Activism
Allan Savory: It’s a Management Problem
Albert Einstein, considered to be the smartest human who ever lived–so far, said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”
But the reality is, that’s what we continue to do. Every year, thousands of people participate at international conferences, forums and expositions, television shows are created, documentaries are shared, books are written—all which rarely solve anything because they continue creating conflict by discussing the problems without looking at the root cause of why so much is going wrong with so many good people and knowledge available to world leaders the failure of system design.
Allan, there’s been more than 50 years of Earth Days starting in 1971 and now leaders and activists and protestors are planning to participate in COP 29 in another event that in many cases will solve very little.
Why are we constantly in crisis mode and what can be done about it to ix the problems and prevent future problems
Well, the reason we’re in crisis mode is because at every COP meeting at every Davos meeting at every International Conference what people are discussing are almost all identifiable as symptoms of global biodiversity loss, desertification megafires fueling climate change, and you’ll find people are constantly
discussing symptoms. Obviously when you never even discuss the cause of the problem, which is just common sense, you can expect no other result than we’re seeing –ever mounting chaos at conference after conference and that will continue till COP 100.
Have the media been negligent in coverage and if so, why?
Yes, absolutely negligent! At COP 26 I was invited to give a 12-minute talk at a small side show on agriculture which any alert reporting in the media could have picked up. In that I talked about the cause of the greatest problem facing humanity, rather than its symptoms. And I said nobody at the conference would even talk about it. Which proved true.
I predicted many people would be demanding action from political world leaders, but nobody would be giving them help, and they would get nothing but chaos and conflicting advice and never any constructive help or advice.
And I said we need to be helpful to these leaders by showing them there is an underlying root cause, which I proceeded to do. Basically, I pointed out that after years of denial from many, recently I believe we can say that every sane scientist now acknowledges that humans are causing climate change.
Now science is logical, and although you can have several things aggravating a problem, there is always only one root cause. So, if humans are causing climate change, then logically livestock and fossil fuels – that we most blame – are not causing it.
“It is how we manage resources including livestock and fossil fuels that is the cause.”
So, we need to be discussing the management and nobody at any of these conferences is doing so.
You’ve written books and manuals on holistic management, so could you provide the public and the people who write policies with a brief description so that they will understand what they mean.
As you know, for over 60 years I’ve been focusing on, and writing and speaking, about the management leading to the loss of biodiversity and desertification taking place even in National Parks, because understanding this beginning of the breakdown of
our life-sustaining environment is crucial. Much is explained in my textbook and the discovery in the 1960’s of how to reverse desertification I described in a TED Talk viewed by almost 9 million people.
But at that COP 26 meeting which the media ignored I pointed out that when you only say management is the cause that’s not helpful to global leaders. This is because it in societies, and institutional (political party) belief and understanding is that we manage millions of things. For this reason, in that very brief talk I pointed out that no we do not manage millions of things we produce millions of things.
We produce grain, meat, wine, cheese and food in many forms, music, art, smart phones, buildings, bombs, computers, cars, planes and everything making city-based civilization, every business and economy possible.
All these are things we produce, we do not manage them. All can be produced independent of one another and stop if we stop producing, none can self-organize, most are complicated, but none are complex.
Humans only manage three things:
- We manage our lives, families and small communities and at scale organizations or institutions.
- We manage economy – having to finance ourselves, and organizations/
- And through these we manage Nature (our life-supporting environment) from which we produce everything.
All three we do not produce, they do not stop even in catastrophe but re- organize in changed form, all are totally interdependent and cannot be managed independent of one another.
As I said, it is this management causing biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change we need world leaders to focus on, and then I also pointed out that when we look at this management, we have two scales:
What I call the human scale; you and I and everybody managing their lives, communities or small family farms, businesses to the best of our ability.
And then we have the institutional scale. Everything we manage at large scale we do through organizations/institutions.
