How did two weeks go by since my last post? And how is it that I continue to be surprised when I fail to blog meaningfully on a consistent basis?
I was just about blogging about "eco-fatigue" which I read about in a newspaper a while back but I Google searched it to find a link to what it was and discovered that the entire concept was actually a rumour started by a Danish trend-watching site (appropriately) www.trendwatching.com which scours the internet for the latest trends and publishes them. The trends were taken down but here's the official response.
I was feeling jaded and cranky before I read that. Now I realize that it was the suggestion of the existence of a phenomenon like "eco-fatigue" that really got me down. It made me feel as though the whole eco-trend was just another fad which, because the environment is actually something I'm passionate about, made me really disheartened.
Funny how much of an impact the media has on our state of mind. We really have no other way to tell what other people in the world are thinking and whether or not that aligns with what we think. In reality, it shouldn't matter what other people are thinking. We should just act the way we believe is right but I guess it's an indication of our own insecurity that we care so much what other people think. If we were able to simply act on our intuition (essentially, our moral compass), we might not always make the right decisions but at least we'd be true to ourselves at the time. And that isn't to say that constant evaluation of our actions shouldn't occur. I'm just suggesting that instead of tiptoeing around playing it safe all the time, why not act on our intuition all the time? Why do we need 100% proof from multiple sources that acting one way or another is okay? If I believe that recycling and living sustainably is important, why should I wait until a hundred or ten thousand people are doing it too before I start? Clearly they had the balls to start before it caught on and if they can, then we all can.
It relates to the practice of voting defensively in elections. If we all just voted for the party that most closely aligned with our own beliefs without worrying about whether our vote would "count", we might have some weird vote divisions for a while, but in the end, I think we'd end up with more national parties because people would demand parties that stood for what they believed in. It would just be so much more honest. And coming back to how we need affirmation of our own beliefs from other people, I think a lot of people vote for the big parties because they are the safe parties to vote for. You can say "I voted Conservative" or "I voted Liberal" and people might not agree, but they won't be surprised. If you say "I voted Green" you're automatically labeled an extremist. In other words, it's a lot more of a risk to vote a colour other than Blue or Red. It's stepping far out of the accepted norm.
It's not surprising that we constantly look for affirmation of our beliefs from the people around us when you think about the way we are socialized from childhood: we do something and decide whether it was a good thing or not by the reaction of the people around us.
I'd like to think we're capable of growing out of that.
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1 comment:
I think, especially with something like environmentalism, the reason people are so concerned with what others are doing is not to validate their own beliefs (at least, not everyone) - but to determine whether or not their efforts need to extend beyond just doing their individual part. The more you see in the media that people are losing interest in the environment, the more you will try to educate others and promote sustainable and efficient living, n'est-ce pas?
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