CMW – a "climate marching willingness" indicator

First off, while we're trying to understand our societies, we have to bear in mind that corporations, political power, etc, are way ahead of us, and the phenomena we start to understand must have been long known to these powerful entities. They sure to already know how capable/incapable we are in terms of acting, as well as how big effect we can make when we do. You may remember the fact that US government already commissioned some (nicely supported) universities to study and model the communication mechanism of people organizing demos, reaching masses on facebook, for which they can use the facebook activity data gathered at the organizing of the Arab Spring (collected and reserved and handed over by facebook the helpful corporation).

So, now that everything is under control, and they even know how far people (we) can get at most – before we would get to think about doing something – we really need to do our part too. We have to understand our societies too, and make that knowledge public so we could all learn from that. We have to invent indicators, for example, that can describe the condition of a society in terms of ... system critical activism (when the problems come from the system and not simply from a bad government's decisions) – like environmental activism, typically.

willing to join – or embarrassed?

What is it that determines how one will react to a call like people's global climate march? How can it be hard for a anyone to join when climate change is affecting everyone of us? How can it be hard to fb-publicly identify with an event like this?

What makes you that type of person who will go to a climate march? And what could be that force bouncing you off?

 this picture is an illustration, these wonderful kids are anything but embarrassed :)

We should ask a psychologist on this, but our guess would be embarrassment. Embarrassment is a very powerful force that can modify our behavior holding us back from doing some things, sort of like what happens to the people in Bunuel's Exterminating Angel, after a party, they can't get out of the house! :)
Or beyond fiction, think of the fact that a hundred years ago (which is really not that much time) people would be embarrassed to go to a beach and let their bodies be seen by other people. They wouldn't do that even though they wanted it, cause they would have felt embarrassed, which was obviously a price too high to pay. That's how those silly bathing suits came to fashion (even the name “suit” is silly !).

We have to admit, that there's something as irrational in our behavior about climate change as in those people's in Bunuel's film about leaving the house. Apparently, it is not nearly as easy for someone to join a climate march (an obvious case, and obvious cause) as it should be. But what renders the people so paralyzed?

the first few answers that come to mind are these:

#1. apathy – being made to believe that you can't do anything about it

#2. fear – being threatened by some horrible examples of getting in major trouble (if you do activism)

#3. embarrassment – being made to accept that it'd be weird, ridiculous, etc, to even start talking about it ...

#4. ignorance – being brainwashed in front of media screens, or being arrogantly ignorant about climate behind the screens like Nicolas Cage

(you can add more points here, of course)

Of these points, #2. and #4. are extremely difficult to deal with, #2. is the hardest to overcome, see Putin's Russia, where people have to be aware that protesting might land them in harsh prison – like the people who went to “the” Bolotnaya square demo, or the Pussy Riot, or the Gay right activists.

Point #1. and #3., however, can be overcome by communication on our part (against mass media's current), by talking about it, by a discourse activated and kept running by the society (as opposed to letting it be outsourced to corporate media).

embarrassment

Even though today we're totally cool about showing off at a beach (unless the bathing suit we wear turns out to be outdated :)) we can still easily get embarrassed anytime, and we make enormous efforts to avoid this to happen. Being embarrassed can be easily traced back on the lack of discourse, missing the info about how the society, how we people as a society feel about certain matters, phenomena. If we don't have this info, we'll feel vulnerable.

picture of a girl being embarrassed (Wikipedia)

No one likes to make a step which s/he's not sure about, and if it seems like,for some undisclosed reason, nobody is taking a given action, we'll feel paralyzed. We need to have that reason, or we'll have to assume a great threat obvious for all the others except for us – which is scary.

Example:
There's 10 apples on the table and there are five people in the room talking about food. They are hungry, but nobody mentions the apples, nor will take one of them. Weird. Like Bunuel's movie. You're not gonna touch the apples either casue you'll suppose that there must be some explanation and not having that explanation would make it very risky for you to make a move.

This is exactly what media does. It keeps us in an uncertain condition by not allowing us to get the whole picture of what is happening and what the situation is about. It will speak about a million things – BUT .. it will be systematically silent about certain things. Silent or superficial. You may think that it's spontaneous, but then again, you may be wrong too :) These are the “media blind spots” on the topic map (= blind spots generated by the media). About these, you'll find yourself awkward (= embarrassed) when you'd like to talk about them. You might not be able to even bring these up. And nobody else will be either. It's the same situation as with the apples, except that here everybody is person #5 in the group, thinking that all the others in the group have all the info about the situation except you. You as person #5 had better not bring it up until you know all that the others know – which will never happen. This is the alienation what media does – okay, one type of it, but even if you only look at this, you'll see why a social discourse can make a huge difference. Once the discourse beings, everything will be put in place in just no time!

"add your voice" - be open, take part!  & forget embarrassment! :)

Climate change has been kept in quarantine and couldn't make it to be a well understood, well discussed topic over the past several decades. We've been kept in a info-environment in which we would feel embarrassed to even bring it up. Because of lacking the discussions, we can have no clue how others think about it, and it'll render us uncertain, afraid, embarrassed.

By marching together on People's Climate March, this situation can be changed! And this change will be huge in effect too, especially because this is a beginning, and the effects will keep popping up in the weeks and months to come too.

see this short video coverage of the march:

the "climate marching willingness" indicator

We should be aware of the condition of our societies in terms of openness, willingness to join such courses like environmental issues. This condition can be measured, monitored and improved! Even using the simple and public facebook numbers can allow us to get a picture on that.

These numbers are simple and public facebook data (not the data that governments, corporations can access when analyzing facebook activities of people). Even these numbers can give us a hint on “willingness” of a society to take part in action. The most interesting numbers are highlighted with green. The "climate marching willingness" indicator we could construct from these (collectively), involving more numbers.

NOTES on the numbers:

We should have further numbers too, like how many actually went (“IRL went”), and the ratio of this to “fb going”. This “IRL went : fb went” ratio can be labeled as “healthy” (at like 75-80% and above), and “week” (like 50-75%), or even “alerting” (below 50%), or pathological (below 30%), or dead (below 15%). This ratio is like a safety number, making sure that we're not mislead by fb numbers.

Also, we should know about diversity of attendants, as for age and occupation, income and lifestyle too. And since we could only do this by asking for a feedback by the people attending, we should ask them too what they think, how good the demo went, and ask them to join organizing the next one f the feel like it – cause openness is vital in grassroots activism.

What we can draw from these data is about society's willingness to act – but it's also important to analyze the nature and the subject of the action, and the type of the organizing organization(s) as well. The cleanest, purest types of demos are, by far, those demanding action about climate change. Other types of demos are a different matter, especially those directly against the government and joined by political parties in opposition.

The other factor that needs to be considered if the organizing organization(s) are grassroots OR professional groups (paying people for organizing, for example) – see the sequel to this article, coming up soon .)

end note: building societies

What we should do is to learn from these data, and make plans, make a strategy, and work on improving the “climate marching willingness” of our societies :) By raising awareness about the climate issue and the political dimension of it, and by getting conscious about the “collective activity willingness” of our own society, we'll be able to address all three major element of the crisis (as opposed to thinking that we're just stupid).

::: for more photos of the demo here