There was this 16-yearold being invited by these rich people (presumably intended to tell them some sweet candy) - accusing all of them to arrive by private-jets, saying that despite everyone at this meeting expects to hear messages of hope, that there is no hope if we go on like before.
Yes, I can see the appeal of that kind of
punk rock message.
Martin Luther King's concept of non-violent resistance
And you see what it got him.
Nonviolence is met with violence here (and in most other places. let's be honest). Nonviolence is only effective if you have a large political force behind the change that you're trying to bring about nonviolently. I'm afraid the people concerned with the environment are not a large political force. Anywhere. And unfortunately for an environmental agenda to have any effect it has to be adopted by
most countries. Not just the rich or powerful ones. Or one rich and powerful one.
WARNING, blah blah blah ahead. You've heard it all before, feel free to skip to the next track.
The punk rock attitude of rubbing the ruling classes shit in their face is gratifying but ineffective. I'm sure many of us know this from personal experience. The punk rock attitude is an immature attitude. Not because it's stupid or wrong, but because it's generally ignited in someone when they get to the age that they start noticing the injustice all around them. When you become aware of that as a young person, you usually react in an alarmist way, screaming
FIRE! in the ear of anyone who will listen.
What you don't realize when you're a young punk is
most people already know the things that you believe you're the first person to discover and be angry about. Most people already know there's inequality and horror and awfulness under every rock. Their generation discovered the same thing. Then they tried to change it and they failed. Just like the generation before them, and the generation before them.
Carol and I watched an old documentary about Billie Jean King last night, and a lot of it was about everything she did to advance the idea of equal rights for women (she was working for equal rights for women athletes, but she was thinking about all women). And they were hailing her for all of her important work. And you can say the same for Martin Luther King and his followers and the civil rights movement and laws that came from that. What a great advancement they were. Then I look around and think, what a fucking joke all of it is. Women and non-white people do not have equality in
this country any rich or powerful country. None. Nowhere on the face of this huge earth.
That's not cynicism, it's reality. And when the last white man takes his final breath, someone else will be in charge, and they will be in the process of oppressing and exploiting everyone who doesn't look like them. It's human nature, and human nature won't change until we evolve into whatever comes after humans.
The story of Sisyphus is 1,500 years old. Greta is Sisyphus, she just doesn't know it yet.