https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
Look man, you’re only saving 50% of the children from starvation, so obviously your idea is bad and we should continue letting 100% of the children die until someone comes up with the perfect solution.
This is a very serious take around Lemmy tho
I suggest we start calling this The Musk Argument.
As in, I won’t spend an inconsequential fraction of my money to solve world hunger – after I literally challenged you for a proposal to do so – because I don’t think you will be 100% successful.
Instead, I think I will take public actions to kill untold numbers of poor people around the world while I continue my quest to be the first smart boy with one million million dollars.
Don’t make Perfect the enemy of Progress.
I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.
The difference is I can look back across the decades and see a lot of people who I have helped, and who have helped me in turn, things have been directly made better as a result (well, at least some of the time). Meanwhile, their “more realistic” approach centred on voting has seen periods of glacial progress and rapid retreat, leaving them further back than ever before in my lifetime.
I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.
Same. Ive never believed it.
Be a helper.
Individual actions rarely cause big changes, but they help individuals all the time. Nothing wrong with that.
For the sake of clarity, I meant actions in the sense of direct action; typically some sort of anarchism flavoured so prefiguration was often at least kept in mind. Nothing has ever snowballed of course, although some actions have spawned some lovely little related communities that are thriving too (and others that since ran out of steam, true); I’ll always choose small victories over chasing the best loss as electoralism endlessly expounds. But I don’t at all disagree with the sentiment!
I do things that make no difference globally because I don’t want to take part in the bad things.
I did not vote for the government that is ruling my country. My single vote did not make any difference, but it makes me feel better that I did not vote for this government.
I travel by train instead of a plane and I ride a bike instead of driving a car because I don’t want to be part of the club of high CO2 emission citizen.
Doing that does not matter globally, but I feel better about myself that way. I don’t tell other people what to do or to follow my example, but I think some people around me do notice and maybe it does get them thinking?
But I have no illusions, most people are busy enough and do what is most convenient every time. I am the only adult in my circle that does not own a car. But I feel powerless beyond my personal life to change anything.
I know it is not good enough, but I don’t know how to change other people.
I did try and sometimes I still do try, but to no effect besides annoying people. 🤷
I also kind of hate the rhetoric that a single vote doesn’t count. One of the local primaries this year came down to a difference of four votes.
This is only valid as long as your partial/incomplete solution doesn’t encourage people who would otherwise keep working on solving the whole problem to decide that since there’s a solution they can just knock off for brunch and leave you to it.
Partial solutions to a polluted creek that’s choked with litter? Yes please, then we can see what comes next
Placebo solutions that make people who’ve made no difference feel like they’ve done their part to fight fascism and can go back to brunch? Gtfo with that shit.
Hint: if the “problem” is a societal one, nothing you see or hear suggested by anyone who has advertisers is going to actually solve anything, and is likely to work against anyone trying an actual solution.
And here we are. The exact sentiment described by OP.
You are the one describing the solution as “placebo”. I think the effort I implement is a positive step. I believe strongly that you are one of two types of people: Anti-solution and an agitator trying to divide and dishearten; or… maybe… you’re invested in the positive outcome and you will continue the greater work while I try to ensure you still can.
If you were only doing it because it was 100% bad, then you’re just as much of an idiot as those ‘why wouldn’t you rape without sky-daddy watching you’ christians. You can still work to solve it when it’s only 90% as bad as it was, since it will still be 100% bad.
Hint: Telling people to either be fully dedicated to solving the big issues or give up and ‘go to brunch’ is reductive and not encouraging the way you want it to be.
No.
The “solution” they’re clearly trying to defend without naming it to make it obvious is “voting for liberal politicians”. That absolutely 100% is a placebo, and every time the liberal shitbag wins, all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved
Hint: “go back to brunch” is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn’t intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.
all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved
From the other poster: Using a paper straw does reduce plastic usage. So will using reusable grocery bags. A person can quite easily do both. Deriding the paper straw as a useless step just seems unhelpful to me. When the plastic bags and straws are reduced, we can attack other angles too. As an anecdote, I rarely even get offered a choice of straw nowadays - it’s either not present or paper. that’s a minor win, but a win nonetheless. Some people worked hard to make that happen and this talk of placebo is derisive of that work.
This is you presuming to know the motivations of all other people and deciding for them when they stop working on new things. Just because I want people to be involved in their political processes doesn’t mean I stop at the voting booth, or can’t also be doing service in my community. I don’t love the catchphrase ‘Blue no matter Who’ - but I recognize that not voting blue is always going to be detrimental to the cause until enough people are involved in local level organizations to change the candidates from the ground up. Until we get there, I recommend we vote blue.
Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy. Wanna fight fascism and oligarchs? Encourage people to participate instead of telling them it doesn’t matter or there can only be revolution instead of incremental progress.
