(Untitled)

[a_farce]

Until people can feel grief from statistics or become enraged and offended by business news we'll just be bored and ambivalent towards the apparent vapidity of evil and injustice. Years of social science work was invested into making it so

Comments

[futileissue]

The solution to this is then perhaps -not- to focus globally. It has been implied that we simply like the ability to actually care or empathize when too high a volum eof people is involved.

This is why breaking down larger bureaucracies are important, and to focus on local communities.

[futileissue]

lack the ability* not like the ability

[a_farce]

Perhaps. Global problems can be tackled locally, such as fighting NAFTA by monkey wrenching the construction of I-69 as people are right now, but most issues are becoming global in scale. For example, the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement, which is a huge issue. Basically, it's Homeland Security (and a strengthening of free trade agreements) but extended to Mexico and Canada as their political class colludes with ours. To write such issues off as being too unmanageable or unwieldy to build a popular response to could have enormous consequences. For example the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which the global anti-imperialism or anti-globalization, or whatever you want-to-call-it movement, successfully shot down, would have enabled transnational corporations to have personal armies. Much like the East India Trading Company did under old imperialism. So in the case of the MAI, you can have successes when you focus globally. There's too much at stake to focus solely on local issues

[tomandocachaca]

I read something once about how ad execs have figured out that generally any social issue has a "shelf life" of 18 months in mainstream media before people start to not care. I feel like this is true.

[a_farce]

I bet that's about how long the media was focused on Iraq, but it still seems kind of longer than you'd expect.