It is at this institutional scale of management where the major part of the problem lies. It’s not a lack of goodwill;
not a lack of good people; not a scientific but a management problem.
I cannot think of a single management issue at scale not done through an organization – environmental, agricultural, religious, marketing, media, political parties, dictatorships, universities, corporations, Etcetera.
Organizations, and none more so than political parties (even dictatorships), manage through policies leading to laws, regulations and permeating everyone’s live in any nation. And at the scale of degradation of our human environment that we are witnessing, the root cause is the universal way in which ALL governments, environmental, and other organizations develop policies.
Society, academia, policy and management schools and our world leaders believe that we have a great many ways of developing policy- scientifically, dictatorially, democratically. Etcetera.
This, as a large body of resource management professional working with me discovered in 1983, is a false belief. Policy, universally, if we peel the onion to it’s core, is and always has been only developed in one basic way.
Whether a mega-environmental organization, dictatorship or a multi-party democracy all develop policy in exactly the same way and it is that way in which policy is developed that is causing the problems
Well right now in media and while they have ignored the problems that we’re facing consequences of failed decision making, without pointing the finger or blaming people how can businesses, communities and every level create the necessary changes that are necessary?
The first thing people and small businesses can do is address the cause at the human scale. How they manage their lives. And we can touch on that later.
But when we come to any corporate businesses, they are very much part of the problem, because we produce almost everything we do today, even a toothbrush through organizations. Most people can’t produce a pencil or toothbrush, because it’s made by corporations.
Here, lies the heart of the problem at scale – we cannot manage at scale without organizations and have to have them for efficiency, but history and science inform us that once formed organizations do not behave as any normal human would. They take on a life of their own and to manage their financing will even go against their very purpose. The classic case is religion. If we look at but one – Christianity – although many millions of good people can, and do, lead lives of loving and caring. However, since religion was taken to scale Christianity alone has, I believe well over 2,000 organizations (churches) that have been warring for centuries and harboring pedophile priests going against their very purpose – love, caring and protection of the innocent. Individuals are not being bad or evil it is how institutions behave.
Because they are not human, they do not behave like a human and they are virtually incapable of Common Sense, morality, empathy and other emotions, and will (political parties, universities and environmental organizations, corporations, etcetera), go against their purpose to finance themselves. They as organizations cannot change their behaviour – however the citizens within them can begin to do something, as will happen when policy is developed differently in the interests of citizens rather than institutions.
Here in America our very own Constitution is written in a way that provides for the endless consumption of more and more and favors businesses over the needs of the people or the rights of nature. So the way out of this is looking at the way we manage things?
The way out of it is to address the cause – changing the way governments (political parties) develop policy. As Churchill so famously said “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge” To change from developing policies in the context of addressing problems, to developing policy in the context of citizen needs tied to their life-supporting environment providing everything making any economy, business or aspect of civilization possible (what is called a holistic context ) is not only faster, simpler and more harmonious, but avoids most unintended consequences of current reductionist policy development. However, this is entirely new and thus subject to what research and history inform us about institutional change.
We only currently know one normal way of such change occurring throughout history. In that the public view gradually changes as more and more information gets out about new discoveries in management, such as we are discussing, and eventually that becomes accepted by institutions.
But when the discoveries, be they in science, management or anything else —fly in the face of pre-existing human beliefs of society, we know from both history and from research that the change in institutions will not happen under 100 to 200 years. Now so far, I’ve been 60 years at it and we’ve made minimal change, although we’ve increased our knowledge of what we need to do greatly.
But actual change hasn’t occurred yet and being realistic we can expect at least another century for institutional acceptance. I do not believe future generations enjoy this luxury of time given the current rate of environmental destruction – the destruction of human habitat on this Earth.
So, at COP 26 I suggested that we try a new approach never before tried in history. Help world leaders by taking one case in one small country one sovereign state, take one policy and have that nation’s president, prime minister or dictator develop their agricultural policy differently with the process open to all and media attention so that every world leader can see there is a constructive way forward applicable to every nation and policy.
