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"One of the societal ills of the 21st century is that we're running out of big clear cut things to rebel against but are continuing to rebel with the same intensity while directing it somewhat aimlessly all over the place, and now mostly just at each other's rebellion itself."

Yeah but the key phrase is clear cut. We have plenty of big institutions and one can see them do terrible things. It's just they fade into each and so challenging a single one becomes a dubious interest. Health care is a mess but blaming say, insurance companies in particular, is problematic. The environment and global warming are huge problems but blaming single institutions misses the point, etc.

Moreover, large institutions are adept at harnessing issues-as-social-signal and directing them according to their interests. One can fight all this but such a fight doesn't follow the path of least resistance. And boy, are people trained, today, to follow that path, whether in rebellion or conformity.

What we have are complex problems instead of simple ones.

For example, slavery up to 150 years ago vs. segregation up to 50 years ago vs. subtle often unconscious racism today.+ Fighting to abolish slavery is a lot simpler than fighting for racial equality. It is not that there are not problems, but there are not so many obvious problems with obvious solutions today.

+ I'm trying to make a broad point here not perfectly depict the history of racism in America, forgive any unjust implications

Stopping global warming seems very simple - just limit C02 production. The main thing is institutions are complex and so even simple change requires complex processes.

I would strongly disagree that any plan to limit CO2 production would be simple.

Simplest are carbon credits.

The good news here is we're all going to find out very soon just how hard it might be.

> Health care is a mess but blaming say, insurance companies in particular, is problematic.

I think this attitude is the key problem: fuck blame. Seriously, who cares? There absolutely are concrete things we can do about healthcare and climate change and so on, but not if we collectively think that blaming this or that institution is going to motivate people to fix the problem.

Someone has to pay for any change that happens - for example if a company is dumping toxic waste into the environment, $100M is going to be lost from their pockets if they have to stop (cleanup + price of proper disposal). That $100M could come from anywhere in the economy, so unless you want Amazon warehouse workers to start paying in to an industrial waste disposal subsidy system you better start constructing arguments that look something like, "the perpetrator should pay to clean it up."

Being intelligent is the most prized human trait, so being seen as "stupid" hurts our egos really bad.

Being contrarian in this manner is proof that you're smarter than everyone else, plus you get to take a jab at the pretend smarty-pantses. I bet this same effect is why political opinions are so difficult to change.

It probably as simple as it helps your chance of getting laid a small bit by being the archetypal "rebel" as the opposite sex like a vicarious thrill.

"I rebel — therefore we exist." - Albert Camus

"we're running out of big clear cut things to rebel against"

Or we're getting much better at the PR processes that muddy up any public discussion of problems and you lack the history education to know how rare actual clear cut historical political problems were.

Do you really think it is more likely that everyone else is virtue signaling than that you have a status quo bias from living in a culture that pushes that message (and I'm guessing you are quite successful as well?).

When has the majority been right about any complex issue anyway? What a bunch of reactionary anti-intellectual nonsense.