I have to say that I am generally quite disappointed by the results of my "consume less" campaign based on Buy Nothing Day and the Invisible Protest
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,4036.msg377325.html#msg377325 .
Very few people reacted, and probably none forwarded any content. No organization or influencer I contacted decided to talk about the concept of buy nothing day or a reduced consumption.
I think I have to make this sentence of Ruskin mine :
That your neighbour should, or should not, remain content with his position, is not your business; but it is very much your business to remain content with your own.
I guess that the way is to be an example, and to inspire people by what you do, maybe talking doesn't make much sense.
Here a quote from Thoreau :
It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.
But I don't feel that I can come close to absolute goodness, I don't think anybody can, we are humans after all. There are some exceptions, but very few and they are not really mainstream nowadays. If you would ask them, they'd probably also would say that they are far away of absolute goodness.
There seem to be a split in society between people who try to reduce their impact on the world as an interdependent system aka Gaia and the ones willing to consume like if there was no tomorrow, and that communication between both sides doesn't seem to work anymore.
I feel that the green political party in Luxembourg did a bad job during their years in government because they didn't achieve that people would be willing to make an effort to save our Gaia but just pushed the ecological transition with rules that are annoying many people and increasing general costs of living.
Just for information, the link between Thoreau and Ruskin is Gandhi. In a book I read recently, he names them as major inspiration to his thinking.
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