Worlds apart, united in anthropocentrism (together the ruin of the earth)

[matrixmann]

You know what’s going to be the biggest factor getting in the way of soothing the extent that climate change will have on this blue sphere here?
The international community outside of the Western countries gives a fuck about so-called “green technologies”. They care more about their own development, which had been kept down for centuries by the plundering of the dominant European and North American countries. And that means, cheap energy accessible to the biggest mass of people and local industries carries more importance than making it as exclusive as it can get through applying complex and expensive technologies in the chain, which the bigger parts of the population in the first world countries are able to afford (in whatever way possible to individuals).
The mindset of the Western world and what they think of as “problems” is so far away from those of the rest of the world - literally elevated thousands of kilometers above the ground, figuratively.

So are many other issues such as that of a cultural nature, for example.
The rest of the world literally doesn’t care about the gender-fantasies of twenty-somethings in the US or Europe and their dreams of deconstructing the biological base of the two sexes. Or about rainbow flags, pride months and loudly celebrating LGBT minority rights like they would be a cure against HIV and cancer altogether (rights which quite a chunk of areas in the world don’t have anyway).
There are way more urgent problems to them than such boredom- and living-in-security-driven ergotherapy of emphasizing things that revolve around the aspect of the anthropocentric worldview to overestimate the social ongoings between humans in a society.

To the rest of the world, the classic aspects of the mindset of the anthropocentric worldview are important: Where do humans get a space to live, a roof over their head, food and water for humans, jobs to earn money and chances to procreate - as well as chances to feed that offspring and raise it into an adult.

If you want to get the rest of the world into the same boat as the culturally loony Western part of the planet, then you first rather need to get them to abandon their part of the anthropocentric worldview, in which all natural resources of the planet exist just to serve and be consumed primarily by humans. - Including your own focus where human business and social interaction still also overshadows everything, beside you talking about “wanting to save the world” and “protecting the environment” (inconsequently).

Comments

[kanzeon-2040.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree the Left in the US is out of touch with the problems of living in the rest of the world. In the US we seem to be out of touch with even the problems of living in the US, whether you're on the Left or the Right.

I saw an observation yesterday that reverence for "the market" in the US is so deeply unquestioned at this point, that even on the Left there is a reluctance to criticize any "personal choice", no matter how loony, irrelevant, or destructive such a choice might be. "Personal autonomy" is a rising value on the Left. Not solidarity. A proliferation of personal identities rather than a broadening of coalitions. Resistance to "the government" telling me (or anyone else) what to do. Certainly if somebody is consumed by questions about their own gender expression and coming out as a new identity to their family, friends, and employer, they're not thinking about the projected quadrupling of the population of Africa by 2100, or the problems of daily life in Manila.

Perhaps it has to do with the US being the world's hyperpower — we suffer no discipline. All of the costs of our global dominance are borne by other people and other species. So we get to fiddle around with how to best optimize our own personal happiness and expression while the world burns.

One of many ways this plays out is the pledge by President Biden not to increase taxes on anybody making under $400,000 per year, a pledge followed by the current "Inflation Reduction Act" (which does not actually reduce inflation). There is no sense of shared sacrifice on the Left in the US. Somebody else will pay for it, or we'll just borrow more.

I'm not sure how to lure people in the US out of their little bubbles, to take an approach of wider solidarity with others around the world.

[matrixmann]

Through the accelerated cultural imperialism coming from overseas in the past years, this mindset which hovers high above the ground settles down here too, like an exact copy of the US liberal university social sciences mindset.
Screaming "gender", "green energy", "racism" and "feminism" all the time. While actually actively destroying the last remaining bits of "team spirit" in society here.
And being about destroy achievements that have been made in the past in technical terms - because the amount of "green energy" currently produced now never ever can cover the amount currently used thoughtlessly without worries.

Eastern Europe laughs about these castles in the sky that those people harbor and which try to get into active politics in a pushing manner... (Because they know how much gas was puchased by Western Europe previously and how much it is NOT replaceable anytime near "soon".)

And while all that - look, countries like Russia make contracts with other countries who wait in line for the supply with energy or energy carriers they can deliver. The rest of the world obviously has other concerns than "green energy" - they first want to get energy at all.

And, regarding all the social stuff - just look at other countries who aren't under the big influence of Western media corporations which spread the Western mindset bubble.
Things which have been made a huge topic in Western societies are none in these. Zip. And life goes on for them.

People for which hunger is still a deal, or which can't live the life in the careless wealth bubble, they got different problems than fighting about whether one's expression of his sex is a social construct or an inborn urge. (Needless to say, they perceive themselves that it's more than just society. So the theory doesn't even need to be discussed because it's bullshit in a scientific manner.)

