There are many ways to champion even desperate causes and draw public support for them. Lately, however, well-meaning but thoughtless activists have failed, utterly failed in generating support for their causes and programs. Makes one sad. No, their actions piss people off!!! Piss me off! Self-righteous idiots dashing about destroying incredible paintings and interrupting football games and blaming corporations and lecturing governments in the name of fringe ideologies too rigid to function in the rough and tumble of reality.

Forget about raising much money to make a difference. Forget about rallying the general public and their many institutions of religion, government, and business to support a wide range of environmental and social justice causes. As the end is apparently so nigh, why antagonize potential allies with stupid stuff when there’s so little time left to take action? To make a real difference? Makes me wanna go, “Boo Hoo Hooty Hoo!” at The End of the World. Let our art stand long after we’re all dead!

The tragedy is we do indeed have little time left as our human lifespans are so short and we reproduce so prolifically across Planet Earth. As a species, we face multiple and convergent global challenges and interlocking local problems. They blur together into a thorny thicket of so-called Wicked Problems, each one in itself a cluster of multiple apocalypses in the making.

Since we humans, however, live such short lives and are notoriously short-sighted even among ourselves, well, we rather turn away from all of our problems to binge among countless streaming services. Instead of making the world a better place, we watch endless sports events, TV shows, movies, porn, or indulge ourselves in neverending wars, corruption, crime, and politics as spectacle. We play games and disappear into our overconsumption. We lose ourselves in the struggles to simply put food on the table, heal the sick and injured, and to pay the bills regardless of what economy we live in or government we live under. Even so many of us still support numerous good fights to make the world a better place even when it seems nothing works.

So when smart, educated activists, even those representing causes we may feel are just and necessary, muck it all up doing stupid, stupid, dumbass shit, well, good luck with that, stupid!

Here are some recent examples. Just reviewing them elevates my blood pressure.

These past few months global climate change activists have engaged in vandalizing and defacing works of art, including masterpieces by famous artists. They have thrown soup and other nasty, messy substances at paintings. They have gashed and ripped some and threatened to slash others. In some cases they even glued and chained themselves to great works of art. In other words, they destroyed some of the best our species have produced, artifacts, ironically, that could outlive us to share our ups and downs with other possible civilizations both alien and terrestrial. 

Such idiots have also targeted large sporting events. Sometimes the players fight back. A young man from an animal rights direct action group ran out into the middle of football game with a pink smoke bomb/flare going off in one hand. The guy evaded security as he zigzagged up the field. Two men from the LA Rams football team jumped up and flattened him. Gifted him with a concussion. The protestor later protested vehemently, blamed every one and everything except his own dumb ass self. The man even filed charges. The charges were dismissed. Mindful of possible unknown dangers lurking in a person’s pockets and noting one of the two security guards chasing the pink smoke dude slipped, fell down, and got hurt, one of the two Rams reminded folks such “actions have consequences.” The majority of people in the stadium including the fans of both opposing teams cheered the two football players for tackling the protestor and booed the guy. So how did the pink smoke man pulling off that stunt help support a good cause?

These actions deflected attention from the very causes these activists intended to draw attention to and support for. Global climate disruption is a primary planetary problem for our entire biosphere, and human actions are the primary cause of such disastrous changes. Animal species are among many life forms threatened with extinction during the current mass extinction event, also triggered by human activity. And how humans treat other life forms including other mammals demonstrates what respect we have or fail to have for our biosphere. 

How many of you are familiar with the concept that if one person loses their temper during an argument over a particular problem, then the issue suddenly shifts from not being about the initial problem any longer but with the angry person losing their temper? “Losing one’s temper” means one becomes aggressive and regressive rather than dealing constructively with the emotions in play to focus on the original issue. Same thing here with activists when they cross a line and inadvertently antagonize the masses. Perhaps such activists don’t care about antagonizing the masses. Perhaps they revel in provoking anger and upset rather than engaging in the transformation of real change. Maybe they gather around their laptops and campfires and high five each other and chortle over their mighty displays of shits ’n’ giggles.

Greta Thunberg was a hero of mine for awhile. She inspired and motivated me. Then her purist approach began to cross lines and rub me and many others the wrong way. Began to tune her out, sadly. She is a remarkable person. And she has every right towards feeling vast disappointment in world leaders as she projected her wrath and scorn upon the bulk of humanity for ignoring or moving too slowly to deal with ongoing catastrophes. Her lecturing became just more lecturing, however, and more strident and corrosive. Wasn’t helping. Not at all. Not anymore. Except to galvanize the choir she preached to as she failed to stir the rest of us. 

