this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
826 points (95.1% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9728 readers
984 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is exactly what people love using this argument for... It's a toxic concept that if we can't make a big enough impact, we shouldn't even try.
I think one could correctly argue that this is one of the major things wrong with the world today. If we aren't willing to fight injustice, how can we expect anything less from the world around us going forward?
In this case "fighting injustice" just means buying greasy chicken from the place next door. It's such a pathetically easy thing to do. Better yet, go buy some discount raw chicken and make something cheaper, healthier, and better tasting at home.
It's kind of proportional to the amount of impact people are making. Not only is the whole "ethical consumption" thing kind of like, oh, yeah, you're fucked buying anything from anywhere, and working anywhere, because it's a tangled web, but more than that, I think that most people are going to look at their individual contribution to chick-fil-a of like, ten bucks for a chicken sandwich meal, and think, hey, who gives a shit. And they're not really wrong, successful boycotts tend to need to be spurned on by some sort of external action. If chick-fil-a was unionizing, and the union said to stop shopping there in the intervening time, you'd see that eat into profit margins a lot, something to that effect.
Everyone collectively kind of understands that individual agents are too weak to do anything on their own, spontaneously. Worse than that, they've internalized it, so it's kind of turned everyone into stones that can only be shifted by larger, tectonic forces. It's like voting, everyone (or most people) are conscious of voting strategies, to not "waste their vote", and it is precisely this which takes away their power to vote. I can't really fault them for this, though. You just kind of have to face the reality, bide time in your organization in the wings, and then kind of choose your moments, when you're going to really push back at something.