Thread by @doctorow

This week on my podcast, I read my recent @medium column, "What Is Peak Indifference?" in which I try to unpack my 2016 theory of change about the role that "self-radicalization" plays in addressing thorny problems.

craphound.com/news/2022/03/2… 1/

Many of our most urgent problems embody a paradox: while these problems are urgent (in the sense that they are matters of life-or-death), they're also part of causal chains that are so long that they're hard to trace and understand. 2/

Think of smoking: the link between a lungful of smoke and a lung-tumor is separated by so much time and space that there is plenty of room for denial to take hold (especially when the denial is amplified and reinforced by Big Tobacco's disinformation campaigns). 3/

The same goes for nuclear disarmament, the climate emergency, corporate monopolization and many other serious - even existential - problems. 4/

But because these *are* problems, ignoring them allows them to fester and worsen. Eventually, the number of people who recognize their existence and seriousness starts to go up of its own accord, without any need for activist agitation or public education campaigns. 5/

What's the force that radicalizes people to care about these subjects? The festering problem itself. A stage-four lung cancer diagnosis is more compelling than any talk about smoking cessation with your family doctor. 6/

Likewise, the wildfire that wipes out your town is more convincing than even the best Greta Thunberg speech. 7/

That moment - when the consequences of a neglected problem visit trauma upon a rapidly expanding cohort of people, turning them from bystanders into partisans - is the moment of #PeakIndifference. It's the moment where the number of partisans increases of its own accord. 8/

But there are two reasons we can't rely on peak indifference to spark action:

I. Trauma interferes with reason. Losing your town to a wildfire won't necessarily make you an anti-fossil-fuel crusader. 9/

it might just as easily turn you into an #ecofascist, advocating for closed borders, violent depopulation and conquest of high-ground to protect you and yours.

thebaffler.com/latest/first-a… 10/

II. The point of peak indifference is often beyond the point of no return, and that can lead to nihilism ("Why bother quitting now that I've got cancer?" or "Now that there's only one rhino left, we might as well find out what he tastes like"). 11/

An activist understanding of peak indifference demands that we work to *hasten the moment* of peak indifference, by helping people *imagine* the trauma before they actually experience it. 12/

For me, that involves narrative work: spinning utopias ("We can fix this") and dystopias ("We *must* fix this...or else").

But all the other activist tactics fit in this frame, too: education, organizing conversations, etc. 13/

And the point of that activism isn't just to create partisans. It's to channel the sense or urgency into positive, anti-nihilistic directions: to counter ecofascism with climate justice, land healing, and remediation. 14/

Here's the podcast episode:

craphound.com/news/2022/03/2…

Here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the @InternetArchive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

archive.org/download/Cory_…

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podca… 15/

Image:
Cameron Strandberg(modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire…

CC BY 2.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.… 16/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2022/03/21/jef…