Fight or flight

I believe the most important and effective way to create change is enactment- making ethical choices that literally become the change sought. Environmentalism should consist of making environmentally responsible choices and educating/assisting others to do so also. Similar to animal rights, etc. Activism as a policy of attempting to create uniformity of action or legislative change fundamentally misses the point. Repsonsibility in this frame comes to mean something beyond simple guilt and innocent in a more juridical sense. Responsibility refers to not just complicity or participation in a ‘bad act,’ but also access to means that stop that act. A person with direct access to the levers of power in a situation that may produce an unethical act has a different level of responsibility than a taxpayer who contributes to making the lever of power. These differing levels of responsibility create differing levels of condemnation that should be given to each.

However, there exist situations where direct action has almost no application. For instance, the taxes example. All efforts should be taken to avoid excessive contributions to the federal government and the ensuing war machine. Even then, there exists a relatively limited scope of actions available (for most people) that eliminates their taxed contributions to war/empire. In these instances petition, protest and any other means should be applied. Only seeking to restructure how money gets distributed through development of new social norms either through legislation or ‘moral legislation’ aimed at the entire social body.

Duncan