As oil and gas giants profit, they push the blame onto us. It’s time to take our power back.
We don’t need more guilt. We need more power. We need bold, collective action, not individual blame.
This is the most privileged first world person article I’ve read in my life, and I’ve read a few.
I don’t even disagree with anything in it, ultimately, but man, Americans being unable to understand the public space as a concept or the need to organize society at large leads to entirely dystopian kafka-esque discourse.
Imagine feeling individual guilt out of a planetary transformation involving eight billion people. Ana Flores could be deleted from history by a rogue time traveller and nothing at all would change, ever. The hubris alone is mind-boggling.
To dislike (or worse) an article and its author, it’s one thing. From that to draw conclusions about all americans seems like a stretch to me.
Nevertheless, I would appreciate some clarification on the following statement, if you don’t mind.
Americans being unable to understand the public space as a concept
What do you believe you understand about public space as a concept that americans don’t?
Edit: Looks like the author is Bolivian, not american
Edit2: Sorry my bad. That’s another Ana Flores. This one isAna Karen Flores is a first-generation Latina communications strategist who commands the narrative and drives real political change. She’s a Public Voices fellow with The OpEd Project and works alongside the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice and the Every Page Foundation.
I am fascinated by her middle name being Karen.
For the record, my conclusions about Americans are not derived from poor Ana’s one article. I’ve been exposed to American-ness before. Even if I hadn’t had to spend time at the place for reasons, it’s kind of inescapable.
To your question, my observation of Americans’ perspective on public affairs is that they’re often seen as an aggregation of individual action as opposed to collective action. Their history is taught as a collection of anecdotes around individuals, they see things like climate change as this personal responsibility thing. They understand public stuff like education or health care as this transactional thing where you pay taxes or fees and you get a service in return. Sometimes individual, sometimes as a weird clump of local things. Their news are local news, their politics are hugely personalist. They get excited about indivduals getting into politics when they present the right optics, they get disappointed in specific individuals when they present the wrong ones.
There is just no sense of politics in its proper meaning. It’s all some scale of an aggregation of individuals, it never smooths out to the next level of the collective. This article does it even when it advocates for getting over that exact effect:
The solution is my voice, my vote, and my refusal to stay quiet. That’s why I’ve made it a point to educate myself by reading reports from Climate Central. I seek out climate justice events, so I can show up informed and ready to push for change.
And if you’re spiraling too, don’t do it alone. Organize. Call your reps. Vote like the planet depends on it, because it does.
It is hard to explain how weird that sounds. No, Karen, it is not your voice your vote and your refusal to stay quiet. It’s a global issue where you are barely making a dent on anything. You are irrelevant.
When we talk about it over here it’s all about global action. International negotiations, trade deals, global targets. At most national regulations and progress in electrification and decarbonization. Where do we stack up on solar power? Should we ban cars in city centres? Is the grid coping with the increase in renewable generation?
You don’t “call your reps”, you vote as a country for prioritizing this or you don’t. And when the government is in charge you fiscalize their actions based on their results. It’s not this personal relationship with a representative, it’s a collective choice to decide what we’re going to do as a group. Regulation is just how we make that choice as a collective.
It’s hard to pierce the cultural veil to explain to you guys how strange it seems to look at it your way. To me, anyway.
Ok, you say the following
Regulation is just how we make that choice as a collective.
For me, the answer is
Organize.
I suppose it depends on one’s perspective.
I genuinely don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
At most I can point out that regulation and organization are entirely unrelated. Regulation is a binding act from the republic, organization is a form of pressure from the public. Entirely different things.
If there’s a difference in perspective it’s the difference in perspective I’ve been trying to explain to you: you think you’re an individual that is part of the public and is organizing to generate action in someone else (the republic, presumably), we think we’re part of the republic and we’re collectively regulating. How the public opinion translates to the collective action of regulation is important but incidental. We are the ones regulating as a group, everything that leads to that collective choice is the mechanics of politics, but the government isn’t a “they”, it’s a “we”.
That’s even dumbing it down, or at least trying to express it in… American-compatible terms. It’s not quite right.
I don’t see effective regulations being put into place to restrict capitalist exploitation. On the contrary, the regulations are in favor of capitalism, and capitalism is ferosiously distructive.
So, what I mean by saying organise is that due to the fact that neoliberalism has bought off politicians (political systems I should say) worldwide, it is important to organise ourselves in order to get rid of its eternal growth model, which is destroying life on this planet.
The Rojava example is one of my favorite approaches.
I have only lived in europe and these are the conclusions I’ve made so far.
And by “Europe” you mean “the UK”? Because that may be relevant.
But in any case, then I’m trying to explain the wrong thing to the wrong person. Whether you look at this like an American or not, you’re not one. You may or may not have noticed the differences I’m talking about, but you’re not part of them.
You’re just a performatively anti-system European who is conflating the current system with capitalism. Libertarian, I presume from your example (in the proper use of the word, as opposed to how Americans use it).
That’s not the American way of looking at it I’m calling out in the article. The American way of looking at it is asking people to organize not because they’re a countercultural movement, but because they see individual action repeated over many individuals as how collective action works. They may or may not be seeking a change of system or regime, but they see political action as something individuals do by themselves to nudge the government leviathan around.
This lady isn’t saying organize the way you think about organizing as a leftie libertarian. It’s not committees and assemblies and worker self-governance. It’s bourgeois liberals complaining to the manager, to which they are entitled as paying customers, in enough bulk to force a specific change. Different things altogether.
