Still trying to go through my drafts and actually get around to writing some of these posts instead of just letting them sit around here for years. This one seems to fit in quite well with a few other recent rants, because it deals with how to make people behave in a certain way, what works and what doesn’t when it comes to creating social change. It does start with a study, but I doubt one is needed in order to realize that creating an infrastructure allowing people to easily be “green” and ethical when it comes to their purchases would help a great deal, while continuing to focus on informing them about such issues will have little effect. Most people are going to take the easy route, or at least one which isn’t noticeably difficult, even if they know that it’s not the right one…
Now please don’t tell me that there are plenty of simple things anyone can do, because I’ve seen too many of those lists and many things written on them aren’t exactly easy to do, not to mention that most of those things would have too little impact anyway, or would at least balance out a positive impact in one area with a negative one in another. What we truly need is an infrastructure designed for environmentally conscious and ethical consumers to replace the existing one, which encourages wasteful and harmful choices. There could be some valid reasons to start some new informational campaigns once such an infrastructure would be in place, but it’s really a waste of time and resources to try to educate the masses before offering them the means to easily put this education to good use.
But requiring such an infrastructure doesn’t mean that we require others to build it for us. Those who are currently in positions of authority may have the best means of providing it for us, but they also have the least interest to do so, seeing as the current state of affairs got them in those positions of authority in the first place and, for better or worse, preserving it is probably their best chance of staying there. So we need to take matters into our own hands, use the masses whenever we have to and do whatever it takes to create this infrastructure and finally set things in motion. Otherwise it’s doubtful that we’ll get far…
Grassroots infrastructure doesn’t have to be that complicated to create. There are plenty of existing things we could use, such as places, people and behavior patterns. A simple example would be hiring poor people who look through trash to sort it, perhaps even collect it. Another would be having local shops take requests for environmentally friendly, fair-trade or otherwise ethical products that they couldn’t normally afford to stock without knowing whether they’d sell. Yet another would be having some people who do go to a good farmers’ market or other such location for themselves accept to make purchases for friends and neighbors as well. It might not exactly sound like what’s normally considered to be an infrastructure, but such things could actually create a pretty decent one, enough to get the job done until those in positions of authority could be somehow persuaded to create and maintain an even more solid one.
When it comes to the first example listed above, I keep hearing people from here saying that they won’t leave broken electronics out when there are announcements that they’ll be collected in order to be recycled, or even won’t drop things like magazines or plastic bottles into the appropriate containers, in the few places where such containers exist, because Gypsies would steal them. That may often be true, but I don’t see the problem. Firstly, you threw them away, so it’ll cause you no loss. Secondly, if they find a way to reuse those things, that’s even better than recycling; and if they take them to recycling centers in exchange for the small payment offered for this, the items are going to end up where they should have ended up anyway. Instead of a problem, I see this as an opportunity. In an ideal society, people wouldn’t need to do this in order to earn a living and they wouldn’t need to struggle to create such infrastructure either, but until that day will come we still have these problems and there’s a way to alleviate both of them. These people could actually be hired to collect and sort this type of trash, the payment being that they’ll be legally allowed to keep whatever they think they can reuse and whatever money the recycling centers will pay them for everything else. Basically, legalize what they’re doing anyway, just ask them to respect certain standards, such as disposing of useless items properly instead of just dumping them somewhere. It saves the regular people some trouble, it saves the authorities some trouble and it provides poor people with a legal way of earning a living. Everybody wins. (Actually, I heard that a company from here did see this opportunity. They caught some people searching through one of their landfills and hired them to sort the trash, separating what’s recyclable from what isn’t.)
Moving on to the second example, I think everyone realizes that local shops can’t generally afford to stock this kind of merchandise. Let’s face it, such products tend to cost more and sell less well than conventional products, so they’re a risk that small shops can’t take. But they could allow people to place firm orders for such products, possibly also requiring a certain deposit to be made in advance if they want to be on the safe side, and then deliver the products as soon as they receive them. If many of them would do this then they could also unite and negotiate with their suppliers with a single voice, so they could get better prices too. This would initially create visibility for these products, because people could get them from their local shops instead of having to go somewhere else specifically for them, without hurting small businesses. In time, this visibility would likely increase the demand, allowing more and more shops to safely stock such products and maybe someday phase out the wasteful, harmful and otherwise unethical ones. Once again, everybody wins. Everybody except those who make a living out of producing and selling those unethical products at least, but that’s certainly a good thing.
