Quick question if you don't mind.
If there was an evil conspiracy by the most powerful and dangerous and ruthless individuals in the world to take as much control as possible and in the process of that murder millions of human beings and trillions of animals and which would also attempt to keep the majority of the population impoverished and enslaved...
And it got to the point where this force of cruel individuals was so toxic and cancerous to the planet that it was literally threatening the very survival of the entire species an virtually all the other species on the planet.. Would you...
A: Do everything reasonably possible to try to help others and the planet and to resist the corruption.
B: Help a little bit here and there as long as it doesn't inconvenience you too much.
C: Totally ignore it, your personal life and happiness is more important than the entire world and everyone else on it.
D: Join in and help destroying everything.
E: Something else?
I enjoyed the irony of starting your post with the word if...
The truth is we do not have to be greatly or vastly inconvenienced to follow the path set out by option A!
Many people undertaking small acts consciously could create a ripple effect of collective will, could destroy entire industries...Could create permanent and lasting change. i don't wanna fall into the cliche trap of using the word change in the manner that a politician does...
When campaigning to be elected, politicians promise change...A limp, sappy, half-assed change that doesn't really mean anything OR is an in-joke to their corrupt cronies. After all, crashing entire global financial markets every few years to exact what they euphemistically describe as a redistribution of wealth is change, right?
Climbing over the poorest people on the planet to reach your ends and skirting round the edges of genocide for profit is a plan that creates great change, right?
Consider this...lets create a fictional evil corporate behemoth to use as an example SonManto...cough ;)
If enough people start to boycott their evil farming chemicals and pesticides and seeds that the poorest on earth (who rely on farming for their very survival) can not afford without going into debt...What would happen to their profits, stock, evil empire?
Or brand x fizzy black drink filled with such noxious toxins as Aspartamane...What if parents taught the truth to their family, friends, colleagues, offspring about having a healthy lifestyle not one that takes us down the road to ill health and into the clutches of Big-Pharma? What would happen to that multi-billion dollar brand?
What if we looked to our so called leaders and said NO! Not in my name, en-masse? How do the few truly control the many?
I choose to start by attacking profits and ballot boxes...After that the whole house of cards is at best precarious.
If these individuals, corporate and otherwise truly existed, we would know them if we searched the information, right?
To make the decision that resistance is futile Is in my opinion, to refuse to make any decision at all.
In this hypothetical situation, none of the other answers are really answers at all!
Great response. Well said. Couldn't agree much more.
Heh.
Damn.. I'ma have to share this in the future if you don't mind.. That's a powerful set of words.
Also yeah, path A.. I mentioned "reasonably" in that context you don't have to starve you don't have to drop everything you're doing, it essentially just means.. You help as much as you can without going into detrimental territory.
This is a major part of the solution right here.. There would be no Hitlers if there were no followers. People need to take responsibility for themselves and stop giving their power and energy to corrupt forces that prey on others with it.
I don't have time to respond to everything right now, but thanks for the very thoughtful response! Yours is the best response I've seen so far. :)
Ahh this is hard. I honestly feel like a piece of junk when I read your post lol You out here trying to save the world and educate everyone and honestly I have an idea of what's going on but not to much knowledge and wish I did.
So my answer is E first... to educate myself in all that's going on..to have a better understanding. Which eventually would lead to answer A.
A long way to go but need to start somewhere and I feel like gaining proper knowledge on it first is key..
I like your answer and your honesty. :) Sorry you felt like a piece of junk when you read this, but at least you felt something. Many wouldn't even feel anything and don't care at all. So the fact you still feel something at all is important.
Educating yourself first is of upmost importance. It's a slaughterhouse out there and if you don't know what you're getting into, people will tear you up. many well meaning good intentioned people try, and then come face to face with the machine and the hordes of the machine and then decide it's a lil much for them. So.. Yes.. The more you educate yourself, the less you'll allow others to take advantage of you and impede your progress, or worse.
Educating yourself is probably the single most important thing you can do. BUT.. Then, once you've got a good idea of things.. Being able to share what you learned with others will also become vital.
I don't pretend to know all the answers by any means, though I've learned a lot and if you ever want some advice on where to start looking, I'd be happy to point you in a couple directions. :)
Either way, thanks for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate it.
Thanks for the positive feedback! And sure, feel free to share!
E. try to inform others, but most reactions have been
like a lot of the other alphabet letters.
Something is a foot as in the slow boiling of,.
Wait no one is suppose to notice, there is a glitch!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. :) I like your answer! I do similar and try to inform others, in the end.. I'm not sure how much else you can do. If peoples minds don't change, the world will mostly stay the same.. Informing others is of the upmost importance.
Hopefully that glitch ends in our favor! :D And by "our" I mean the people who still care.
A: A is assuming we know who the individuals are that are so toxic and cancerous to the planet. That being the case then Yep I would choose A.
B: D: and E: With the above being known then not likely
C: If the above (A) is not know then that is what I would do, Like Don Quixote, sometimes fighting a windmill is the same as whistling into the wind. If you do not know who the toxic individuals are then any thing done is nothing more than collateral damage and adding to the rapid decline of the planet to safely hold human life. So you may inadvertently join "D's" team
Thanks for your answer! Why do you think you need to know who they are in order to resist what they are doing and to help others?
