SAY IT LOUD, IM NIMBY AND PROUD by Adam Peak God I hate the expression “nimby”, especially when used as an insult. You just know that anyone who uses that expression in a pejorative context has serious cognitive processing issues. I won’t say they’re stupid, because academically they may well be quite clever. What they are ultimately lacking in, however, is any kind of genuine green credentials whatsoever. If the Green party wants my support it will need to instantly expel anyone who uses the term “nimby” as an insult. The acronym should be immediately outlawed, the same way certain racial epithets have been over the years. Anyone who uses the word “nimby” as an insult is PERSONALLY responsible for destroying the environment. They need re-educating. As always with me, I prefer to do it the nice way – gently, patiently, empathetically and humorously going through their flawed thinking together with them, and rewiring their faulty mental faculties (with their enthusiastic involvement) until they are thinking properly again! So what’s the problem with attacking a “nimby” then? Well the expression stands for “Not in my back yard” and is sometimes heard disparagingly when people complain about toxic waste dumps being located outside their bedroom window. Everyone should be a nimby. It means, dur, CARING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. Any green campaigner who criticises people for actually caring about their local environment, and for standing against inappropriate developments in their own neighbourhood, well that campaigner is a charlatan and a fraud. You never, ever, ever attack people for defending their own environment. You don’t belittle them. You don’t call them names. You don’t patronise them or disregard them, Their feelings come first. ALWAYS. If everyone on planet earth was a nimby, the world would be a million times more pleasant. The corollary of the nimby-as-insult meme is that the green movement stops being about promoting personal responsibility for the conservation of your own back yard (which is essentially what the movement should be all about), and instead it becomes ego-driven monuments to blind ideology, big-state, top-down, dehumanised industrial schemes, all given a nauseating “green” badge of honour. “Shut up, you’re a selfish whiner, put up with whatever we tell you is right and stop complaining. We’ve got the planet’s best interests at heart and you’re standing in the way.” Trust me – that kind of mentality is like shagging your sister in a lift: wrong on every level. Firstly, it implies you feel morally superior to these backwater whingers, whereas in reality you’re the morally inferior one by subjecting them to something you wouldn’t choose to suffer yourself (thus violating Jesus’s commandment to treat others like we’d like to be treated ourselves). Secondly it’s gonna get their backs up (as any student of human nature will tell you) and make them throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the green movement is seen as an extension of draconian government control (and all the corruption and inefficiency that implies) then people WILL rebel against bureaucratic directives that directly screw their lives up…and good luck to them! Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it just shows a fundamental lack of awareness about conservation. Everything should be a local issue first and foremost. The needs of the country as a whole will be better met by keeping local communities vibrant, organic, autonomous and responsible for looking after their own back yards. The minute you remove that is the minute things start decaying, because once we lose that loving pride for our home turf, we sure as hell won’t respect anywhere else on the planet. Everything starts with home. So I’m a proud “nimby”. I wanna start a yearly street carnival called NIMBY Pride, in which us nimbies take to the streets and reclaim those projects that have been imposed on us without our consent and against our wishes. I look forward to the Green Party’s wholehearted adoption of my “Say it loud, nimby and proud” advertising campaign :-)
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 11:42:21 +0000
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