to be a ban as a solution. Recycling is still another option. Paper vs Plastic vs Metal… Somebody could choke to death on any of them. Any of the three is fatal if stabbed in the throat too (martial arts background kicking in there, lol). We went to a restaurant using paper straws recently also, and the straw was surprisingly sturdy and held up in drinks for over an hour. Maybe they were plastic laced like Starbucks cups. 😀 Doomsday sayers and bad ideas though, again I can relate. I’m old enough to remember that plastic bags were given to us by the environmental movement because we had to save the trees.
The rest will have to wait for a specific detailed post on Environmentalism
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I agree that we have to start somewhere. I just believe that the “somewhere” should be a real problem.
Food waste takes up the largest percentage of waste in our landfills. The place to start would be for us to make personal changes to reduce our own food waste. If the various governments really want to spend money on the garbage problem, they can identify the best ways to reduce food waste and develop education programs, rather than banning things that aren’t actually a problem. Just a perceived problem.
https://www.bettermeetsreality.com/most-common-types-of-waste-found-in-landfills/
A thing to remember about plastics is, not all of them can be recycled, and in many cases, it takes more resources to recycle plastics (and other things, such as glass) than to just throw it away. The fact that we are shipping our recycling to other countries, where it is building up and causing problems there, is something else we need to address.
The old adage is, reduce, reuse, recycle. The focus has been on recycle. If we focused more on reducing and reusing, that would go a lot further in reducing the problem then banning straws.
As for the example I gave of the metal straw killing someone, it’s not about being a choking hazard. A woman with mobility problems fell. She was impaled by the metal straw through the eye. A plastic straw might have hurt her, but it wouldn’t have killed her. My friends with various disabilities can have straws in their cups for hours, sometimes all day. For some, just trying to grasp a straw in their mouths would be much more dangerous with metal straws, too. Mouth and tooth damage are the first things to come to mind.
I think another thing that’s being forgotten is how these products came to be in the first place. Plastic straws may be ubiquitous now, but the first places to adopt them the most enthusiastically were hospitals. Elbow straws were developed specifically at the request of nurses, who would try to help patients drink from a straw without spilling, and there bending straight straws to help. Straws were the solution to real problems.
Likewise with plastic food packaging. Speaking of food waste, it is plastic packaging and liners that helped keep food fresh longer, preventing or slowing spoilage, and helped reduce exposure to bacteria and dirt. Plastic food packaging actually reduced food waste, and made our food safer, reducing food borne diseases in the process. We may be able to improve the packaging (compostable plastics, for example), but moving away from it would be a step backwards, resulting in increased food spoilage, increased food waste, and increased food borne illnesses.
It’s a complex issue that deserves better than feel-good, knee jerk reactions.
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