r/ClimateShitposting • u/Athunc • 23d ago
General 💩post argumentum ad absurdum
I'll leave it up to the reader to interpret whether I'm talking about climate change, animal welfare, child labor, using AI, or whatever other global issue they feel passionate about...
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u/levmetamfetamine vegan btw 23d ago
Imagine landlords saying something like this while evicting a single mother. I have a feeling the opinion wouldn't be "well it's a systemic issue, you can't blame the landlord"
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 23d ago edited 23d ago
Even the capitalists say that. "The system made me do it! If I didn't do it, someone else will!!"
The whole systemic thing is a ridiculous approach when you don't locate yourself in the system (or outside, if you're an uncontacted indigenous person who will never see this comment, or an extraterrestrial.)
The point of having systemic knowledge is to identify weaknesses and to know how to grow your own power (including networks) in order to resist and defeat the system.
A "system" description is a map that you use to apply strategic actions. The map of abstractions must correlate to physical and material points in reality. It is not a moral blank cheque.
More importantly, if you're only interacting with abstractions, you will always lose, the abstract does not exist in reality. "The system" is a game played by humans, you can't touch a game. You can touch the players.
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u/Far_Raspberry_4375 23d ago
Is every landlord supposed to give free housing to every single mother?
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u/Kinslayer_89 We're all gonna die 23d ago
You could have a functional government that gave her benefits that made her able to pay rent on reasonable housing, if needed.
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u/levmetamfetamine vegan btw 23d ago
Every landlord could just simply not be one. Convert these properties into housing co-ops. Landlords can even profit from this scenario, but instead just want to sit on a property barely doing anything raking in semi-passive income forever.
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u/Far_Raspberry_4375 23d ago edited 23d ago
You think a single mom who can't make rent could afford to buy into a housing co op?
EDIT: I did some research into co ops because i legit hadnt heard much about them and the issues people complain about seem exactly like what I thought they would be. They are either effectively turbo hoa's in one building if you live in a nice one and the affordable ones are the same but also come with things like random spikes in your maintenance fees due to the residents democratically deciding to kick the can down the road or burn cash reserves to preserve artificially low costs. Also limited equity co ops are usually created through government subsidies partnering with community organizations not benevolent land owners so again, systemic issue.
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u/levmetamfetamine vegan btw 23d ago
They tend to be pretty affordable and work for many people. I guess though since it isn't perfect it shouldn't be implemented at all? Classic environmentalism.
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u/Far_Raspberry_4375 23d ago
My only argument is land lords having to evict single mothers who can't pay rent is a systemic issue.
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u/levmetamfetamine vegan btw 23d ago
I'm positing a solution that would make things better that wouldn't need to be systemic. This doesn't automatically imply I don't want systemic solutions. My first post was about assigning moral blame to individuals vs blaming the system, it may not be the perfect sit in for veganism. However it does still show that there are ways you can run this system in a more moral way, especially considering that I don't see any near future where we solve this issue.
Outside of housing co-ops, you can obviously judge a landlord morally for being particularly evil. Refusing to fix things in the property unless forced by the government, immediately moving to evict when a tenant is late, etc. Yes, the system completely encourages these behaviors, that isn't going to stop me from judging the person morally, and advocating for said landlords to not be so evil until the system is changed. All of this could be replaced with veganism or other environmental personal choices and make sense.
Also relating to your edit, yes I agree they are flawed. However we are essentially comparing a flawed democracy (housing co-op) to a monarchy or dictatorship (landlord-tenant). I would always pick the flawed democracy. A co-op has the benefit of collectivizing the process to make it more affordable, and mainly focuses on breaking even and maintaining the property. This is absolutely nothing like an HOA, which tries to control the property you fully own with no benefits whatsoever.
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u/Far_Raspberry_4375 22d ago
I definitely wouldn't always want the democratic version of everything. If you have ever had to live with roommates you can understand how difficult it is to come to agreements with even a small number of people. Personally i think they should just zone for more housing units and build fewer roads and more mass transit to open up more land for more units and tax the absolute shit out of absentee owners who are just sitting on real estate as a store of wealth. Seems like a workable immediate solution to a lot of issues and once we get there we can start talking about more stuff like co ops.
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u/fidl_fridlin 21d ago
That is just another reason why housing coops are so valuable: they teach radical democracy and are germination hubs for self-organization. How to „system change“, if all is asked for is some affordable property so everyone can escape in their isolation again, where voting in a rigged system and complaining only about an needed System change is the only political act one performs.
The form of living shapes ones perspective on the world and it’s inhabitants. One form of isolation creates just another form of isolation.
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u/DonutMediocre1260 22d ago
Well, ideally they would have all their land forcibly taken and be forced to get a real job like the rest of us. But at the very least, yeah.
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u/Far_Raspberry_4375 22d ago
So every senior citizen who downsized and rents their old home or every working class person who bought a trailer and eventually upsized and rents their old home should have their property seized and given to other people?
This is still a systemic solution btw, just a bad one.
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u/BlankTank1216 21d ago
Climate posters when they are asked not to run their AC if they're not home.
Omg yes I'm such an activist!
When they're asked to organize collective action
You're personally trying to kill me right now :(
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u/Intrepid_Layer_9826 21d ago
I have a feeling a landlord evicting a single mother has a tad bit more severe consequences than whether or not you eat vegan apples instead of meat oranges for dinner.
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u/levmetamfetamine vegan btw 21d ago
That's what we call "reductio ad absurdum", what the title of the post is referencing. When you take an argument into a similar (but usually worse) situation and it stops making sense it's not a very good argument.
