I actually believe this to be the single most successful technique for social control in the 21st Century, convincing those most eager for change that it can only come through thrilling and glorious action, a battle of pure good versus pure evil. “Why bother voting on this boring bond issue? I’m not leaving the house for anything less than a war to overthrow capitalism! And don’t ask me to hang out unless you agree, I don’t befriend class traitors.”
The truth that the system is so afraid of us learning—and that we’re happy to let them keep from us—is that actually changing the world requires a stunning amount of tedious, quiet work, of dry reading and learning and organizing and slowly changing obstinate minds. Mathematically, this includes engaging at least some minds you previously considered ignorant or hateful. And this persuasion occurs, not through flashy performative acts, but by slowly earning trust until your opponents want to agree with you.
The system wants you to equate tedious work with neutered slavery and to equate liberation with sexy drama because it knows the opposite is true, that if you restrict yourself to flashy and dramatic solutions, you will be exactly as useful to the status quo as any other sedentary daydreamer. There is a reason the system has no problem feeding you a steady stream of fantasies about violently overthrowing it.
1 Like
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724919302922
Over 7,000 chemicals are now made or imported to the US for industrial, agricultural, and personal care use in amounts ranging from 25,000 to over 1 million pounds each year, and plastic waste now exceeds 83 billion pounds/year. This chemical load creates a rising tide of manmade pollutants in the oceans, air, water, and food chain. Fewer than 5% of these chemicals have been tested for developmental toxicity. In the 1980s, 5–10% of children lived with a chronic illness. As of 2018, 40% of children, 50% of teens, 60% of adults under age 65, and 90% of adults over 65 live with a chronic illness. Several studies now report the presence of dozens to hundreds of manmade chemicals and pollutants in placenta, umbilical cord blood, and newborn blood spots.
This chemical load creates a rising tide of manmade pollutants in the oceans, air, water, and food chain.
Its not directly related to the post, but hearing stuff like this always made me wonder about the advice given by some health gurus to avoid plastic. Whether it be bottles, containers, etc. To me it seems kind of pointless. We are so polluted all over the place that making your life harder by avoiding water bottles, plastic containers, etc. seems unnecessary to me. We should (probably?) do stuff to get rid of all the chemicals/plastics in the environment. Sure. Though it seems kind of pointless to avoid drinking water from a bottle or making sure your meat is cut on a wooden board. Both have probably come into contact with so many pollutants and microplastics in the process of getting to you (even if they’re “quality” products) that making your life harder by buying special products is pointless.
Only way I could see it being meaningful is if somehow the additional plastic consumed from bottles and cutting boards is so much more damaging then the many microplastics you’ve probably already consumed.
The amount of pollutants you encounter matters. And your body removes a lot of them so it’s not just a lost cause.
Some changes are efficient – a large reduction in exposure that isn’t very hard. Other changes can be a lot of work for a tiny improvement.
For example of an efficient change, I have metal water bottles with plastic lids. They work about equally well as plastic water bottles, so there isn’t really a downside. When they’re sitting still, the water isn’t touching the plastic part, so I think the exposure is reduced a lot. I’m sure it’s possible to get a fully metal water bottle but that sounds more inconvenient – these are just regular mass-produced products from Costco so I didn’t actually go shop anywhere different to get them and they didn’t have a high price like a speciality product. I do occasionally drink bottled water which comes in plastic bottles in which case I’ll just drink from the plastic bottle.
Similarly, I mostly stopped microwaving plastic. I got some containers for storing leftover food which are glass (pyrex or something? idk) with plastic lids, so the food doesn’t touch the plastic much and you can microwave it without switching containers and without putting plastic in the microwave. Again they’re just a normal mass-produced product from Costco.
I also stopped buying nonstick pots and pans. In general I find stainless steel works fine and is more durable over time. Cast iron and carbon steel are options too.
The nonstick and microwaving both matter more than most use cases because heating stuff can cause a lot more pollutants to come out of it.
I don’t sleep on plastic bedding. You spend a lot of time in bed and have a lot of direct skin contact with your bedding. But my office chair I’m typing this at has a lot of plastic because changing that sounds way more inconvenient, plus I sit in it fully clothed so my skin doesn’t touch it a lot.
These aren’t particularly special products, aren’t really inconvenient, and are really different than trying to avoid all pollutants, which is too much of a hassle.
I didn’t throw and replace a ton of stuff at once.
I don’t think just totally giving up is the right attitude, but on the other hand perfectionism about these issues is really impractical and can get in the way of making any changes.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of research effort required to figure out which changes are good, in addition to the effort of making the changes. There’s lots of contradictory or incorrect information. It’s hard to find summaries to trust. So not yet having reached conclusions about most of the issues is another reason not to change much.
With this I wonder if this company is finding it profitable? When they say they’re ‘saving’ them, what do they mean? That they’re finding buyers for them? Whose beauty standards are the fruit being rejected by, the supermarket’s or the consumer’s? I’d be happy to pay less for fruit that just looked a little different, I don’t care, but I would choose the nicest one I could find if the prices were the same. I can see this being good from the perspective of the farmers, who can now sell more of the fruit they produce. But I don’t know if I agree that it is otherwise being wasted.