Tom Warren wrote:
>
>
> Says who? Some stale old book written 100 years before the perception of
> ecological issues? Resistance is driven by MANY factors. You might as well
> be an X-tian, Carrol, and begin quoting us scripture. Start with Jeremiah.
No book says so as far as I know -- which is unfortunate, since were someone
to write a book developing it we might be able to understand it more deeply than
we do. It is based mostly on empirical observation. People get involved in mass
action when they have experienced some lightening of the load, some escape
from a world in which action seems hopeless. Crash, on the other hand (as in
the early stages of the Great Depression, feels too much like an act of nature,
a flood or hurricane or earthquake, from which one can only seek individual
shelter.
The slump of 1974-75 was the final blow to the various movements of the
1950s and 1960s. The great pre-war struggles occurred *late* in the '30s
when (subjectively more than objectively) more hope of achievements
through collective action opened up.
Once a mass movement (of the working class or large sectors of it) takes
hold, participants in it and even "onlookers" begin to see the futre as open,
and they can become very concerned about the future even of their
distant descendants.
You, I think, are in denial. You are so blinded by the disaster you see coming
(correctly as far as I know) that you act like the protagonist of one of the
more
obnoxious film/TV cliches: the hero sees how horrible the crime was and demands
that something be done. Those around him inform him that anything done now
will just complicate the pursuit. So he begins scraming and throwing chairs
and breaking china to show how much more sensitive he is than those who
are arguing that it might be well to use their heads.
If you want to stop those disasters you are so worried about, you need political
power. That political power will only come from a mass movement. That mass
movement, once underway, can learn to confront those environmental damages
and can become concerned about the future of humanity. But screaming about
the oil running out or the eastern seaboard flooding or 3 billion people
starving
in 2035 won't distract people from the very complicated and frustrating problems
of just staying alive and having a little fun day to day.
Screaming simply is not a very effective political strategy.
Carrol
P.S.Ezra Pound tried to excuse Hitler by comparing him to those whose vision
blinds them "Adolph, furious from perception / But there are those whose
blindness comes from inside." That is also the content of the film cliches I
object to. The cliche is not so common in drama or in prose fiction -- because
such responses would seem merely silly in real rather than electronic bodies,
and in the slow movement of prose they are too absurd for the most
mechanical and melodramatic of writers.
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