If we are going to dismantle aging hydroelectric dams on the Snake River to restore ruined salmon runs and clean up clogged rivers to in turn feed starving orca whales and grizzly bears out here in the Northwest, then we must also address the needs of several different groups with divergent interests. We must address the Native Tribes and their relationships to the river and the interlinked web of life and water. We need to address the water needed for irrigation required by ranchers, farmers, and herders to survive, not to mention the regional economy dependent on such. There’s also the interests of recreation from fishing, camping, and hunting to paddling the river and hiking its canyons. We must address our rapidly growing demand for energy, especially electric power, and what we must do to meet those needs. Our needs for power exceed our capacity to transform our power grids and implement technologies we may think of as “new” but has already been around awhile stuck in our slow-as-molasses “cultural-economic queue.” The point here we just don’t tear down structures that absolutely need to be demolished such as those dams without first understanding the consequences and planning for what we must do to address divergent, competing needs and wants.

Activists need to change their ways if we are all to succeed. I recall back when I was an activist in the streets of Seattle and elsewhere with different groups off and on over the years feeling nothing ever seemed to work. Yet over time, improvements were made. Sometimes, many changes were made, even dramatically. Overall, however, these changes didn’t seem to matter much as things felt as if we took three steps forward then one step back and another sideways. We kept getting lost in our own confirmation biases and trapped in circular thinking. We kept demonizing all others. We kept moralizing even when we were sinning and grinning ourselves. We kept blaming everyone else. We kept throwing utopian solutions out as the only way to make anything work. No wonder things continue to collapse. 

During earlier years of protests, campaigns, and direct actions, I remember hearing more than once over the years and from those in a wide variety of groups their dismay more people would come watch a ball game than march in a peaceful demonstration for a just cause. Going to a game often costs a lot of money, too! Besides, don’t most people even care? This persistent complaint, however, does nothing but create more demonization and division. Ball games and concerts or protests and demonstrations? It’s like comparing apples and oranges, turnips and yams. Good lord, those fussing about more people going to ball games than to protests don’t get it. Besides, what does “most people” really mean anyway?

Wake up, everyone. Stop demonizing each other. Let’s all reevaluate our belief systems. Let’s be bold enough to dump our ideologies when they turn rigid and trap us raging in a box. Stop the blame games. Our belief systems get hijacked by those who use them to empower themselves in the name of our many movements yet without getting stuff done. Stop claiming you’re acting on behalf of “the people” when you exclude much of humanity from “the people.” Ever study history and notice totalitarian movements love to do things in the name of the people?

Look, we are all messy human beings with stressful lives far from perfect. My own life has its share of messes and mistakes. I’m sure many of you do as well even if we like to pretend otherwise in public. C’mon, stop screaming and blowing stuff up. Be kind for a change. Reach across whatever line you drew in the bloody damn sand and offer a hand. The world will end when it ends. Our civilization may end faster than we can handle any collapse. What are you gonna do now? Run and hide? Smash some more art? Run out on a ball field and piss off even more people? Flip off the next driver who cuts in front of you, especially if they have a bumper sticker on their card at odds with your own beliefs? Look down at your smartphone and hope you won’t get shot? Good grief! Look at us! People destroying art and disrupting games thinking they’re gonna save Earth from humanity.

What would truly help if more and more people around the planet learn to take our converging, overlapping wicked problems seriously. More of must understand a united, integrated planet-wide approach would resolve these challenges more effectively and more quickly than to stay divided into hundreds of quarreling nation-states and thousands of squabbling stateless-nations. A democratic world republic under a democratically-elected world parliament may sound utopian to many, even impossible, and is also long, long overdue.

Our penchant for wars, endless conflict over politics and religion, and real concerns any world government would be corrupted into a global dictatorship are the excuses, reasons, and justifications we use to stay divided and weak. We have the intelligence, resources, and technology as a species to build such a global cooperative network of nations and peoples. Our species has access to deep wisdom.

At least we can acknowledge the need for eventual democratic world government to get our species and planet out of a global mess of our own making while recognizing it’s most likely a long-term, far-off-in-the-future idea. We start with acknowledgment and recognition.

What can we do to move forward to achieve a goal various individuals and organizations have advocated for across centuries as possible yet so many used to dismiss as impossible? Because blowing each other up or tossing gross muck onto famous paintings isn’t working at all for anyone.

Truth is we all need each other even if you don’t want each other. Live smart and die well or go out stupid in dumbass self-annihilation. Amen!

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 8 December 2022
Monday 12 December 2022
Seattle/Shoreline, WA
USA
Earth

Copyright © 2022, 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.