I suggest agriculture because it plays such a major role in biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change that even if we stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow, climate change will continue almost unabated because of agriculture.
So we could take a policy like that just get one person in charge, a prime minister, a president, a governor of a state to act in a statesmanlike manner, not take any risk because they’re politicians and they can’t.
And work with us, the Savory Institute and let us help them and their own officials of their institutions together with their citizens and let them develop policy in a different way, as we learned to do in 1983. Just do this and have it openly observed by world leaders and media. And then accept it or not.Now the downside of doing this, if it failed to produce harmony and a policy the nation dreams of, is that we would waste maybe a year, maybe a couple of million dollars which is trivial.
If it succeeds—and there’s over 95% chance it’ll succeed I believe from results when we’ve done this with lawmakers and their bureaucrat advisors – we will not be able to put a price to it because we will save billions of lives and save civilization as we know it
We will save billions of lives because right now as we speak institutionally developed policies are destroying Human Habitat and no species including humans can live without habitat. In fact we can live longer without food and water than we can without habitat.
So the downside of it is almost nothing; the upside is beyond measure economically, humanely and environmentally.
So, I’m suggesting that and if we can get public support for that idea particularly from young climate activists most concerned with the future, I believe it can happen. Because this is the greatest problem and danger facing humanity I have no monopoly on ideas and I invite anybody in the world, any Nobel laureate to come up with another and better idea or tell me where that idea is silly or shouldn’t be tried.
At my age of 89 I find myself more concerned than ever with the future we are creating, and I believe if we do what I suggest we have a fighting chance to offer young people and future generations much more hope than they have in one conference after another discussing the symptoms in increasing global chaos.
If today, you were to advise is a leader in government anyone who can Inspire this to put into Policy what would that look like?
We pretty well know because of experiences I have had. While I was working this out as an ecologist, I was also leader of a political party in opposition to the racial government of Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe) and I was also an army officer for 20 years in the war. And in the army we have something called TEWTS: (Tactical Exercise Without Troops) where you can’t experiment with something, you can’t fight a battle experimentally first, but you can rehearse and do it.
So, we’ve done this in America we’ve done this in India in Lesotho in Zimbabwe and every time we get the same results. When the same officials that develop policy the way they do today are helped by facilitation and develop policy in what we call A National Holistic context the result is entirely different:
For example: What do the citizens of that country want based on their culture and their way of life tied to their behavior and life-supporting environment, sustaining them centuries from now? This, once developed, becomes the context for any policy addressing a problem, as all do, When we make the policy in that context with the same people we get totally different results.
In the United States when I came over here as an exile and was commissioned by the USDA Soil Conservation Service to put 2,000 professional people through training in the work I was developing we discovered how to do this.
For over two years I trained 2,000 officials and academics in groups for a week at a time. As one of those groups concluded (and I published this in in first edition of my textbook):
“We now recognize that unsound resource management is universal in the United States”
That statement is dramatic and not a single person in the media has picked it up in 40 years.
When all of your policies are unsound and your own officials can discover that in in a week of training we need to pay attention. But because institutions are not human and do not behave like a human being, the same agency the USDA then banned all further training. Now that defies commonsense, morality, humanity and decency and is why I say institutions are part of the problem, not the people.
Most people are good and the I think a lot of people get this. So, let’s take the example I used earlier of the Catholic Church. There are millions and millions of Catholics around the world who are good people and they’ve been good people for thousands of years. But despite this we’ve had centuries of the church policy to protect pedophile priests and not the innocent and the children.
Now if the citizens had developed that policy with the priests and church it would be very different because the same people produce different results as I have found over and over again. In training exercise for 35 lawmakers in Zimbabwe in one day they came up with a nucleus of an agricultural policy the world would dream of, and every bit of knowledge we needed was in the room all we needed was a different way of doing it.