As for the last example, it’s rather similar to the second in a way. It does less for the visibility of these products, since the person going to shop for them can’t be expected to know what is going to be available in advance and they can make no guarantees about being able to actually purchase what the others asked them to either, but it would still make at least some of the right kind of products easier to obtain, which could increase the demand for them and, in the end, help the cause. The person would obviously also have to be very trustworthy, which isn’t something that one can just become overnight, so the process would likely be a slow one, but it could still help. In the end, even if many people still wouldn’t trust each other enough to make such an option immediately feasible, they could at least carpool. It would still make these products easier to obtain for some, while at the same time reducing the pollution generated by transportation. Eventually, if a certain group of people would keep shopping together like this for long enough, they could learn to trust each other enough to delegate one of them to shop for all. Then, if that trust won’t be betrayed, others could start to add their names to the scheme as well, helping create yet another element of this infrastructure.
There are many more things which could and should be done in order to create this kind of grassroots infrastructure and there are many more things to say even about these few examples listed above, but this should be enough for now. The bottom line is that we need to take matters into our own hands and create something like this, not wait for the authorities or corporations to do it for us. Stop trying to inform people, because those who are going to care tend to already know, and start making it easier for them to actually do these things that you keep trying to inform them about. Ideally, someday it will become easier to do the right thing than the wrong one, and that’ll most likely be the day when the masses will be on our side. Whether or not that day will come soon enough is up to us…
With the Perseid meteor shower peaking now, it could have been a good moment to wish upon a shooting star… But what shooting star can I see from here, boxed in by all these other buildings and considering all the light pollution? I can barely make out a few actual stars, probably eight if I try hard enough.
But at least my wish would be the same one it’s been for the past four years… I guess I might as well wish upon stars. It’s not like it’d take, or be, anything short of a miracle, is it?
Yes, been more down in the dumps than usual once again these days. Since Saturday night, to be exact, when I realized that I just have those two pictures.
Then again, I’ve been saying that I’ve been more depressed than usual so often that I guess I should consider this to be the norm and see the days during which I feel somewhat less awful as unusual. Either way, I’m still as worried and scared as usual, about how she’s doing in general and about a certain issue you should already know about in particular. Right now I feel too sorry for myself to even be up to feeling sorry for myself in writing, which doesn’t happen often…
Otherwise, to use a single post for all of this, a front tooth decided to start hurting when it touches something cold. At first I thought it was another, but eventually I think I identified the real culprit after I noticed a small brown spot on it. Should see a dentist soon, before it starts hurting on its own, but of course the thought of that really scares me and the one I went to two years ago is on vacation just now anyway. Maybe the tooth will allow me to wait until she’ll get back, because a vaguely familiar face could help a little bit.
Just realized something last night. I only have two pictures of me and Andra together, those we took ourselves while cuddling and making faces at the camera during that trip when we met, in 2002. They were taken with a regular camera and then scanned, so the quality leaves a lot to be desired, not to mention that you can’t even see all of her face in one of them. Such things make it even harder to still believe that we ever were together…
My parents took some pictures when they visited us once, while I was living with her, but I can’t remember whether any of them had both of us in them. What I do remember is that Andra really didn’t want them to take her picture, so it’s possible that she avoided being in any of them. But even if they did take any, they either threw them away or hid them, because I certainly never saw any of them. None with her, I mean, because one of me holding Bubu is in the living room… I tried to look for any others, but I’m not about to start searching through their things and I can only find older pictures in the place where such things should normally be. And I’m not going to ask for them either…
I find myself very disheartened by all the green parties and environmental organizations that claim to attempt to strike a balance between protecting the environment and ensuring the well-being of the people, or even to protect the environment and improve the people’s standard of living at the same time. That means they’re just greenwashing, because environmental health and humans’ well-being are no longer compatible and this drive to constantly improve the people’s standard of living is what got us here in the first place, robbing Earth of as much as we can and giving back as little as we must.
