Comment by jodrellblank

> "What if it's most effective to .. instead of preaching about what people should do, you just do what it is that you believe to be right?"

It isn't. See these LessWrong articles[1,2,3] about charitable giving for more reasoning. People take ideas, understanding of the world, behavioural cues, from what we see around us. From the first link, a charitable fund raise over a mailing list involved quiet private donations without fanfare, and public mailing list posts about why (other) people were not going to donate, why it was a bad idea. None of the donators posted publicly in support of donating.

I could make up any number of examples, but here[4] is a recent news article about two young lesbian women living together who "had been spat at in the street and received anonymous messages - including abuse scrawled across their front door on Christmas Day". What good does it do them if everyone who supports them does it quietly, and everyone who hates them does it loudly and publicly? What world does it lead to when spitting on someone in the street is fine, but speaking out against it is "woke leftist moralizing"? What world does it lead to when people who are not involved looking around to see how others are behaving (bystander effect) see LGBT hate enacted, written, spoken, and don't see or hear anyone around them speaking against it?

Would the young women care if someone vocally complaining about it at the pub is genuinely annoyed or just performatively status grabbing?

Seems pretty clear from history that just quietly living your life while horrors whirl around you is a personally comfortable way to live your life, but is not an effective way to change any of the horrors. Whereas taking arms against the horrors can be an effective way to change the horrors regardless of whether you're doing it because you really want to, or because you were peer pressured into it, or because you are just going along with what everyone else is doing.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-ki...

[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6FNkxMJpraMLTPwq/to-inspire...

[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KoTCTwmPbEAZTyPbz/why-you-sh...

[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgnwqdp7gno?at_bbc_team...