Even if we don't know exactly who they are, we can still see the effects of what they are doing and we can try to address those things.
To resist and to push back against something you need to know what you are fighting. If you do not then your actions could end up aiding those you oppose. Blind acceptance runs both ways, you can not blindly follow a crowd. Look at how people blindly tried to fight back against the "System" in Fuergeson. They thought they were fighting back, they thought they were doing right. They did not know who they were fighting. Did the shop owners who's stores were destroyed cause the problem? Did the people injured by the crowd cause the problem? The crowd thought they were doing right, did they.
If you do not know who the enemy is, you hurt yourself, friends and neighbors that are innocent. I happen to believe collateral damage is not okay.
I can sorta get what you're saying. And I can agree that if we don't know who our opponents are we can make things worse in ways, however.
In this case, I'm not sure it's possible to know who the string pullers are, they are so clever and so well hidden that all we see are the results of their actions.
Does this mean we are just.. Forever screwed if we can't learn who they are?
I think I found a better way to say it.
If we see the world I described above before us, and we don't know who is responsible for it.. Shouldn't we at least try to find out who they are instead of just doing nothing cause we don't know who they are?
But once again, we may never be able to know they are so well hidden.
Which brings me back to my point from my last response to you.. Can't we still resist the effects of what we see? For example, speak out against wars, protest, bring awareness to the injustice.
Even if we don't know who is TRULY organizing the wars and all the messed up stuff, we can still speak out against all the injustice we see. That in my opinion is resistance. Speaking out against injustice is resistance to it.
For.. If enough awareness is drawn to it and enough people start speaking out and demanding change, maybe then something will happen and it will deter or slow things for the immoral abuses.
Well, by observation, a little bit of B and a little bit of D.
I'm not sure if this would change if there was some sort of viable plan for A available, though.
Thanks for the honesty, do you mind if I ask why you think joining in on the destruction is viable if a clear solution isn't? You seem like a very logical fellow. And your reasoning has me a bit curious.
I don't know that it's viable; I'm not consciously pursuing it as a strategy. It's just my empirically observed behavior.
I might theorize something about human frailty, personal inconstancy, and a general inability to make fighting entropy the first priority at all times.
I may also take a broader view of D than others. I used plastic straws this weekend, I stayed in a hotel in a city where cleaning staff is vastly racially divided, I ignored a local police shooting because I was busy with other things, I'm short the market. All of those are D-ish.
At the same time what I was doing during all of that was working to help myself and others make better, more thoughtful, more humane art, which is very much B. There are tradeoffs there that I have no confidence that I'm making efficiently, but I think some level of tradeoff is inevitable.
I see. I appreciate the last paragraph. That's cool! And I tend to agree with a good portion of that. Though.. Even if it was hopeless, wouldn't it still be better to try to help than to join in on the destruction? I guess that's what puzzled me a bit about what you said since you seemed to entertain A if there was a viable solution, but.. In this case, who knows if there is or isn't.. There may be something we can do, and it may be impossible.. I don't think that will be known until it is either tried or not tried after the fact.
Thanks for further clarifying your position!
There's a balancing act between what needs to be done, what I can be effective at, and what I can motivate myself to do. I've found that if I let what needs to be done dominate, I end up doing nothing.
One of the insidious things about the way destruction is built into the system is that there are all sorts of places where participating is lower-overhead than not participating. If you want to "play defense" as it were, and never be complicit, if that's even possible it would inevitably take all of your resources just to manage it.
So I'm willing to take some of that lower overhead from complicity and inject it into playing offense in the areas where I'm more effective. Like I said before, I have no idea if I'm doing it efficiently, but most of the time I'm able to do worthwhile things, and that's important. (What we'd call "protagging" in the fiction world: taking an active role in your circumstance.)
D. Join in and help destroy everything.
Reason: This world is a mess and it's not worth saving. Many have tried their maximum best to keep it intact yet we go about ruinig the very own planet we live on. Countless social vices, rape cases, thefts, crypto going down and so on. Prolly this evil man will vanquish the planet and bring sth new. Who knows lol. My opinion tho
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Not sure I understand though how if you find those things like destruction and theft deplorable or undesirable, why would you join in on them and add more to the equation in that direction?
Whoa, in that scenario of course we should be all be A. I know I would. :P Sure hope I could. :D
And also if that happened, shouldn't they be getting rid of the smart people and those already on to them first? Oh no, I thought of maybe... fake rapture? Whoa...
In terms of saving the world, we gotta do it one step at a time. Little by little as much as we can. As an individual first and then as a group. It will grow of course. There are a lot of groups already doing such so I think we're getting there slowly...
Like ya style with this one, nice and subtle, yet bang on the money.
Option A is the most viable for me, the other options sound a bit egista. If all the people of this planet took the option A in response, the world would be very different. You talk about supposing that there is a conspiracy to kill the inhabitants of the planet and, actually, I take it literally, because that is what is happening around the world we are destroying friend @apolymask. I send you a great greeting from Venezuela.