askchapo

She looked at me and just said "I have two kids. I need to believe that things will get better."

I totally get it but at the same time this is a great example of why we're fucked. Anyone with the power to change anything flatly refuses to. Anyone decent enough to want to change anything refuses to acknowledge the necessity, because it's depressing. But refusing to admit it's happening doesn't make it not happen. And so humanity as a whole has their head wedged firmly up their ass and we march straight into hell.

I deeply sympathize with both your position and your sister's. But I also can't help but remember that the only thing that can possibly save us from the worst outcome is the full recognition of how bad the situation is, how immediate it is. That desperation in your kind-hearted sister's eye is the only thing, on a mass scale, that has a chance of mitigating the worst of the apocalyptic scenarios. I know it's easy for me to say, and I'd be lying if I claimed to be doing everything within my power to stop capitalism, but I think confronting reality must happen if we are to have any hope at all for a world worth living in for our children. Because confronting it and truly recognizing the unimaginable horror of it is the only way that people will ever get mobilized to do something about it (beyond the bullshit pressure-release-valve feel-good non-solution pablum like "green capitalism"). If she let down that wall of pretense that things will be ok for her kids, that wall she already knows at least on some level is a lie, and actually internalizes the hell that her children are going to have to face (whether she acknowledges it or not), then what's left to do but to fight against it? Fight it for their sake, because there will come a time for them when they will have no choice but to fight it. Existential-scale climate catastrophe is coming either way, but even as merciful as the sand is, the longer we keep our heads buried in it in lieu of action, the worse the catastrophe will be. And by worse, it could even be the difference between extinction or survival.

They're murdering our children. It is absolutely understandable that we would want to look away and deny this. But if staring that fact in the face is the only way to get them to stop murdering our children, then aren't we obligated to look? There's no easy answer here, but I do think there is an answer.

and just said "I have two kids. I need to believe that things will get better." There was such a pleading, desperate look in her eye that I just had to drop it.

jesus christ having kids is a horrible thing to do to kids