Comment by gretch
18 days ago
> What about when the "prigs" were right?
I think the big take away is that being right via a lecture doesn't do anything.
If you are morally right, and your aim is social justice, you should stop lecturing people, because it doesn't actually achieve what you are aiming for or really even advance the cause (in fact it may run backwards).
Instead, go out and do something. For example, defer typing up that long comment about how [x] is right and [y] is wrong, volunteer for some community service. Build shelters for people who need it. Offer pro bono services to marginalized groups.
If nothing else, simply live your way of life and out compete the people who were wrong.
But that 1000th internet comment you posted, even if it was "right", it didn't make a single lick of difference. So ask yourself why you really put it up.
> If you are morally right, and your aim is social justice, you should stop lecturing people, because it doesn't actually achieve what you are aiming for or really even advance the cause (in fact it may run backwards).
Actually it's through Internet conversations and mostly online education that my mind was changed, my whole worldview in fact.
Quietly doing good is admirable. So is speaking up where people are talking. Both is even better still.
This is why the idea of wokeness was attacked. PG even describes it as a mind virus.
The very idea that your opinion would change over time terrifies people like PG. If you are useful, you must stay predictable. If you are not useful, you are a convenient target.
Stoking the classic 'us vs them' is the oldest trick in the book. Pay no attention to the man on the podium.
Quietly being your best self doesn't give us substantial change, though. Consider that all of the big gains in civil rights for various groups came from people being loud about their belief in equality, and insisting that people who felt otherwise were wrong.
> If you are morally right, and your aim is social justice, you should stop lecturing people, because it doesn't actually achieve what you are aiming for or really even advance the cause (in fact it may run backwards).
i'm basically a professional social justice warrior in tech and nobody is lecturing each other. everybody just does the work.
"stop lecturing... instead, go out and do something" is a dangerous train of thought. I agree that building houses for the homeless is a good idea (imagine if you could actually just do that, though...) but most of the issues people are talking about can't be directly confronted in cozy ways like going to the soup kitchen or building a house. A lot of the issues people are "woke" over are societal ills and the "action" available to them is stuff we don't want people doing. We should be advocating for reasoned discourse instead of - to paraphrase a popular tweet I didn't like enough to screenshot - telling people to shut up and go firebomb a Wal-mart.
Or take the abortion debate. We don't want anti-abortionists "taking action" against clinics and doctors any more than we want pro-choice advocates doing back-alley abortions if we can avoid it. It's all very dangerous!