>>7041"Policy" is the new religion. Americans hated the Soviet Union but have crafted for themselves the same state religion, worship of the bureaucracy. Every single positive possibility of change becomes impossible in the tangled web of institutions, bureaucracy, contracts, laws, networks, market logic, and so on and so on. This "policy" has become the new will power.
Sure, in a practical manner, some things are best handled at the policy level: like land use, which would be a concern for large-scale buildings and development like a data center. Absent of that, a real society would have direct action to fall back on. Ahem. Anyway.
Some things are better informed by cultural and social norms, such as you or your father's choice to board an airplane. We can establish a rule for ourselves to fly less. We don't have to Enact Policy for that to happen, we don't need to literally outlaw all human flight like a Fox news boomer fantasy. We can evade the question of bureaucracy or ~policy~ altogether, and hold ourselves to a higher personal standard, judging whether traveling somewhere is really necessary, and otherwise, consciously taking steps to avoid it. I would want someone to get onto a plane for a funeral of a dear family member, or to go to an academic or professional conference. But, the context of your retort to your father suggest he is using it for repeated and frequent vacations or just to burn savings like many in that demographic.
Now, the average person will look at this and go, but what about the billionaires in their private jets? Why do we have to shoulder the responsibility? And while this isn't quite faulty logic, it gets us nowhere at the end of the day, only sitting around and pouting that things get worse while those other people also aren't changing their habits.
I think the snarky comparison to Jainism is in bad faith. They did not achieve the total ahimsa they imagined to be possible, but they still introduced the idea to millions of their people who proceeded to follow an imperfect, though ultimately effective, form of it. Even the most lax modern Jains will do their best to adhere to the diet and other principles laid down from antiquity. Was that broader, longer-lasting benefit not better than complaining about how individual carbon footprint is a WEF psyop, and throwing our hands up in the air and saying there's no ethical consumption under capitalism?