Stop Calling These Consequences “Unforeseeable”
I tend to err on the side of believing those who claim ignorance. We live in a world chock-full of narratives. It’s possible, in some cases, to go through a large part of one’s life without hearing a particular counter-narrative to a given belief–even if the counter-narrative cleaves more closely to reality. As humanity advances, and reality wins through, claims of ignorance become less believable. At some point, we have to accept it as evident that someone is either willfully ignoring a fact, or that they do not feel compelled to act on it.
As an easy opening example, take the practice of hitting (a.k.a. spanking) children as a “teaching” tool. This was a universal practice for . . . well, ever–”spare the rod, spoil the child” is 2500+ years old. Fast forward to the enlightenment and you get the first people hypothesizing that it might not be a great idea, based on the premise that children are humans and stuff. Fast forward to the mid-late 20th century, and observational evidence begins to accumulate that the best outcomes are associated with peaceful parenting. In the current day, the evidence appears overwhelming. The only remaining advocates of hitting children “for their own good” cite the Bible as their principal authority.
Whereas the parents of the 60s and 70s could perhaps claim never to have heard the position against hitting their children, today’s parents can’t say the same. A parent who hits a child today can’t reasonably claim to be doing so in the child’s interests. He or she wants to inflict abuse[1]
There’s a similar lesson that should have been learned, amply, in 10+ years of public access to full-spectrum information: when you send agencies whose existence depends on violence to carry out your social agenda, awful things will happen. In political and economic science, these were once called “unforeseen consequences,” but given the premise of this article, we should change that to “entirely foreseeable consequences.”
In 2008, the EU decided “to obtain 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020.” I assume in pursuit of the laudable goal of taking some heat off the environment (pun intended)–something we can all get behind. According to the Guardian, “the total land area required to grow industrial biofuels . . . has been estimated as 17.5m hectares . . . more than ½ the size of Italy.”
In a world of equals, should the EU be serious about meeting this goal, there would need to be a lot of exploration in pursuit of uninhabited regions suitable for growing biofuel crops. In light of the scarcity of such land, there would probably also be alot of “wheeling and dealing,” trying to make it worth the while for the world’s farmers to grow biofuels and/or offering them buy-out levels of wealth in exchange for their land.
Luckily for the EU and their corporate creatures, no such equality exists. The lands were simply seized from their rightful, mostly indigenous, owners by the various puppet states around the world, and handed to the corporations seeking legistlated profits susidized and protected by the western armed militaries of the 3rd world.
A parallel land grab is on to depopulate indigenous farmland to grow forests for carbon credits, which, apparently will be worth alot in the future.
master
The Guardian continues, “The latest data suggests that up to 203 million hectares of land has been acquired by companies in land deals and two-thirds of that is for biofuels.” By my math, that’s just short of 4 Italies’ worth of arable land moving out of the hands of its actual owners, those who live on and work it and into the hands of multi-national corporations.
This is the result of demanding that government, “do something,” about a problem. It is an inevitable result and it has countless parallels in the modern world as well as throughout history. This does not mean, by any stretch, that there aren’t myriad social problems that must be addressed; anybody who votes to hand them over to the corporate-state, or worse yet, collections of multi-national-corporate-states, is either wilfully blind, or evil.
- [1] with the possible exception of a few religious folk who really can hit their children thinking that they’re carrying out God’s plan. ↩
and/or listen to me tweet
A bit too much caricature. And a bit too divorced from reality. People who hit their children and believe it’s proper parental authority exercised, they come from all backgrounds and beliefs. There’s nothing limiting them to bible-thumpers, or people who believe in Speaking in Tongues, nor those writhing on the ground to show the Holy Spirit’s presence.
I’m old enough and aware enough to be clear on what is socially acceptable, as a status at points in time, or as a continuum of attitudes and behaviors, regarding child-rearing. What you describe here, Jad, is more like how a “progressive” who takes in NPR, PBS, TED as gospel, as an internalized script of What Life Really Is To Real People Who Are Real Like Those On TeeVee Or Radio.
What I have witnessed is that people still beat their kids, and I’ve seen it in way more homes than the fundie whackjob families. I’ve seen less of it among those who call themselves “Christian” and appear to make some efforts at being like that Jesus dude. I’ve seen more of it among those who pretend at being “progressive” or “liberal.” Even when their bumper stickers and tax-write-off donation checks to non-profits might suggest otherwise.
When you slip into that erroneous perspective, you may as well just write one sentence:
Those ______________ religious fundamentalists are at fault for everything I don’t like about humanity.
It’s a cartoon served up for D vs R electioneering, and the sub-variants of that enterprise which aim more toward cultural snobbery/distinction.
This is not one of my “blame religious fundamentalists” articles at all. I’m saying they’re the only one’s with an out. My whole point is you have to live in a counter-factual world to honestly and calmly, with the best intentions, hit a child and think you’re being helpful. The “‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’” assailants you describe *know* that hitting their child is causing long term harm. If they don’t, they’re intentionally ignore your list of information outlets as well as anyone who has written anything about the subject in the last 20 years. That, or they just don’t give a shit. In no case can an archetypal liberal explain to you why it’s a good thing they beat their kids. Those days are gone.