Growing up, my mother always\u00a0said \u201cEverything you do has a consequence. Every decision you make and everything you say will change your future. Live carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n
I resent this statement.<\/p>\n
1. Because it is a frightening thing to tell a young child.<\/p>\n
Although it may encourage responsibility and could be empowering, it also tells the child that their individual behavior will completely determine their life outcomes — which is untrue– and encourages self-loathing and low confidence when things don\u2019t go as planned. We have\u00a0slowly\u00a0 been discovering that personal behaviors are not the main determinants of — anything.\u00a0 Living your life walking on eggshells will only cause you stress and self-loathing. Not everything is your fault.<\/p>\n
2. Because the statement fails to recognize your effect on the world around you.<\/p>\n
It enforces this idea that we should only care about ourselves, our future, and our own experience. There is a whole world out there. Why should your <\/em>future be the only reason to consider consequences? This thinking is exactly why the populations which caused the Anthropocene fail to acknowledge it’s consequences– they do not affect them. We (the global affluent)\u00a0have the privilege<\/em> of calling climate change a theory, while those less fortunate call it reality.<\/p>\n As 7 billion people in our own experiences, how can we tend to the thought of our effects on others? Can we? Can we ever truly grasp the butterfly effects of our actions? Perhaps, the Anthropocene is an era of consequences. It is a time in which we (the Anthro) must contemplate and begin to realize that we are part of a bigger picture; part of endless systems. Change happens when we recognize our collective responsibility.\u00a0 Will we accept this collective responsibility?<\/p>\n Perhaps, our individual responsibility is to be the voice and actor which encourages the collective.<\/p>\n I believe: \u201cEverything you do has a consequence. Everything you do and everything you say will change the future. The world can change. Live boldly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing up, my mother always\u00a0said \u201cEverything you do has a consequence. Every decision you make and everything you say will change your future. Live carefully.\u201d I resent this statement. 1. Because it is a frightening thing to tell a young child. Although it may encourage responsibility and could be empowering, it also tells the child that their individual behavior will… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,12,14,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agency","category-citizenship","category-climate-change","category-econ-dev","category-localism-globalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}