Only thing that I have to note critically about this "we stand in line, waiting for energy to be delivered" is: Just as much as people in the Western societies are obsessed with the social relations between humans and quarrel about this, as much the other areas of the world are just busy with making the resources of the earth serve only human interests. The rest of nature seemingly doesn't exist in this mindset.
And in that point, they have something incredibly toxic in commong again: Anthropocentrism.
The world revolving around humans and human business.
Like there's nothing else which should receive attention.

And in this "looking away" from everything else that is no concern of human life, they both work their ways in making everything die on this planet.
'Cause there's more on this blue sphere here than just the lives and the ongoings of humans.

[kanzeon-2040.livejournal.com]

Interesting way to put it, that the one thing we all have in common is our selfishness.

I've been reading a book by a biologist who studied social behavior across species, in ants, termites, apes, humans, etc. He wrote that no animal has ever shown a concern for its entire species, much less concern for other species. He stated that humans are no different, except for a small minority of us who seem to have an unusual amount of empathy. He does argue that social animals show altruism for their kin or those they consider to be "on my side". But this is rarely a universal altruism, and when you run the biostatistics, there's no reason for DNA to evolve universal altruism. Instead there's a tension between actions that benefit the self and actions that benefit others in our social group.

The foreign aid budget of the US is only 0.2% of our GDP LOL, and we're still the largest GDP in the world. Only 2% of US residents listed the environment, pollution, or climate change as our #1 problem when asked during June 2022. Only 1% listed the gap between rich and poor. Another 1% listed foreign policy or foreign aid. 40% listed the economy, especially the high cost of living. Most people just want more stuff for themselves and their families — that's definitely what unites all of us.

[matrixmann]

Hm... Indeed, that observation seems realistic.
Altruism itself is tied to some sort of more complex cognitive capabilities of thinking. So there's a limited amount of animals except for humans which can actually show such a trait. (This would plausibly explain why some other mammals also show gestures of helping humans in distress. - They must perceive them as "on their side" or at least to face a similar challenge like them, e. g. predators that can also become a danger to a human.)

And, as it's also known, the lesser the conscious cognitive thinking, the more instincts rule a creatures behavior. - And this also comes tied in some relation to the size of a creature. E. g. insects are recognized to be much too small for conscious thought.

Thus, those animals left mostly controlled by natural instincts, it can end no other than the "ultimate goal" in their behavior being: Eat, shit, procreate and then die.

As humans aren't completely free of instincts (as much as they despise that fact and like to see themselves as something much more evolved than other animals), the same rules also apply to them...

...Hm, so to say, having an unusual amount of empathy could be regarded as "a defect of evolutional development"?
...Or maybe "the next step"; at least concerning if a species occupies too much space and too much resources on the planet.

Individuals of a species who turn limitation of their own species into practice, in some way, also save the continuation of its existence. By preventing it to die from overexpansion.

Intellectually, my brain comes from root thoughts that involved misanthropy and questioning the outstanding position of the human species that is so much part of its acting overall worldwide in an unreflecting manner.
So that's how I come to take a step back from everything and actually put the question overall "Most of what humans make a fuss about, how cares? Who cares other than them?".
Most things that everyone gets told to care about are issues from the circle of human life and human civilization.
But "life" itself is more than just the business of humans. Or what they enjoy from nature or think of as "useful for themselves" from nature.
For example, if nature "wants" to, it can let the human species disappear again. And barely anything, except for their bones and some of the monuments they built, will remain as proofs of existence to whatever life form after them manages to acquire a higher cognitive development.
So... why is human business always so unconditionally important while the rest of all existence isn't?
There is no objective answer to that question, so there only remains "bias". Bias towards human business. "Humans taking and declaring themselves to be the most important thing in the world", in other words.

And under that umbrella, you get a lot of explanations for why some things are as they are... And why, for example, the growing environmental problem remains disregarded by the people who could decisively make a change in it. Why these individuals favor human-created values such as "money" over seeing the surroundings they live in daily continue to exist.
They live so much in an anthropocentriv worldview - as much as it can be. They take their daily surroundings for granted which actually allow them the lives they lead and freely be a slave to their greed.

The human world many has turned away from the stance that the earth is the center of the universe, but underneath the surface, the "spirit" that produced such nonsensical assumptions is still very alive.

Say... that's why I regard Nihilism as a gain to the sense of recognition. It teaches you the relativety of the wheelings and dealings of human society. That humans don't matter to nature, that they mostly matter to themselves.