#back to queue

the majority of academics/radicals specifically on /tumblr/ who make passive-aggressive generalizations about why & how ‘peoples’ priorities don’t immediately align with whatever hot academic/societal topic is at the forefront of www.imperalism.news don’t.... normally have the right set of negotiation + conflict management skills to have an accessible conversation with most people about *their hot topic of choice* IRL to actually change anyone’s opinion or behaviour. 

so it’s probably not your fault that you don’t really know what’s going on or what’s being said. and you’re not necessarily responsible for figuring out everything about that topic all at once. remember. learning is a lifelong process. and having discussion about that learning with people who are patient & invested in you (and vice versa) is an important factor in being confident enough to take empowered steps towards a specific action as you grow!!

despite having access to resources/connections/jargon from a privileged education or being able to speak to a specific lived experiences... many are happy to yell about what the proverbial *you* doesn’t know or do & expects the proverbial *you* to “just google it” when actually asked/confronted about what they actually mean lol

from experience, 

* having to be reflective about their lack of effective interpersonal communication skills usually makes /academics/sjws/anyone over 22 uncomfortable lol 

* people engage with, process, and act on the knowledge they’ve gained in different ways. how we perceive what they’ve learned or acted on is usually just that. our own perception, one we are are responsible for reframing ourselves

* we are also solely responsible for the way we influence, negotiate with, persuade, communicate, and build community with others. the choice to go about it in one way or another is our decision alone. 

* just because general observations about the state of - for example - ‘the uptick in etsy metal straws sales as indicative of neoliberalism’s dampening of the radical potential in the climate change movement’ - can be made to paint an overall truth, doesn’t... mean that people aren’t contributing meaningfully to their community / the climate change movement in other ways... 

* we can celebrate and emphasize ‘sustainability moments’ in thought and practice as well....... & perhaps influence systemic behaviour change more productively 

so, let’s re-evalute how we engage with our knowledge and values. especially if that knowledge and values are to contribute meaningfully to the world. also get off the internet and build some real social skills, lmao. 

You love it? What do you love? What is science? 

Science is not the result of scientific pursuit. Science is not technology. Science is not astronomy. Science is not biology. Those cool photos and new computer models and incredible new inventions aren’t The Science.

Science was just how people got around to discovering/creating them. The things created and discovered are things, and as things some of them are good, some of them are bad, many of them are neutral, all of them are subjective. They’re things.

Without Science the entirety of the natural world would still be out there puttering about, whether or not we understood it. All the things you ‘discover’ through natural sciences are already there. Love them. Stop giving Science credit for the world, or human ingenuity.

While the issue these days is that science’s main foe now is calculated anti-intellectualism we all must fight so that we can survive long enough for environmental breakthroughs to come about and take effect, not so long ago the issue was (and still is) that the materialistic view harbored by the inherently reductionist methods Science requires engendered a view of the world that was, well....materialist, and that paved the way for the mindset that the Earth should be changed and developed by humans extensively, and that our environment would naturally benefit from that.

I’m sure many of you can look around and see where that particular faction of thinking has gotten us. In recent history, Technology has always been close friends with the defense and maintenance of territories and control of populations as much as it has been about crop yield increases and disease control. Think of how many advancements were developed as a response to the threat of war. Things that later get repurposed as household technologies or find greater use somewhere else are often produced in a push to compete with another country’s military.

Science is a method of exploring and understanding the world. Do you also say things like “I love Thinking!” do you put “Thinking!” patches on your jacket? Science is a thing people do...if you judge science by its products then do you also judge other concepts like that?