Word: hurtfulness
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...careers. But in the face of inevitable death, human pyramids are a thing of paramount importance. In all their precariousness and closeness, in all the effort they take and the time they waste, they are really all that is wonderful in this world. We laugh, we fall down, we hurt ourselves, we hurt each other, and then it’s over. We can’t make a human pyramid—or a life, for that matter—without supporting and being supported by all those around us, aware that the whole thing could topple...
...revolutions invariably involve some people giving up on what they strongly believe, which usually involves getting badly hurt. The American Revolution hurt loyalists; the Industrial Revolution hurt artisans; the suffrage movement hurt those with a strong attachment to male hegemony. In each case, the social decision selected progress of the whole at the expense of a dislocation of the part. This, after all, is what a claim to progress implies: in some cases, obstacles to change must be steamrolled...
...People haven’t yet been honest about this when talking climate change. The environmental movement remains a carefully-positioned velvet revolution in which nobody will be hurt, nobody will give anything up, and everyone will be carried upwards in the universal tide of a post-carbon society. This narrative is not only disingenuous—it is untrue. It is a falsehood largely borne on the shoulders of environmentalists, who, delicately careful to make platforms seem as palatable as possible, have twisted over backward in order to obfuscate and excise the sometimes jarring side-effects of comprehensive environmentalism...
...assumption of American life. The scions of the suffrage movement, however, didn’t try to swindle their way out of an uphill battle by offering society a sweetened pill. There was no way they could avoid recognizing that those committed to the male-only vote would be hurt by their movement. Instead, they decided to attack the moral and intellectual position of the anti-suffrage movement—and eventually...
...more, the promises and improvements of a post-carbon society will vastly outshine the archaic values which will have to be cancelled. But the environmental revolution requires at least something of a revolutionary rhetoric—not because it is appealing but because it is true. Some will be hurt by environmentalism. Many more, lucikly, will accrue its benefits...