I think it was COP 24 that was held In Poland, a young girl from Sweden got the world’s attention when she held power to account and started to “How dare you! How dare you!” Yet, still the complaints, the crises continue, there have been ongoing protests, marches, campaigns—all ending with the same results…. AsEinstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.”
What would you tell the Youth of today who are protesting and activists who continue to protest but rarely solve the problem?
There are so many sincere, young people like Greta. And I recently watched a group of young Americans giving Congressional testimony, and they were incredibly bright and sincere. But all they did was the same as Greta, demanding action when nobody knows what to do.
That’s like demanding that world leaders fly before the Wright Brothers knew how to fly!
You can keep demanding as much as you like, and all you do is create conlict.
And we’ve got enough conflict! And conflict is relentlessly increasing; so, what you have to offer is a constructive solution — a way forward – so I ask young people to just talk to me!
There’s such a constructive way forward.
When I made that suggestion at COP 26, I couldn’t get Sir Adrian Smith of the Royal Society to even talk to me. Now if a thousand or a million young people demanded that the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Science who have no Solutions at least talk to me instead of just vilifying me for over 50 years it would begin to happen.
And if I’m wrong, then I’m more than willing to accept whatever anybody offers, but nobody is offering any way forward. Just more of the same and demanding; that we stop using fossil fuels, demanding that we make artificial meat or become vegan, and none of this address the cause of the problem. And in fact, and I will stake my life on this – some are going to make it worse.
What we need is a small group of thinking people, not a big conference, a small group of the youth leaders. A group of young activists and if they’re determined to have a better future, then just talk to me and we can sensibly discuss how to bring this about without conflict and in harmony uniting people in our hour of need.
One of the main features in the Holistic Management I suggest is that conflict dies the moment we start talking about how everybody wants their lives to be tied to their life supporting environment.
At the moment everyone today is making their conscious decisions for one of three reasons with reason and context virtually the same:
- To meet a need
- To meet a desire or
- To address a problem
Now those always have been, and always will be, the reason for our actions, to improve our lives but they cannot be the context in what is realistically a holistic world in which our lives, economies and life-supporting environment are inseparable and complex.
So when, as it is today, in policy the reason is solely to address a problem by non-human institutions it invites conflict and endless costly measures to enforce policy most people don’t see as even making sense.
Now the moment we get people together and say let’s not discuss the problem because it’s a symptom of how we make management actions.
Let’s first discuss what every human wants at that point you have complete agreement and now you go forward and say now let’s listen to all the points of view, all science and sources of knowledge, and see what aligns with that context and you get amazingly different results.
Right now, as I said, I am more worried about the future than I’ve ever been in my life, and I literally have spent my life since I was 20 dedicated to trying to solve this problem. If I had only one last wish it would be that a group of serious young people just talk to me nothing more.
Wanted! A small group of serious young climate activists willing to meet with and discuss this with Allan Savory. Please fill out the form below. Someone will get back with you as soon as they can.
“We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential transformation of human civilization in history…” — Tony Seba & James Arbib, Co-Founders of RethinkX
Humanity is on the brink of existential transformation, but we’re blind to the deeper processes of change. To recognize the mind-blowing possibility space of the next decade, as well as its catastrophic risks, we must grasp the patterns of history to understand how they can illuminate today.
Rethinking Humanity takes viewers on a whirlwind tour of the rise and fall of civilizations through a powerful lens that makes sense of the past, so that we can step into the present and create our future. During the 2020s, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors that underpin civilization, and with them every major industry in the world today. In information, energy, food, transportation, and materials, costs will fall by 10x or more, while production processes an order of magnitude more efficient will use 90% fewer natural resources with 10x-100x less waste.
The knock-on effects for society will be as profound as the extraordinary possibilities that emerge. For the first time in history, we could overcome poverty easily. Access to all our basic needs could become a fundamental human right. But this is just one future outcome. The alternative could see our civilization collapse into a new dark age. Which path we take depends on the choices we make, starting today. The stakes could not be higher.
