This article IS NOT (solely) about “climate change” or the environment … in fact, while it may surprise you to hear this from someone as passionate about Ecological & Social Justice & Sustainability as I am; I am equally passionate in my distaste for the term “climate change” … and this is a great place to start the article, because on the one hand while it is deserving of a thorough treatment in its own article, it’s nonetheless relevant to this one.
What I am referring to above is that the term climate change is such a monumental dumbing down of the gamut of topics on ecological issues, that for me it bears little or no resemblance to the real problems we face … and it doesn’t help the discussion or the associated debate against “climate change deniers”, as it plays right in to their strategy of dumbing down the conversation in order to control the narrative … what we should be doing instead is properly educating people, to raise them up to where the conversation needs to be, instead of constantly dumbing things down so they don’t have to think.
Now … will you lose some of the audience with this strategy? Sure, probably … but you’re losing them anyway AND you’re making the job of the deniers easier AND you’re misinforming people about what the problem really is, which just makes the next one even harder to solve – ie: it is a crap strategy.
So with respect to the “boiling of our own frog”, it is this dumbing down of the conversation, connected with the corruption/erosion of the education system, and the almost non-existence of real honest investigative journalism in the mainstream media … through which we are being slowly cooked to perfection, as a tasty treat for those at the top who wish to consume our lives in order to support theirs (none of which is necessary).
But let’s take a further look at how our frog is slowly boiled …
With respect to the state of the environment, I would imagine if you took a wide sample across metropolitan, country & rural areas, and asked the question: “do you think the environment is in a great, good, ok, bad or calamitous state?” … you’d get answers all over the place, but the majority by far would think it was somewhere from OK to great, because they don’t really know much about it, they see images on TV presenting a biased view, the majority of our populations are increasingly from metropolitan areas, and as time goes by they’re increasingly also too young to remember what it used to look like EVEN IF they are originally from the country / rural areas … not to mention that there may not at this stage be anyone left in many countries, who knows what it was like from what is now therefore “beyond living memory”.
Now … I know a lot of people are more informed than they used to be and do care … but you’d be surprised how many NOT in your own circle of family friends & acquaintances deny entirely what is going on.
In other words, when you think of the state of the world: what are you comparing it to, when are you comparing it to, are you conclusions biased to human interests only, and what expertise (experience/knowledge/training) or rationale do you have to justify your conclusions anyway?
If you extrapolate this further, you’ll see how humanity is the slowly boiling frog … we’re being brainwashed, misinformed, distracted, and the real concern is that on top of everything else, we may be running into short supply of those with the experience, knowledge, qualifications, training etc. to actually teach people well & reverse the trend.
How will we solve our problems if we’re too biased, ignorant, stupid & misinformed to do so?