Hint: “go back to brunch” is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn’t intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.
That’s my whole point. Don’t discourage.
More encouragement of participation is better. Tell me that’s wrong.
Plastic pollution in the ocean is not from consumer waste, it’s from industrial fishing. Plastic straws LITERALLY DO NOT ADDRESS THE ISSUE. It’s a fantastic example of this.
Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy.
Look at the people telling you to engage in these ways.
This is the epitome of the issue I’m talking about – you people seem to presume the engagement ends at the simple step. For some, it will, but those people weren’t likely to engage larger in the first place and reducing the consumer waste doesn’t hurt.
For others, it will make them aware of the larger call to action, to get them to join advocacy groups that punish industrial and systemic issues.
I can’t stop fascism or climate change or pollution on my own. I need MORE people engaged and telling people we need all or nothing solutions can only lower the number of people willing to take action. Individual, even trivial steps matter.
Look at the people telling you to give up.
No one is saying to give up. The fact that you hear “stop wasting your energy trying to solve things in ways that are controlled by the people profiting from the problem” and interpret that as “give up” tells us all exactly how engaged you are with anything that actually might make a difference.
Your lack of reading comprehension tells me exactly how much you think.
My point being: ‘give up’ is what some people, who would otherwise be our allies, are hearing. Stop telling *them* to give up.
You won’t make more anti-capitalists by squashing the people who see the problems and want to solve them just not in your way. That only accelerates us towards the fascism you claim to be against.
“I use a paper straw, so I dont have to reduce my plastic usage”
I think this is an example of what this commentor was pointing out.
“This is not a perfect solution, and therefore it is not a solution” is called the nirvana fallacy, and is poor reasoning. Somehow people are really susceptible to it.
The argument “this solution only partially solves the problem, and further entrenches us into a system that makes the problem this solution aims to solve much, much worse in the long run, and as such the benefits do not outweight the costs” is a different argument, but it is often mistaken for the former argument because people are incapable of long term thinking.
Interesting, now I know that type of argument has a name. I think many rationalizations are a veneer for laziness. Taking the stance that doing something is useless means you don’t have to feel guilty about not doing it. Likewise, when there’s a widespread delusion that simple, ineffective actions make us heroes, people will do those actions and nothing else, because giving themselves a gold star is all they really want. It’s important not to confuse spending hours in social media circlejerks with “spreading awareness”.
Remember, that is exactly what an exploiter will say to you. They’ll always try to place the blame on the individual for the damage they’re doing collectively. Same with the BP Oil campaign when they invented the “carbon footprint of the individual” while being one of the worst polluters in the world.
If you look at real, concrete, systemic changes in the world, the times where it has happened because of “optimism” is close to zero.
Remember that the exploiters will always demand that people use the proper channels, because they own those channels, and can make sure nothing ever gets through.
There are only two ways to deal with exploiters. You can try and use your voice a few times, and if that doesn’t work, you start using your hands.
Perfection being the enemy of good (enough).
Sorry, can’t hear you over your failure to solve the entire problem. /s
Well, your negative comment made me spiral and transformed me into a speed bump on the road to progress. /s
Things have gotten worse over my lifetime in small, almost imperceptible ways, which have all accumulated into the humungous shit sandwich we find ourselves consuming daily. The only way things will get better is in the same small, incremental way. Should we fight for more, faster, better? Absolutely! Should we let that get in the way of small wins? Hell no. It’s not sexy, it feels like trudging through mud every day and requires a level of faith to believe that the small contributions each of us make will matter in the long term. But it is the only way given the realities of the world we live in. Everything else is apathy or accelerationism.
Sometimes layering bandaid improvements is ultimately worse than solving the problem correctly.
Sometimes. Not often.
What is often the case is that solving the problem correctly is not an option.
If that is the case, then that should be your argument
I agreed up until the “or else” caveat at the end. Many people simply do not have the energy to be curious or proactive at any particular time. That needs to be okay, otherwise the end destination is alienating a lot of people who might agree with a cause.
I feel like this is type of thinking is a cope for people who don’t want to actually do anything but maintain what they think is the moral high ground.
They realize that if they admit that you doing something is positive, then they’ll be forced to confront why they aren’t doing it.
We need a word for people who are either willfully ignorant or just ‘too tired for politics’. Like it’s nearly the majority of people I find, but they’re so used to being the default idk if they ever consider other options
Kinda like how the word ‘cis’ pisses people off because it makes them realize their state of being (like all states of being) is neither eternal nor predestined.
I almost want to call them ‘muggles’ just to spit in Rowling’s face, but she really doesn’t need the free advertising
Ignoramus comes to mind
Edit: “A totally ignorant person—unknowledgeable, uneducated, or uninformed; a fool.”
Yep that’s the word