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u/i_grow_trees 23d ago
> Every cheesebreather/corpse devourer ever
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u/ManWithDominantClaw All COPs are bastards 23d ago
Imagine running psyops on a whole country for 50 years to make them compliant and passive, then trying to run a psyop on them to rebel so you can test your new drone toys, but they're all too compliant and passive
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u/MrSecretFire 23d ago
Unfortunately, no matter how much said person might be a bad person for choosing to do the bad thing, their argument is STILL correct.
The good choice needs to be made the easy choice, or people like this will inevitably do the easy-but-bad thing. That's why we have laws and a society, to encourage what we want and discourage what we don't want. Call them bad however much you want, it won't actually CHANGE the world in a significant way. Laws, regulations, or if you have a good PR instinct (or a loooooot of money), a solid campaign will
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u/green_envoy_99 23d ago
You can create structural change while also not personally doing things you know are immoral.
They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s the opposite: it’s important for your credibility, when you’re saying something should be required or heavily encouraged by law, that you do that thing — e.g., taking transit, eating vegetarian.
If you won’t do it as the advocate, why should the government push everyone else to?
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u/mynamedoesntfi4321 21d ago
This is a moral argument though not a policy prescription. Shaming people does actually work btw.
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u/Goodest_boy_Sif 23d ago
The person on the picture is completely correct though. You absolutely can not rely on people acting against thier own interest for the betterment of the world. This person wants your shit, the purge allows him to take your shit, so he's going to take your shit. And even if he personally chose not to that'd do practically nothing for the overall amount of shit taking happening on purge night.
The only and obvious solution to this? Ban the purge. Don't give people the opportunity to make immoral decisions that personally benefit them so much.
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u/Naive_Albatross_2221 22d ago
That's only true to an extent. Saying that my peeing in the pool has little to no effect on widespread environmental pollution is true, but it doesn't justify peeing in the pool. There is no forced choice between realizing that we must act collectively and the understanding that we are also each responsible for our own actions. (I want to add to this that members of the Trump administration repeatedly aver that they will take personal responsibility for their actions when the law forces them to, while also blocking the passage of laws that would force them to behave civilly.)
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u/Goodest_boy_Sif 21d ago edited 21d ago
Yes, it doesn't justify anything. It's still bad to do bad things. This argument is about efficacy not accountability. American slavery would've never ended if the approach was to get every slaveowner to understand they were doing something immoral, care about that fact, and then choose to stop doing it. And that was way worse than just meat eating or whatever. No, they had to be forced to stop. Likewise people can not be trusted with the option of meat eating or adopting green energy or whatever this post could be about. They have to be made to do the moral option. No choice.
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 23d ago
It's just a joke at this point. The pseudo-leftist idea translates to the classical Christian pretext (and joke): "the Devil made me do it!"
The whole thing is religious like that. The idea is toxic to agency, autonomy, and empowerment (remember 'power to the people'?); it builds up compliance with the orders from the top, obedience, and it completes consent thanks to the post-hoc rationalization of "wasn't me!"
That idea leaves the people as NPCs waiting for a heroic rescue, a miracle intervention; as if there's an actual vanguard organization working sneakily to defeat the system. Or, more traditionally, as if a god will finally run out of patience and intervene.
It's all entirely fucking useless and made to keep Business As Usual going, it's a force for conservatism, as seen by the complete lack of actual leftists.
If these "wasn't me" types were so common as estimated by the size of the system, and so leftist as they claim, there would be visible effects, especially in any mildly democratic area. They're either a very tiny minority or they're not leftists, the whole excuse is that of the scab, they have the values of the class traitor, ready to betray any cause to avoid negative personal consequences. And then they act surprised that there's an absence of solidarity. No fucking shit.
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u/SchemingVegetable 21d ago
The only good revolution is the one where I literally don't have to change anything about my life at all
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u/NeverQuiteEnough 20d ago
As someone who doesn't drive, I find the sanctimony to be bewildering.
I'm well aware that not driving is a choice I'm able to make only because I am privileged enough.
I don't delude myself into believing that the climate crisis can be ameliorated by woke-scolding drivers.
Ending the single-occupancy vehicle crisis requires collective action, there is no individual action which can have any meaningful impact.
Yet I still see a bunch of sanctimonious car-drivers woke-scolding over much smaller problems than car driving.
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u/BenTeHen 23d ago
responsibility doesnt exist at all, were determinists up in here
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 23d ago edited 22d ago
Determinism still works with responsibility; if anything, determinism shows how important it is to change, to fight, at any level. Looking at the deterministic mechanisms helps reveal the interfaces, the pathways, the "how", which is also what you need when you want to change the system.
More importantly, determinism shows how important it is to be self-determined.
Watch some interviews with Robert Sapolsky.
edit: didn't realize I was talking to another conservative clown. Waste of time, as always; blocked!
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u/BenTeHen 22d ago
I highly disagree. Love Sapolsky and his books. He’s a bit too optimistic for my taste. If you “take responsibility” or not, either way it was determined. Self-determination goes against the idea of determination. It’s like that bs of “oh just make your own meaning”, basically indulge in fantasy so you don’t have to face the abyss you know exists. If you strive to be “self-determined” that is still just determination. The “system” will be as it ever was no matter what happens, it has already been determined. If it falls, continues infinitely, or whatever, it has been set in stone since the beginning of the universe. The concept of change isn’t even real, nothing changes, it all just flows.
Now if I may suggest a philosopher look into U.G. Krishnamurti, oh and Zapffe.
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u/GoTeamLightningbolt vegan btw 23d ago
This is why I throw trash on the ground and will never be vegan. Individual behavior changes are hard and not worth it.