DailyDigital

Very thought-provoking piece on the Huffingtonpost:

Link

Semi-quote:

So where does that take us? Information is available and so are solutions. And where does that leave us? It strikes me, that with so much knowledge, we still don’t know better. If the world is not changing could it be because people are not changing?

This is what troubles me a about a lot of videos from TED, or many other interesting post/blogs/whatever. The trouble is not by any definition that we don’t know what should be done, or what needs to be done or even how to do it. The trouble seems to be that ‘we’ are just not doing it.

So the question should be more about: how can we pursuade people to start doing the right things? Of course, the trouble starts with defining what the ‘right thing’ is. And that is where most efforts will stop, because people will not even agree on what the right thing is. So that moves the problem again: how can you get people to subscribe to a problem?

Given the recent experience with the ‘Climate-gates’ and all the problems and escapes you see people using to try to wiggle out of this problem, I’m not very hopefull at all. People will deny a problem even if they know it exists if denying it will give them something they value more than solving the problem.

Again, the problem moves: how can you shift the burden of not solving the problem to the people that should be able to solve it, but don’t. And again, recent events (ie: the credit-crises) does not give me a lot of hope that this will happen. There, the exact opposite happens. The people who created the problem go more or less unhindered, and can simply continue doing what they always did and what created the problem in the first place.

Still, I think this might be the only way forward: start burdening people who can actually change things with the problem. That will lead to solutions.

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