I have a dear friend that is an engineer like me, but his life-long dream is to become a poet. Or some sort of writer, at least. I can't say he has succeeded but he is definetely good. He usually comes up with clever phrases like the one top (I don't really know if he took it from somewhere... maybe he did) and I find it fascinating. I mean the end of the world is the event to end all events so prospecting it from our consumerist worldview i can't imagine it not having a sponsor. And Coca-Cola sponsors all major events, so why wouldn't they sponsor the biggest one in mankind history? I mean they somehow found the way to sponsor sport events like the Olympics and it doesn't seem to bother us, so probably they will find a way to make the Apocalypsis appealing. And well, for a change, it is an event they helped materialize and not an obvious whitewash.
All jokes aside, even with the world collapse being an unlikely scenario, we do face difficult times. The two most likely scenarios we covered in class, Green Stability and Energy Descent, require a significant paradigm change for us, as a global society. We can't continue living this way. We know it. We all know it. We also know that this materialistic way of living is not significantly "better" for us. And by "we" I don't mean "we, the experts" I mean all of us, as Ray told us in today's lecture.
So what is happening? Are we in a spell casted by the Illuminati and Reptilian lords? Is Coke's main ingredient a mind controller? Are we just dumb?
I understand that a a transition towards a greener global society requires patience and positive emotions and that our role as "experts" is to guide the population but i don't overstimate the power of anger. Anger gave us mankind major political revolutions and structural changes. People should get angry when Coca-Cola sponsors the Olympics, but that doesn't mean that they should go and bomb their local Coca-Cola store. I doesn't even mean that they should stop drinking Coke. They should find a way to channel that anger into something positive.
Today's class was an eye-opener in some ways. The seed of sustainability is already planted in society. Our role is to nurture it with water... and not with Coke.
I don't disagree that anger can be a powerful tool. After all, this country was founded on outrage at taxation withour representation. Then again, when I think of the most powerful movements in the recent past, I think of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela. Yes, they all talked about the negative, about the anger, about the injustice. But they moved the masses because they painted a vision of a future that was better than the present. They inspired people through the power of positivity to make sacrifices for what they were passionate about. I think anger can be an incredible motivator, but it is fleeting, not to mention exhausting. If we want to escape the end of the world, we have to create a vision of a future that people can aspire to. If Coca Cola is bringing about the apocalypse, then we should shape a vision of the future that is better than today and where there is no place for Coca Cola.
ReplyDeleteI think it will be interesting to see how societies with high consumption change their behaviors if the Green Stability and/or Energy Descent scenarios draw closer and closer and societies begin to really feel the effects as economies and fossil fuels decline. Will people make a voluntary shift towards a more sustainable lifestyle once they see major signs that this scenario can/will occur soon? Or will the change be forced, as people can no longer afford to live the kind of materialistic lifestyle they did earlier, or their parents and grandparents did? Could the current situation be attributed to too many people seeing such scenarios as too far off in the future to really do anything about it right now?
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