Individual/Humanity

I originally started writing this blog post before we did the final reading for this week in which I railed against of the problems that I had as a social scientist with the articles we had been reading about the anthropocene. While many of them were addressed, we didn’t come to any clear conclusions.
Even with a counter argument in place and attempting to elucidate a new metaphor or what we even mean by anthropocene, we were left with an ambiguous foundation in which we know only what it shouldn’t be (which coincidentally enough is how I often feel after having discussions problematizing something from an anthropological or feminist perspective).This discussion to me felt like or at least has parallels to this seemingly insurmountable space between individual and global problems. What individual change can make on a global scale. Even if we bridge the gap between geological/biological fact (ex. biodiversity is being lost at exponential rates) and the social (and inherently political) construction of those very realities, there still leaves this gulf between those of us privileged enough to be sitting in a college classroom learning about these issues and those who experience the effects without any of our vocabulary or conceptualizations. In the matter of individual vs. humanity as a whole, I was getting frustrated with this repetition of “if we just all come together”, “we can all just come together” and somehow that would get something done. Who is this we? Are the differences not being erased all the same by trying to use a magically all inclusive we? Or the seemingly implicit assumption that just because globalization has occurred/is occurring and even more people are in contact than ever, that everyone is in contact with everyone. There are still many, many places in the world, especially in impoverished countries where they will probably be disproportionately feeling the effects of climate change, still get their news from the town crier, filtered down to the interests of whoever is in charge. That is not to say that I think it impossible or that being optimistic is a bad thing, but I think a more realistic approach could be taken. Such as convincing those in power (US government, CEOs, UN, politicians in other powerful countries) and the citizens of those countries of the importance of addressing these problems. This is just one small fragment and also my opinion but I prefer to be overly critical than running the risk of  wholeheartedly accepting ideas that appear wonderful but hide realities (that are inevitably socially constructed) that cannot be ignored.