[abeppu]

I think our society needs to revisit ideas about not just collective responsibility, but collective guilt. Any one of us struggles to see living our normal carbon-intensive lives as an act of violence, but the consequences are nevertheless deadly. We've understood many of the impacts of our behavior for decades, but our carbon intensive activities only intensified.

At what point can we talk about collective guilt, and appropriate measures of a justice system? At what point do we say that, like PG&E killed a couple of towns, that a larger collective like a country or group of countries has killed people?

[abeppu]

Clearly my take is unpopular, but the alternative is that we continue to kill with impunity so long as we do it through sufficiently diffuse means?

[goodpoint]

Together with wealth inequality we are seeing environmental inequality.

Perhaps history will remember the "First Environmental War" after WW1 and WW2.

[the_third_wave]

> the alternative is that we continue to kill with impunity

Who did you kill recently? I did not kill anyone but you must have given your statement.

No, I do not think that you killed anyone. The type of hyperbole used in both this piece as well as in reactions like yours only serve to polarise the issue without offering any upsides. The alternative to this type of hyperbole is to change yourself instead of trying to change others. Aim to find enjoyment into becoming less dependent on those things which you deem to be bad or harmful - whatever these might be - without proselytising your newfound purpose in life. If you're successful it will rub off on others in a far more effective way than by you trying to force your way upon them for the greater good. Walk the walk, don't talk the talk. Only once people ask how you managed to walk that far the time has come to do some talking to help them find their way.

[hirundo]

Collective guilt is frequently a chief rationale behind mass killings. That includes six million dead in the Holocaust, three million in Kampuchea, another three million in the Holodomor, estimates of up to sixty million in China's Great Leap Forward. Unfortunately the list goes on and on. I think this makes a good argument that collective guilt is possibly the most evil, unjust concept humanity has ever invented. Playing with fire doesn't describe it, it's more like playing with a supercritical lump of plutonium.

[abeppu]

I didn't choose to bring up the holocaust, but I was thinking more about the other side of it. Many did feel that all Germans were guilty, even those who weren't specifically employed in the military. But it was recognized that actually holding many parties responsible was infeasible, so the trials at Nuremberg were only for the very most prominent. For some time the US tried to make German civilians in their zones watch films showing the atrocities, but many people refused to even look at the screen.

[zwieback]

In my age group of Germans (born 1966) it's basically dogma that our generation is responsible for studying the Holocaust (movies, literature, art in addition to documentaries, etc.) and then turning around and preventing it from happening again. For the most part I think it's been a success but it backfired with a small but steady percentage of people. In addition, Germans can come across as sanctimonious when picking who their favored victim group is, often being accused as being antisemitic when siding with Palestinians, for example.

The other problem was that the discussion basically happened in a vacuum, hardly any of us interacted with Jews. Since I emigrated to the US I've had more productive conversations with actual victims, or rather their children.