Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by roenxi 195 days ago
Greta Thunberg achieved nothing useful in practice and if the best mascot for a movement is an autistic teenager it bodes poorly for that movement's chances.

She personally is perfectly successful, but in terms of political effectiveness people should model themselves off movements that achieved something.
1 comments
g-b-r 195 days ago
To me it seems that she achieved a lot, compared to the rest of the activists.

The opposite forces were too strong in the end, but that doesn't mean that she didn't do a lot.

I'm not sure I see any problem with an autistic teenager as a "mascot"; I know how much a political area despises her, but if they treated a child like that, they would probably have done much worse with a normal adult.

But of course she's not enough, and expecting that she on her own will solve climate warming is delusional.

Which movements would you recommend as models?

link
fsflover 194 days ago
> Which movements would you recommend as models?

Supporting NGOs like https://edri.org, https://fsfe.org.

link
roenxi 195 days ago
> Which movements would you recommend as models?

If we're talking about the scale of reforming the EU, I'd say the basket of things to look at are things like the rise of capitalism, liberalism, major religions, spread of democracy, the Enlightenment. There are a lot of smaller examples of polities reforming too but those are some nice big ones. The smaller ones tend to be quieter, less flashy affairs where someone organises people together to try and make life better.

> I know how much a political area despises her, but if they treated a child like that, they would probably have done much worse with a normal adult.

I like to believe the adults are more likely to run the numbers and say "hang on, rolling back industrial society for no obvious reason is a terrible idea and I'm probably going to fail anyway with these stupid tactics - progress is hard to stop".

link
g-b-r 195 days ago
> I like to believe the adults are more likely to run the numbers and say "hang on, rolling back industrial society for no obvious reason is a terrible idea

I guess you're a climate change denier, there's little to discuss then

link
roenxi 194 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_And_Fo...

?

link
g-b-r 194 days ago
?
link