Guilt over consuming under globalization is diffused by unmappable causal chains

Evidence

Here we are back in the realm of the ethical — but the ethical bleeds out into the political. The choice to press the button has a special force in the era of globalisation and climate change. We know that our wealth and comfort are achieved at the price of others’ suffering and exploitation, that our smallest actions contribute to ecological catastrophe, but the causal chains connecting our actions with their consequences are so complicated as to be unmappable — they lie far beyond not only our experience, and any possible experience. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 620

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Distant production removes moral incentives to examine consumption’s true costs — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2528; Slow, diffuse causal chains obscure personal responsibility for environmental harm; Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 346 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Distant production removes moral incentives to examine consumption’s true costs #corroborates (0.92) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2528
• Slow, diffuse causal chains obscure personal responsibility for environmental harm #expands (0.88)
• Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification #corroborates (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 346
• Cause-branding collapses the gap between exploitation and atonement into the act of consumption itself #complicates (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1462
• Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions #corroborates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186