The commenters actions make a difference to them and in turn may influence people around them.

Collective actions start out as individual actions and like that they set the stage for change that is real and measurable.

By your reading Rosa Parks should have just shut up and sat in the back of the bus because 'individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing'.

Understanding orders of magnitude is indeed not something that comes easily to humans but it must be understood to work on large problems, right alongside understanding how social change is engendered.

There is a difference between individual action leading to social change (such as political activism or civil disobedience) and individual action that makes the individual feel better and satisfies the need to "do something" while having no measurable effect.

If you take one less flight this year, you've considerably lowered your carbon footprint. Congrats. If every single person that flies reduced their carbon footprint by one flight this year like you did... it would make absolutely no meaningful difference with respect to climate change. You might as well whistle in the wind. On the other hand, if all of those people had actually taken political action, meaningful change would be practically inevitable.

The narrative that encourages recycling, buying green brands, and generally expressing how much you care about the earth by how you choose to shop (making your environmentalism part of your identity as a consumer rather than as a citizen) serves only the status quo, and dissipates energy that might otherwise be channelled into making an actual difference.

> understanding that individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing

One is forced to wonder why people who think this way bother to get out of bed in the morning. On a global scale you are insignificant approaching nonexistent, so by your own reasoning nothing you do matters and therefor you shouldn't bother doing anything.

> One is forced to wonder why people who think this way bother to get out of bed in the morning.

Because they get hungry. You are animal, you don't need a noble cause to do things.

The thing that (supposedly) separates man from beast is our ability to reason and supersede our animal nature.

Supposedly. Still, you can't overcome hunger with reason (at least not for very long) and hunger is sufficient to give you a reason to get out of bed.

Actually lots of people have voluntarily starved to death. There's a whole religious practice [0] about it and it's frequently used as a means of self-termination for quality-of-life reasons [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana

[1] https://compassionandchoices.org/end-of-life-planning/learn/...

> Actually lots of people have voluntarily starved to death.

As I said: Not for very long. Besides, I wouldn't call that reason (except for people who do that to die, it's pretty efficient for that purpose).