Though most people never seem to realize it, it’s obvious that humans’ well-being requires a healthy environment in the long run, but not the other way around. Or at least not usually, since right now the damage is so great that the environment would really need humanity’s help in order to prevent further degradation. But it wouldn’t matter so much in the end, since Earth as a whole would recover soon enough after we’ll be gone even if we wouldn’t fix this damage before that’ll happen. It’s just a pity that so many other species would be dragged down along with us if that were to happen, so we owe it to them to clean up all this mess!
But we won’t manage to do anything for the environment if we, those who are currently alive, also want to preserve and even improve our own standard of living, and that of humanity as a whole, at the same time. It’s like chasing two rabbits… We are far too many and the environment is far too damaged, so there can be no balance for a long time to come. We can’t even say that we’ll take from the areas that still have plenty to offer and give in the areas where the damage is significant, because the damage is everywhere and we currently need more than the entire planet still has left to offer anyway.
We have three options: First, fight for people’s well-being at the expense of the environment and perhaps let two or three more generations live a good life, then rapidly go extinct and let Earth recover on its own. Second, keep trying to achieve a balance and likely ensure humanity’s survival for several more centuries or even millennia, but have both our standard of living and the health of the environment constantly degrade as time passes, our only real hope being to manage to move to another planet before going extinct. Third, fight to preserve and restore the environment at the expense of humanity and hopefully manage to reach a point where an actual balance between the two will once again be possible, perhaps as little as a century from now.
From where I’m standing, the only real solution, both morally and practically, is the third one. But, you see, that third option actually requires us to focus on the environment and accept that we’ll need to make significant sacrifices for that purpose. We’ll also need to accept that these sacrifices will have to be made for at least one full century, and probably more than that, so it’s highly unlikely that any of us, those who are currently alive, will still be around by the time the fruits of our labor will truly be ripe for picking. It’s not a pleasant prospect, but it’s the only option that ensures our future. The second option might require far fewer sacrifices from us, but it will require even more from those who’ll come after us and the future it promises is uncertain at best. While the first option might require no sacrifices from us, but it also offers no future at all.
Telling people such harsh truths might not be the way to earn any popular support, votes or funding, but if those parties and organizations actually mean it when they say that they mean to find that elusive balance within at most a couple of decades, and not let people suffer during that time either, then they’re obviously not really going to do much for the environment in the first place and probably only mean to gain votes and funding by selling lies, just like everyone else in that “business”. It is also possible that they might do something, of course, but such an approach can only take them down that second path described above and therefore anything they could manage is going to be way too little compared to what’s necessary in order to really protect the environment. Not to mention that it will also cause people to suffer, and greatly, just perhaps not right away.
I wish those who see what truly needs to be done would stop trying to gain the support of those who don’t. Just do as much as you can out of what needs to be done by any means necessary and, when you need more help and popular support, get it without bothering to discuss issues with those who couldn’t comprehend them anyway.
What we do now might not make much of a difference for Earth as a whole, but many of the other species we currently share it with cannot wait any longer for us to get our act together. And, as weird as this phrase might seem, our future cannot wait any longer either. We need to stop putting ourselves above the world, or even on the same level with it. We need to stop trying to find a balance that can’t currently exist anymore and know that we’re the only ones to blame for the fact that it couldn’t possibly be restored in the near future either. We need to admit that, as the Earth had to suffer for us so far, so do we now have to suffer for it, preferably before it forces us to just as we keep forcing it…
If we start now and do not flinch from what needs to be done, that third option might still be available to us… Barely…
This post has been in my drafts since 2007, when I bumped into a study about this issue. Seems like today’s as good as any other day to actually get around to writing it, because the situation’s still the same. Something like this doesn’t change in two years; it probably doesn’t change in two millennia either. Most people have always been sheep, and sheep follow each other much more than they follow the shepherd.
This is much to any good shepherd’s advantage, because you have to put much less effort into keeping your flock heading in the desired direction if the natural tendency of most of its members is to stick together. This way, once you convince a part of them to go where you want them to go, a second group will tend to follow them, a third group will follow the second group and so on, simply because they tend to stick together. It might not tickle your ego if you’re the kind of person who wants to be recognized as the leader, but in that case I don’t have much to say to you either way. If you just want to make your flock go where you want it to, it’s a very useful mechanism, because the flock does a good part of the work for you without even meaning to.
