Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 30, 2024, 10:05 AMThe number is indeed small.  Jared Diamond * has some exposure.  For the purposes of argument I'll guess 17 people in a thousand have heard of JD.

I'd bet that is a huge overestimate.  It's not really critical though how precisely you guess how many people are well informed about collapse, it's enough to know that relative to the size of the population as a whole it is small and because it is small these people are easily marginalized and portrayed as cranks.

If you're one of the people trying to get the word out also, you have to be really careful about how you portray things, because you'll immediately turn people off.  If you portray the situation as bad as it really is, people either won't believe it or if they do become so hopelessly depressed they don't see what you can do to make a difference.  If you portray it as a consequence of Capitalism, most Amerikans will dismiss it as Commie propaganda.  If you blame the rich, it's because you're jealous, along with being stupid and lazy.  If you tell them they have to give up their cars, they wonder why life would be worth living? lol.

So it's pretty hard to tell the truth and make any headway with it.

RE

Quote from: RE on Apr 30, 2024, 01:25 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 30, 2024, 10:05 AMThe number is indeed small.  Jared Diamond * has some exposure.  For the purposes of argument I'll guess 17 people in a thousand have heard of JD.

I'd bet that is a huge overestimate.  It's not really critical though how precisely you guess how many people are well informed about collapse, it's enough to know that relative to the size of the population as a whole it is small and because it is small these people are easily marginalized and portrayed as cranks.

If you're one of the people trying to get the word out also, you have to be really careful about how you portray things, because you'll immediately turn people off.  If you portray the situation as bad as it really is, people either won't believe it or if they do become so hopelessly depressed they don't see what you can do to make a difference.  If you portray it as a consequence of Capitalism, most Amerikans will dismiss it as Commie propaganda.  If you blame the rich, it's because you're jealous, along with being stupid and lazy.  If you tell them they have to give up their cars, they wonder why life would be worth living? lol.

So it's pretty hard to tell the truth and make any headway with it.

RE