Source: RethinkX
By Liddy Franco
Despite mentally preparing for Trump’s reelection, the day after the results came through, I paced a hole through my living room, rambling my rage to my mother.
Not about the results themselves, but on the election cycle tactics. Every political advertisement came with intentionally angering and polarizing statements posed as facts. Every ad for a politician said nothing about actual goals, and only bashed the other running candidate.
All trying to win voters over through mob rage rather than actual supportable policy. All shouting, ‘Join me in the fight against the clearly evil and idiotic other side!’
I’m angry that these manipulation tactics worked as well as they did, but that’s why they’re used. They hook you well. Even I got caught up in highschool. Like everyone else, driven by a sense of righteous rage at the system, and looking for something to give me hope, I found it in a “justified hatred.’ An arrow to direct my passion towards. My rage towards how my friends’ parents and classmates treated my LGBT+ friends was easy to manipulate. I thought life would be better if these people didn’t exist. We don’t think—especially with compassion—when angry. Just like how these parents and classmates were manipulated, being told that specific problems in their life would not exist if my friends weren’t around.
Thankfully, several years have passed and I have had the privilege of going to college (and therapy).
These experiences came with becoming educated in topics like formal logic and manipulation tactics. Even more specifically, political manipulation tactics. I realize now, too late for this past election, but hopefully right on time for the next one, that raising awareness regarding how politicians try to deflect and disperse our very valid discontentment can help us reunite.
Why do they do it? Why try to pit us against each other? Because fracturing the majority to fight amongst ourselves means we fail to realize we all face and care about the same issues. Issues that are being perpetuated by lack of policy reform.
Politicians, as always, are funded by large businesses and lobbyists, not the public they serve. If the populous wants to change something the businesses do not, then politicians are unlikely to act in our favor. Despite our discontentment with their failure, they stay in office. How do they pull it off while ignoring the public’s desires?
By distracting us from realizing we are being ignored.
There are two main ways this misdirection is done.
- Intentional Political Polarization: Manufacturing a greater divide between ideological ideals of the populace to prevent a willingness to compromise (Psychological Manipulation Tactics, ARTT Research). Exaggerating political differences takes focus from the issues that people want addressed, and diverts it to fighting “the other side.”
- Scapegoating: Creating an easily digestible target to be angry at that is not the cause of the problem. Just like with polarizing, it takes the focus away from the actual cause of the issue, and directs the anger towards something or someone(s) who cannot easily fight back (The Dirty Politics of Scapegoating, Alexander Douglas, 2016).
These two tactics are perpetrated by both major political parties in the United States, and I think it’s a safe assumption that no one wants to be manipulated like this. To make it easier to spot, here are some examples and a further breakdown of how these tactics are used against us.
Intentionally inflating political polarization plays into our emotions. They intentionally bait us into anger that prevents us from questioning what was just said, and then gives us a target to direct our anger towards. The “other side.”
In Ohio, current Senator Sherrod Brown has been outvoted in favor of Bernie Moreno. A news article from Cleveland’s local news by Jeremy Pelzer summarized the two candidates’ campaigns perfectly.
- Brown’s entire campaign focused on proving that Moreno was a ‘crooked businessman’ and completely anti-abortion with “no exceptions”.
- Moreno’s entire campaign focused on proving that Brown was a radical leftist who voted with Biden “97% of the time.”
- Both campaigns focused intensely on discrediting the other candidate by making them seem the more radical option. As an Ohioan, I was personally bombarded by their ads for several months, and they were designed to make me angry.
I watched Moreno’s ad about Brown letting “transgender biological men in girls locker rooms” several times a day. This specific ad was designed to make me scared that my daughters were alone with grown men in their changing areas. Designed to make me blame Brown for this supposed danger. For Moreno, the ad should cause voters to think, ‘Sherrod Brown put child molesters where my daughter changes. I am angry that my children are in danger. If I vote Brown out of office, my daughter will be safe.’
