350.365: One of the things undermining the viewpoint of people with sound ecological advice is the shuffled nature of our society. We shuffle ourselves constantly like a deck of cards at a poker match, moving from one town to the next, doing school in few year intervals, changing jobs (as one's parents did when one moved as a child). "Everything solid melts into air", yes. Such as gradually gained authority in the eyes of others. And with it: the capacity to be a trusted advice-giver.
By contrast, consider a small, sedentary town. People grow up with each other, and over time, some people get a reputation for good judgment, based on their actions and past advice they've given which has proven true. In such a town, a wise person might say, "Look, we should really suspend some present interests for the sake of our town's future", and others will listen, taking the evaluation to heart. The person has earned epistemic authority over time in everyone's eyes.
But in a shuffling society, there is always a qualification on hand, a place a challenging value can stand. And since values so often depend on experience, it becomes easy to distrust another's -or at least to see no extra reason to consider it- especially when one has no basis on which to trust the other as a wise judge, no built-up experience of the other as especially sound of judgment.
What I'm saying is that, in our shuffling world, the conditions of judgment are troubled, quaked. That organizational problem at a societal level undermines the grip our best judges ought to have on our imaginations.
