Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
Naomi KleinRead
If this really is true, then greed really isn't good, after all. It really isn't the way to maximize the best possible outcome. We really do need to come together and act collectively. Government isn't always the problem. It's sometimes the solution. And, so their whole intellectual scaffolding collapses. So, they'd rather deny the science.
Interpretation
The quote critiques greed and advocates for collective action as a solution.
Naomi Klein highlights the flaws in the belief that greed leads to optimal outcomes, arguing instead that working together as a society can bring about better results. She suggests that dismissing the role of government ignores its potential as a force for good and that a reliance on individualism undermines the pursuit of effective solutions to societal issues.
In practice
During a community meeting about resource management, this quote can be cited to highlight the need for cooperative solutions.
Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
Because it is such a huge crisis, because it puts us on a firm science-based deadline, it's a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better society and address raging inequality, create huge numbers of jobs, rebuild our public infrastructure. But, we can't do it unless we break every single rule in the free-market playbook. Which is why the worst people in the world all deny climate change.
Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.
Everybody that's trying to get anything progressive done in this country knows that the biggest barrier is getting money out of politics.
I think I would say that there is absolutely no way to reconcile an austerity agenda with climate action. Our political class needs to understand that the fight against austerity and the fight for climate action are the same fight.
I think the fossil fuel industry is genuinely freaked out by the combination of the price collapse, the divestment movement, and that fact that renewable energy is getting so cheap so fast.
Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.
What scares me is what scares you. We're all afraid of the same things. That's why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you'll know what frightens me.
We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.
If there's hell below, we're all gonna go.
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