When we’re angry though, we of course struggle to think critically. I would be angry too, if I actually thought my child was in danger.
Moreno seems to be arguing that Brown supports child predators. When taking a moment to breath, and think about what was just said though, you start to see cracks in the statement.
- Transgender men are people who were born a girl, and decided they are men. Why would a woman who was a child predator transition to become a man, if she could already go into the locker room?
- Does he mean transgender women? A “girl’s locker room” implies that it’s just for kids though, like at school. How would a grown adult get permission from the government to enter it anyways? This doesn’t make sense.
Then when looking for a fact check, you realize that isn’t what Sherrod Brown voted on at all. The above link to the actual ad also includes a fact check of it. The actual statement Brown gave was about how a child’s healthcare should not involve the government, just the child’s family and doctors. This has nothing to do with adults in anyone’s locker rooms, or child predators. In fact, it now sounds like a reasonable stance that I can get behind. Thinking about it, it does seem strange for the government to try having a say in my child’s medical care. I go to the doctor for that expertise for a reason, not a judge.
This polarizing ad that ran had nothing to do with the actual stance neither Bernie Moreno nor Sherrod Brown supported. It was just to make me angry at Brown over something that isn’t true, or even exists.
If I had not looked into finding actual information on this statement though, how would I know? I would only know Brown sounds crazy, and everyone who supports him must also support endangering my children. I personally would have no interest in talking it out with someone who wants to put my kids in danger. I would try to remove them from our life and strip them of their power over my family.
Now that I’m not talking to the ‘other evil side,’ I can’t talk to them about how much I care about my kids being safe. I would have no way of knowing that, actually, it’s not just ‘my side’ fighting to protect my kids. Fighting to protect kids is something we are all getting behind. That’s pretty much a universal agreement. People have different focuses to do so—like access to healthcare, catching child predators, or restricting gun access—but we all care and worry about the same thing.
What is this trying to distract from then? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have a large group of people agree on the same thing? We could work to pass some important bills to improve our lives this way. If we stop fighting each other though, some of us might pay more attention to news surrounding child safety, like how Matt Gaetz is currently being investigated on allegations of sex trafficking minors.
This leads to scapegoating. The other main way of diverting our attention. When people are upset we want something to blame. Something to direct our anger and energy towards. But the bigger the issue, the harder it is to find a clear target. What do you yell at when you can’t afford groceries? So many systemic issues like inflation, low wages, and price gouging all play a role. Is it even possible to name each reason behind these issues, let alone express your frustration and fear? Let alone in a way that will actually make a difference?
Americans realize that the government is supposed to fix this problem. That’s why it comes up in elections. In this election we saw that the economy was the most important topic for many voters (Gallup Surveys). It comes with uncomfortable questions for politicians though, like why has so little been done to address these problems everyone is currently facing? As a voter, I ask the question each time of,
“If the politicians in power have done little to specifically address the problems facing my life, why should I re-elect them?”
If a politician has not worked towards anything that would benefit the voter base, it would definitely be in their best interest to draw that anger away to something else. The most desirable target is someone else who does not make up a noticeable portion of your voter base, and cannot easily fight against their unfair blame. It also has to be someone that most people do not know personally, to lessen the likelihood of drawing sympathy.
In the instance of the economy, Trump chose China. As we have heard throughout the campaign, Trump blames our outsourcing of goods for the current economic state, and has a long list of potential plans to lessen the United State’s reliance on them. While this specific issue is one of the many reasons that our economy is struggling, it does nothing to address how our minimum wage, and in general all wages, have not been raising to meet inflation within our country for decades. This is something our government could address. They can pass bills to increase wages, and penalize companies that are using ‘inflation’ as a way to justify their price gouging and shrinkflation. However, Trump has worked hard to publicize his blame on China, which distracts from how he has remained silent on increasing wages, and instead plans to cut taxes for corporations again. If the public believes that China is the only thing to blame for the economy, then less people will notice the failure to apply actual fixes to the consistently growing poverty rates.
