Comment by andsoitis
2 days ago
> However I believe most good things in the world came at the behest of violence - again not necessarily physical, but at minimum people sacrificing personal peace. Woman's suffrage, black suffrage in America, the civil rights act, LGBT rights in the UK, the overthrow of the kmt military dictatorship in Taiwan. Endless examples.
Absolutely. I would further assert that path of least resistance is very often not the right one. The art, as I think you imply, is in "knowing" when to pick up a fight and persist, vs. when not.
> The art, as I think you imply, is in "knowing" when to pick up a fight and persist, vs. when not.
I think you're right on this, and if I implied it I think it's because that's where my thoughts have been heading without me realizing it.
When I wrote that blog post I was still in a mindset of "expend maximum effort at all costs." A new review strategy of my day to day and month to month life made me realize that this way of doing things wasn't making me more effective, just leading to peaks and troughs.
I've recently accepted that energy is a finite resource that needs to be recharged. Practically, that meant I needed to figure out what costs my energy and what renews it, and as I plan my days and weeks, schedule around this paradigm.
I think my activism is one of those things that's trickier because it energizes to an extent because it actualizes my values, but also it's tremendously energy draining because it takes time and huge amounts of willpower to do any given action - like overcoming my poor local language ability and nervousness to confront an illegally parked car blocking pedestrians.
So that's another aspect of this peace vs violence dynamic you've got me thinking about in a new light - yes, you need to choose your battles, if nothing else temporaly so you can put the battle at a time you'll have the energy to deal with it.