The difference between being against an industry and being against the workers within an industry.
brianlux
Posts: 42,038
Another thread on AMT got me to thinking about this subject. I would like to propose that it is very possible- wise even- to be strongly opposed to certain types of industry (or at least industry practices) but at the same time do not vent that malice toward those who work within that industry.
I first came across this concept several years ago through one of the many books or articles I've read about the logging industry. At a time when clear-cutting and old growth forest devastation and deforestation first became a huge issue in places like northern California, the Amazon rain forest, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, etc., many people who opposed the rampant, unchecked cutting expressed a lot of anger and hatred toward loggers in general (and visa versa, of course). What many of these protesters failed to understand was that the loggers themselves were an endangered species because the companies that hired them were literally having them cut themselves out of a job by not having them practice sustainable forestry (still a problem in many places). On top of that, that if you used wood products, paper or read books you could not be completely against the act of cutting trees without being at least somewhat hypocritical (we have since found that this is no longer necessarily true- that hemp crops and production could actually prevent most tree cutting, but that's another rather involved story). The result was that the anger of some (not all!) environmental activists was misdirected toward the loggers themselves rather that the greedy self-serving corporation heads who practiced short-sighted, profit driving logging operations.
Where I run into a wall with my thinking is, at what point do people individually become responsible for the continuing decline of environmental conditions as a result of continuing to do what we are doing? I would never suggest that any individual peerson working in any industry deserves some kind of karmic backlash from Mother Nature because they hold this job or that but at some point, if we don't learn to live lighter on the land we as a species will and must pay a severe price for not living with natures limits. Every year we use what nature provides for us at a sustainable level by sometime in August and the rest comes out of future generations resource access and that date (called Earth Overshoot day) comes earlier each year. How wise is that?
What I'm trying to get at is that there is a difference between loathing an industry and misdirecting that anger at workers yet at the same time, I think all people, workers, managers, corporate heads, the unemployed, everybody, should all become better educated about the need to live within the basic laws of ecology and move toward a more sustainable way of living and stop reproducing at such a rapid rate. It is not useful to blame the average working individual (greedy profit driven corporate heads- maybe a different story) but at the same time it seems to me it would be wise to take more individual responsibility and change how we live. To continue on the way we are is to accept an inevitable form of mass, world-wide suicide (not a song quote, don't go there) as an inevitability and I for one am not that cynical.
I first came across this concept several years ago through one of the many books or articles I've read about the logging industry. At a time when clear-cutting and old growth forest devastation and deforestation first became a huge issue in places like northern California, the Amazon rain forest, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, etc., many people who opposed the rampant, unchecked cutting expressed a lot of anger and hatred toward loggers in general (and visa versa, of course). What many of these protesters failed to understand was that the loggers themselves were an endangered species because the companies that hired them were literally having them cut themselves out of a job by not having them practice sustainable forestry (still a problem in many places). On top of that, that if you used wood products, paper or read books you could not be completely against the act of cutting trees without being at least somewhat hypocritical (we have since found that this is no longer necessarily true- that hemp crops and production could actually prevent most tree cutting, but that's another rather involved story). The result was that the anger of some (not all!) environmental activists was misdirected toward the loggers themselves rather that the greedy self-serving corporation heads who practiced short-sighted, profit driving logging operations.
Where I run into a wall with my thinking is, at what point do people individually become responsible for the continuing decline of environmental conditions as a result of continuing to do what we are doing? I would never suggest that any individual peerson working in any industry deserves some kind of karmic backlash from Mother Nature because they hold this job or that but at some point, if we don't learn to live lighter on the land we as a species will and must pay a severe price for not living with natures limits. Every year we use what nature provides for us at a sustainable level by sometime in August and the rest comes out of future generations resource access and that date (called Earth Overshoot day) comes earlier each year. How wise is that?
What I'm trying to get at is that there is a difference between loathing an industry and misdirecting that anger at workers yet at the same time, I think all people, workers, managers, corporate heads, the unemployed, everybody, should all become better educated about the need to live within the basic laws of ecology and move toward a more sustainable way of living and stop reproducing at such a rapid rate. It is not useful to blame the average working individual (greedy profit driven corporate heads- maybe a different story) but at the same time it seems to me it would be wise to take more individual responsibility and change how we live. To continue on the way we are is to accept an inevitable form of mass, world-wide suicide (not a song quote, don't go there) as an inevitability and I for one am not that cynical.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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I never supported war, but I always supported the men & women fighting it.
There is nothing wrong with personal accountability and particularly for something like the environment we are destroying it's just too damn important not to expect a certain level of change from everyone. As long as your primary target isn't regular everyday people to make up the bulk of the change and the effort to reduce our destruction of the world then you're fine. You give the example of the loggers getting abuse from environmentalists. You say the same thing about any Dept of Sanitation employee or any one who works for any receptionist for any large manufacturing company, unless you're trying to convince them to switch to reusable bags instead of plastic I don't see why you'd even been engaging them in that side of the debate. I mean the primary culprits like environmental pollution from waste runoff and emissions from manufacturing and shit that all needs to be attacked from a regulations standpoint right? so like no one is going to be yelling at the chinese factory worker making iphone cases, everyone needs to be yelling at apple to stop producing a new phone every six months. or something. right?
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