This is a great point, and I appreciate your thoughts about prophecy.
I've been thinking about something similar this last month, regarding what my (more conservative than I am) family tends to regard as alarmism. Discussing the possibility of a Trump coup, one of my family members told me we should "wait and see" what happens, to which I replied that if what happens actually *is* a coup attempt (however badly organized, however unlikely to succeed) we will have waited too long to stop it. The time to be prepared is before it happens, when you're looking at a pile of reasonable evidence that it might. This doesn't make you an alarmist. It makes you someone prepared to defend your country's people and principles.
This general idea might apply to a lot of other issues where more "progressive" folks get dismissed by more conservative folks as alarmist.
Human-accelerated climate change is an example. Instead of sneering at folks for the last 40 (?) years that they're being alarmist hippies, conservatives could have taken proposed problems and solutions seriously, asking: "does it *hurt* to be cautious in the wide adoption of resource-heavy technologies? Does it hurt to choose cleaner energy? Et cetera. Even if it had turned out that our cultures were not contributing to the earth's significant and rapid warming, we would have done greater good for more humans and for our planet, and we would have done it without today's bitter divide.
And, of course, folks could now be dismissing those early prophets of climate breakdown as alarmists. But I'm pretty sure most of them would rather *do* right than be seen as righteous. It's why they're willing to deliver, over and over again, such a painful, hard-to-hear message.
This is a great point, and I appreciate your thoughts about prophecy.
I've been thinking about something similar this last month, regarding what my (more conservative than I am) family tends to regard as alarmism. Discussing the possibility of a Trump coup, one of my family members told me we should "wait and see" what happens, to which I replied that if what happens actually *is* a coup attempt (however badly organized, however unlikely to succeed) we will have waited too long to stop it. The time to be prepared is before it happens, when you're looking at a pile of reasonable evidence that it might. This doesn't make you an alarmist. It makes you someone prepared to defend your country's people and principles.
This general idea might apply to a lot of other issues where more "progressive" folks get dismissed by more conservative folks as alarmist.
Human-accelerated climate change is an example. Instead of sneering at folks for the last 40 (?) years that they're being alarmist hippies, conservatives could have taken proposed problems and solutions seriously, asking: "does it *hurt* to be cautious in the wide adoption of resource-heavy technologies? Does it hurt to choose cleaner energy? Et cetera. Even if it had turned out that our cultures were not contributing to the earth's significant and rapid warming, we would have done greater good for more humans and for our planet, and we would have done it without today's bitter divide.
And, of course, folks could now be dismissing those early prophets of climate breakdown as alarmists. But I'm pretty sure most of them would rather *do* right than be seen as righteous. It's why they're willing to deliver, over and over again, such a painful, hard-to-hear message.