This scapegoating has more consequences than just distraction. Depending on the chosen target, they can be put in genuine danger. It’s hard for people to attack an entire foreign country across the ocean, but a small minority within your own population? That’s entirely different.
I’d like to look a little further back in history before I bring us back to the present.
Germany during World War II is now one of the most infamous governments in history. A truly horrifying time to look back on now that we’re fully able to grasp exactly how the Nazi party was able to direct economic stress on the Jewish people. A small group of the population—Jews, disabled individuals, and the LGBT—pockets of the population with little voice and understanding by the greater population were easy targets. Scapegoating these groups led to 11 million people killed. No matter how illogical the arguments were to blame these people for the economic hardships, they still died painful and gruesome deaths directly because of it.
This disastrous crime against humanity is not something that will never happen again. The only thing preventing us from repeating this part of our history is consistent awareness. To now bring us back to the present moment, during Trump’s first presidential term, he made a bold statement about wanting to create a ‘Muslim Registry.’ It would have forced government surveillance of Muslim individuals both living in the United States, and those entering.
This idea was not new, taken from the Bush administration for the ‘war on terror.’ The fear of terrorist attacks after 9/11 led an entire group of people unrelated to a specific foreign terrorist group to face dangerous and targeted discrimination.
Tracking an entire population from one specific religion? That sounds an awful lot like the ‘Star of David’ badges that Jews were forced to wear in Germany before and during World War II, and helped Nazi officials round them up into concentration camps. The public agreed with this comparison, and national outcry against this idea prevented it from any implementation.
It was easier to spot this attempt as it happened. Most of the population has been educated in the Holocaust, and seeing one religion replaced with another makes the comparison clear.
The same clarity cannot be said for the current scapegoating target of our election; our transgender population.
What are they being blamed for? Thinking back to Bernie Moreno’s ad about ‘transgender biological men into girl’s locker rooms,’ there is a clear suggestion that people who are trans are child predators. If you have watched the news for the past several years, you’ll see that there has been a drastic spike in anti-trans bills and transphobia since 2019.
Well, what big things happened in 2019 that caused an increased concern about child predators? Jeffery Epstien was arrested for allegedly running a massive sex trafficking ring of minors. While investigations started years ago, his actual arrest, infamous list of benefactors, and death before going to trial became international news. This list included names of many prominent public figures in both the media and government.
Tragically, while there was massive public outcry about this discovery and calls for justice, a dead man cannot be prosecuted.
Who can be prosecuted though? The benefactors on that list. However, a lot of people with government power are on that list, and can use it to avoid further investigation. This includes Donald Trump. In the several years since the initial news break, little progress has been made with investigating and prosecuting the other people named.
How has the public been prevented from continuing to call for the justice they craved just five years ago?
When people can’t get justice through official means, we tend to lash out at the people accessible to us. This anger can be easily misdirected and manipulated because it comes with the nasty side effect of weakening our critical thinking. It gives us the power to act without thinking when we’re in danger, but it also means we could easily misjudge what to attack.
If politicians give the population a seemingly more attainable target to attack, it attempts to satisfy that desire for justice, without actually providing any. It also pulls the negative attention away from the people in power, and makes it feel like they are trying to fix the situation. In reality, they are trying to fix a problem that they artificially created to hide reality.
Our trans community has always been a target of ruthlessly violent discrimination. They are a small community that a majority of the population do not know personally. Only 3 million people, or 1.1% of the American population publicly identify as trans. This is even smaller than the Muslim population which sits at about 3.4 million people.
Because of this, the trans community has very little voice or rights under our current government.
When the public lacks basic education about sub-groups within it, misinformation is easily spread. This makes it easy for someone to intentionally spread false information when they have authority, as people have little personal experiences to compare it against.
It is even easier to do when playing into peoples already existing biases. If you have grown up being told that someone trans is directly going against the will of God, no matter if they are or not, it is hard to shake what everyone you trusted growing up said. Especially if someone in authority is still telling you this. Like our politicians.
