Political Memes

Human brains are sadly very predisposed to convenience over spending extra effort, especially when that convenience is the established norm; we tend to resist change unless that extra effort will bring a noticeable and immediate personal benefit. Degrees of separation from the act and the harm is also a big factor, most people stop thinking beyond a certain point and just go "it's not that deep".

It takes a lot of education and introspection about complex topics to understand how the "harder way" is actually cumulatively easier and brings more benefits but that also brings with it accepting certain truths one used to believe about the fundamental workings of the world they based all of their actions and even their identity on are actually falsehoods but the brain really, really hates that.

This is a key concept in writing enforceable legislation to get people to change habits. Had to learn about it in a class for my degree for wildlife conservation. The way is somehow exploiting how the way our brains work to trick them into believing that the decision to change is not only the best and easiest option but also that it was their idea to do so in order to allow their brain to handwave any inconsistency in their internal logic instead of fighting against their cognitive dissonance trying to change it by force.

Generally, people aren't bad people, they are just dumb primates who are trying their damnedest to live as easily as possible with the least amount of conflict while still feeling that they and their loved ones are protected from perceived harm. They "care" but they don't really think about what that means beyond a very, very limited scope of their immediate existence. After a certain point, arbitrary to each individual that will change at any given moment, they begin to wonder what it all has to do with the price of tea in China.

So don't convince them to care about the price of tea but instead how the price of tea will affect something they do care about in their lives.