Blog Action Day

So it's Blog Action Day, a day in which bloggers are supposed to all blog on the same issue as a way of raising awareness. This year's theme is "the environment." Yeah, it's that vague.

I don't ever want to discourage actions such as these. I mean, seeing as it's a basically no cost way to theoretically raise awareness about an important subject it's hard to call it a bad thing. But I say theoretically because I can't see too much awareness being raised by it. The problem with such blanket issue ideas like this is that they are of necessity watered-down. There's no way you can get a million bloggers to all agree on something unless it's pretty weak. For example, I highly doubt that the same amount of people would have agreed to blog on the issue if it were putting forth clear-cut calls for real change. Note that we're just supposed to blog about the environment, not call for an end to te capitalist organization of the world economy that is directly responsible for the majority of wasteful and harmful anti-environmental practices that are killing the earth.

Furthermore, there's always the self-selection process. Because of recent high-profile events surrounding the environment (up to and including the stupidest Nobel Peace Prize award since Hank Kissinger), there are very few people unaware of the current environmental crisis. In addition, it's become such a politicized issue that it's pretty likely all those who see a problem with the environment will gravitate to those blogs that speak to a need for change, and those who think global warming is just an anti-business communist plot will probably gravitate toward blogs that think we dont really need to do anything.

I'm sure many people will write some very moving, humorous, poetic, and/or brilliant screeds today on the need for action and environmental change. And those posts will be read primarily by people who agree with them. Which again is not to say that it's bad these people are writing these posts, but just that it will likely have very little effect, outside of possibly motivating already sympathetic peoples to be more resolved in their actions, which is certainly not a bad thing.

But one could argue that such events actualy have a harmful aspect to them as they focus on individual action instead of far-more effective collecive action. The danger in these days-of-action semi-movement types of action is that they allow many participants to feel not only that their participation in this day of blogging made a difference (which again is quite questionable) but that they are now absolved of responsibility for further action because they've done their part. I understand that a significant number of people blogging about the environment are seriosuly committed and will continue their struggles long after they've written their posts, but without a clear and agreed-upon set of demans, the impact of such days will be little more than some feel-good time for all involved.

Which is not a bad thing, but we should always keep in mind the distinction between actions that do good and actions that make us feel good. Both are important, but it can cause serious problems when people mistake one with the other.

But in the meantime, try to do something environmental today. Plant a tree, walk to work, recycle your shit, get those fancy long-lasting lightbulbs, start a compost pile, masturbate manually instead of with some sort of battery-powered device...whatever floats your boat. But if you're interested in making a real impact, why not try to track down a few people and get a real movement going.

So there, I've fulfilled my duty as a citizen of the blogosphere. Tomorrow: more wackiness and potty talk, with no mention of the environment what-so-ever.