Imagine you are a part of an important social movement. What’s at stake is nothing less than the future of our species, and the planet at large. You believe that the authority of scientific discovery is behind you – it is our best predictions of what’s to come that drives your anxiety, your fear, and your resolve.
The problem is large, impossibly so; it is also time sensitive. So piecemeal tinkering on the edges of policy is just not going to do it. A revolutionary change is needed, and it’s needed now!
The good news is that people seem to agree with you. Though they might differ on some of the details, by-and-large they too think there is a problem that needs solving; they too are unsatisfied with the way things are.
With so much agreement in the air, you put forward your case and wait expectantly for everyone – or almost everyone – to fall into line behind you. After all, the fate of humanity depends on it!
Yet no one does! No one does… anything!
At first you are rightly dumbfounded by this – how can people be so blasé about their own survival? You are also outraged, and rightly so, because you need these people. You can’t make the required policy changes by yourself.
But then it settles over you: they must not have really understood the problem. As frustrating as it is, you realise that you will have to spend the time to convince these people of the end-of-world-threat they face before you can get around to actually fixing it.
Time is against you, so you begin collecting more data, conducting more research, building better explanations and better arguments.
Everyone listens, they nod, they smile in apparent agreement, and then they continue to do absolutely nothing about the problem. You try again, and again. Each time doing more to convince your fellow citizens of the obvious truth before them, appealing to their rationality, their compassion, and even their self-interest.
No matter what you try, they all continue-on as if catastrophe is not coming their way. They are sleepwalking towards their own deaths – in one breath not wanting the world to end, and in the next refusing to do anything that might stop it from happening.
You will have to find a way to break through their apathy! For their own good they cannot be allowed to ignore you any longer. So if they cannot be convinced, then they will have to be coerced.
You will need something extreme, something disruptive and eye-catching; something that will force people to begin talking about you, and the problem they face. By doing this, by using this tactic, you understand that many people might find you obnoxious. You will be criticised, you will even be hated for it, but you definitely won’t be ignored, and that’s what matters.
You think on it for a while, and then it hits you: you know what you must do!
You gather up a few loyal supporters, the kind that understand sacrifice. You then march down to the local graveyard, you protest and picket the funerals of dead soldiers, yell abuse at the grieving families, and hold up signs that read: GOD HATES FAGS!