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[vlogbrothers 2021] Wrong on the Internet - The importance of individual action (www.youtube.com)
submitted 6 months ago by threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Hank Green on the importance of individual action, not because it helps directly (which it does), but because it helps remind our brains of the problems which need to be solved.

Social scientists have studied this, and they've found that people taking individual action leads to more pushes for policy change, not less. The original idea is that if you focus more on individual action there will be less push for policy change. It turns out to be the opposite of that.

As social psychologists Leor Hackel and Gregg Sparkman said in their 2018 article, "People don't spring into action because they see smoke; they spring into action because they see others rushing in with water."

I've seen a lot of the "It doesn't matter what individuals do because 90% of the emissions are done by 50 companies" sentiment on Lemmy, and find it concerning. What are the best ways to address this?

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[-] Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago

It definitely is used that way and I probably should've worded my post a bit differently so I don't discourage others from taking action.

What I actually think we need is individual level systemic actions which is sort of oxymoronic but I think it has some sort of logic to it.

For example if you think that capitalism is causing a lot of the worlds problems then stop buying stuff and try to find ways to reuse what you already have or get it without engaging with that system (swap shops, free cycle, etc).

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There is obviously some things that you can't live without buying on some capacity, but like you were saying don't let good be the enemy of perfect and it is better to find alternative systems or ways of doing things that still satisfy your needs.

And I'll say this is true of climate related problems too. Even if capitalism isn't necessarily the main cause, the goal should be to identity what system we think is causing these problems and gradually try and replace these systems in our daily lives with something hopefully better.

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this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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