Not that there’s any need for studies to reveal this. It’s obvious that humans are like this and those in positions of authority, or simply those who have done well for themselves, usually take full advantage of it. That’s how they usually end up where they are, after all. So it’s equally obvious that, if we are to create a major positive change, we’ll need to make full use of this mechanism as well. It might not appear ethical, but it’s the one way that works, so it has to be used. After all, if one person tries to persuade individual sheep that it’s better to go in a certain direction while another tries to simply herd the entire flock the other way, who do you think the sheep will follow?
But how do you herd bipedal sheep, seeing as the highly influenceable aren’t the kind of people who can be reasoned with? Well, the solution is to more or less do the same thing shepherds do: Make it easier for the sheep to follow the desired path than any other and, when needed, make it interesting to them as well. Bipedal sheep might not respond to exactly the same stimuli as their four-legged counterparts, but the basic principles are quite similar. You just have to see what works best and keep doing it until you get them where you want them to be, while at the same time being careful not to let too many of them stray, because in that case others will begin to follow those and break apart your flock.
But let’s move away from all those comparisons and get into specifics. How do you make a large number of influenceable people do something when you can’t exactly reason with them and make them understand that it’s the right thing to do? Quite simple, actually. If you have the means for it, you provide the necessary infrastructure and the required laws to make it easy for them to do what you want them to do and hard to do anything else. This is what those in positions of authority do, the best ones being so subtle that few realize what’s going on before it’s too late. If you’re not one of them, however, you have to resort to trends and the cool factor in order to make the highly influenceable actually want to do certain things.
Since those who already are in positions of authority have likely made full use of these principles to get there, I’ll say we should leave them aside and focus on the rest of us. If you’re not in a position of authority, you can still make a lot of people do something if you make them believe that it’s cool, that it’ll make them more interesting, or better than the rest, or happier somehow. Your claims don’t have to make much sense; those who’d think things through aren’t the ones who’d fall for such tactics anyway, they’re not the highly influenceable, so they’re not your targets. Those who actually are your targets, however, will fall for it once you manage to paint a nice enough picture and bombard them with it for some time. You shouldn’t try to reason with them and you shouldn’t try to lead them. You should just put this image out there, make it attractive enough to the unintelligent and superficial, who are usually the most influenceable, and let them chase it. Past that point, they’ll do most of the work for you.
Once your primary targets will become interested enough, they’ll create a certain amount of peer pressure, therefore enhancing the appeal of the trend in question and making the moderately influenceable desire to follow it as well. Naturally, this will create even more peer pressure, which will eventually lead the less influenceable individuals to start following suit as well. And once they do so, the staggering amount of pressure thus created could even play a part in making those who aren’t usually influenceable follow suit. If nothing else, so many people doing something tends to automatically create some of the necessary infrastructure, therefore making it easier to perform said action. Also, if most people end up desiring something, those in positions of authority might tend to appease them, which means that laws encouraging that particular behavior might eventually be passed. And even if this doesn’t happen, what people actually do is much more important than what laws say they should do if you mean to get something done.
Of course, the downside of this approach is that the rebels will automatically reject your idea, simply because everyone else seems to be embracing it. But they’re not your primary concern, seeing as they’re far fewer than the sheep. And there are ways to have them accept your idea as well. If we’re talking of the rebels without a cause, most of them tend to follow certain trends as well, so it could be possible, with some very careful planning, to create trends that appear to differ greatly from the ones you create for the highly influenceable but which actually generate the same results. The success rate would be significantly lower, but it could still work. On the other hand, if we’re talking about those who don’t rebel specifically because they want to be different but because they are actually thinking and realize that what the majority does is usually very wrong, you could reason with them and they could end up supporting your idea if it actually is a good one.
So how about we stop trying to persuade people that certain things are good and right and start using this power of the mindless masses? We’d only need to make certain things appear cool, and preferably also be easier to do them than to avoid doing so. I’m talking about such things as helping instead of harming the environment, treating other animals well, including fellow humans, informing yourself before casting your vote, being kind and helpful towards those who haven’t given you reason not to be and so on… The fact that these methods, when used by those who are currently in control, manage to keep human society on its current evil course well enough should mean that they’d be equally effective in steering it towards a new, better path.