The intentionally voiced misconception that trans individuals being sexual predators is clearly still used, since it was the focus in ads for this election.
Along with this, the spike in transphobic policies proposed since 2019 shows a clear and somewhat sudden shift in political focus overall.
Why are trans individuals the chosen target?
- They are a small community, which means misinformation is more easily spread and accepted.
- It is already a target for discrimination, making it easier to amplify the hate rather than cultivate it from scratch.
- They have little political voice. The small community means that politicians aren’t losing out on a significant number of votes if they ostracize the group.
If we do not keep awareness about us, we risk similar tragedies to what happened only a couple generations ago. We have to keep fighting against that possibility, and our own prejudices that could be used to cause it. No group of people, however small, deserves to be attacked for crimes they did not commit.
None of us deserve to have our anger manipulated against us. We deserve a chance to come together and call for genuinely positive change and protection from our government. Fighting back against every falsified statement is exhausting. No one has time to do it every single time. That does not mean we shouldn’t try.
Each attempt gets easier. The easier it becomes to identify manipulation, the easier it is to demand genuine plans and answers.
The easier it is to realize this polarizing climate has been manufactured. We all care about the same intentionally hidden issues. It is up to us to keep fighting to remove the hood pulled over our eyes. Only then will we actually see the change we demand.
A better understanding of how communities can create change in the face of a system that prevents it.
From Thomas Linzey’s book: On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability: The Community Rights Movement in the United States
Humanity stands at the brink of global environmental and economic collapse. We have pinned our future to an economic system that centralizes power in fewer and fewer hands, and whose benefits increasingly flow to smaller and smaller numbers of people. Our system of government is similarly medieval—relying on a 1780s constitutional form of government written to guarantee the exploitation of the natural environment and elevate “the endless production of more” over the rights of people, nature, and their communities.
But right now, people within the community rights movement aren’t waiting for power brokers to fix the system. They’re beginning to envision a new sustainability constitution by adopting new laws at the local level that are forcing those ideas upward into the state and national ones. In doing so, they are directly challenging the basic operating system of this country—one which currently elevates corporate “rights” above the rights of people, nature, and their communities—and changing it into one which recognizes a right to local, community self-government that cannot be overridden by corporations, or by governments wielded by corporate interests.
This is part of a trilogy focusing on natural rights’ activism at the community level
- Part One: Youth vs. Gvt.: How the Youth are Leading The Way
- Part Two : How communities can create change at the municipal level in the face of a system that prevents it
- Part Three: The Green Amendment: Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment
An informative conversation with Thomas Linzey, CDER: Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights and Rob Moir (interviewer) from the Ocean River Institute
- How can communities create real system change?
- Why does the current system makes it next to impossible to create the changes we want?
- What can communities do to improve the quality of life by rethinking our realities?
- If the regulatory systems were written in cahoots with the corporations that are supposed to being regulated, what can we do at the local level?
From Thomas Linzey’s book: On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability: The Community Rights Movement in the United States
Humanity stands at the brink of global environmental and economic collapse. We have pinned our future to an economic system that centralizes power in fewer and fewer hands, and whose benefits increasingly flow to smaller and smaller numbers of people. Our system of government is similarly medieval—relying on a 1780s constitutional form of government written to guarantee the exploitation of the natural environment and elevate “the endless production of more” over the rights of people, nature, and their communities.
Also from CDER: The Land that Owns itself
But right now, people within the community rights movement aren’t waiting for power brokers to fix the system. They’re beginning to envision a new sustainability constitution by adopting new laws at the local level that are forcing those ideas upward into the state and national ones. In doing so, they are directly challenging the basic operating system of this country—one which currently elevates corporate “rights” above the rights of people, nature, and their communities—and changing it into one which recognizes a right to local, community self-government that cannot be overridden by corporations, or by governments wielded by corporate interests.
