Trinity of Despair?

Professor Maniates' Trinity of Despair ... here's how I scored:

HN (Human Nature) - 4
SC (Social Change) - 2
ES (Environmental Strategies) - 3

The trinity of despair exercise was, in my opinion, a good exercise in critical thinking. I think I misunderstood Mr. Maniates when he asked us about human nature; he distinguishes between selfishness and self-interest, stating that humans by nature have a high degree of self interest, yet are not actually selfish, but to me they are essentially the same thing. Self-interest becomes selfishness when one person's self-interest conflicts with that of another person, and both are disinclined to compromise.

As evidenced by the (comparatively) low value I gave to social change, I agree with Mr. Maniates that social change is not an issue in which everybody needs to be on board. I'm completely with him on the whole "it only takes a few really motivated people to make a difference" bit. We don't need a ton of people on completely board the environmental issue, we just need a few people to work hard to change our system to make it simple for a gamut of people with differing viewpoints to find it in their best interests (as well as in the best interests of the planet) to (grudgingly or not) assist reducing humanity's environmental impact.

On the third point of the Triangle/Trinity of Despair, environmental strategies, I opted for the safe middleground. Our consumer-driven attack on the economic system is definitely something to keep pursuing, but it is not what will see the world though this environmental crisis. After all, humans are diverse creatures, and there will always be someone who will want to buy a Thneed, and there will always be a Onceler willing to make and sell it to him. Consequently, we not only need to curb the demand for Thneeds, but we also need to prevent Oncelers from becoming Oncelers. However, our market economics driven world system makes this a hard task. Hard, but not impossible. We just need to adjust the system to encourage the development of Loraxes rather than Oncelers. Again, very, very difficult to do, but completely possible. Look at how far we have "progressed" in just the last few hundred years--or even in just the last few decades!

On a final note, I really liked Professor Maniates (and hopefully he won't read this blog post). He easily conveys his genuine interest in the topic, and his nice personality enouraged me to really try to think about what he was saying--not just critically analyze the logic behind his arguments, but also figure out where I really stand for each of the points of the triangle. And while I'm pretty happy with my score, I'm even now reconsidering and reconsidering points made in our discussion.