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It could be argued that the reason we haven't advanced further as a race is because so much of our energy and resources are directed toward developing better ways to kill the enemy. I'm not the first to have thought the only way we'll ever come together as a species, setting aside differences, is if we're threatened by a larger threat external to our planet, uniting us as a species against another species, joined together by a common mortal threat with a rapid agenda. A while back people worked out that human productivity can be enhanced by taking work and turning it into a game. Gamification of mundane and repetitive tasks made for happier people and greater productivity. With all that in mind it may be that the only way we break the back of global conflict, global warming and the like is to somehow convincingly anthropomorphise the problem. Make global warming an enemy. Give it a face. Not in a propaganda sense, but in a 'face that I can smash' sense. An 'enemy we can rally against' sense. Just as if we were being invaded.
Sodded if I know how we'd do that. But it seems to me that if we replace 'aliens' with 'global heat death', or 'foreigners' with 'man's inhumanity to man', maybe we'd get somewhere.
And then I look at Kony2012, (which I think in a very real sense is duplicitous and risks replacing a very bad problem people at least have made progress on with a brand new problem), and realise they may have actually done that. They've given a problem a face. And the world's woken up a little (or so it seems at this early stage). I realise we can't do the same thing for global warming. Unless, one by one, we target the world's biggest polluters.
It's one thing to join a global pile-on against one shitheel in a jungle, and another to take down a phalanx of the world's most powerful institutions, but there is definitely SOMETHING there.
Sodded if I know how we'd do that. But it seems to me that if we replace 'aliens' with 'global heat death', or 'foreigners' with 'man's inhumanity to man', maybe we'd get somewhere.
And then I look at Kony2012, (which I think in a very real sense is duplicitous and risks replacing a very bad problem people at least have made progress on with a brand new problem), and realise they may have actually done that. They've given a problem a face. And the world's woken up a little (or so it seems at this early stage). I realise we can't do the same thing for global warming. Unless, one by one, we target the world's biggest polluters.
It's one thing to join a global pile-on against one shitheel in a jungle, and another to take down a phalanx of the world's most powerful institutions, but there is definitely SOMETHING there.
I like my friends and I’m lucky to have them, so if I can do something for them I will. Especially if it’s something that will add to their life. I did that twice over the last few months and it wasn’t until some time after that I realised how much everyone concerned had gained – or stands to gain – as a result, and was a big inspiration for writing these three(?) articles.
