I care deeply about individual injustices and the systemic features which encourage/allow them (in pretty direct proportion to severity and frequency; I care about the system mostly because I care about the individual behaviors and impacts).
I _also_ care about orthogonal (and only-slightly-correlated) things, and need to balance my energy between object-level and system-level disagreements. Fighting to make the battle lines match my preference is more exhausting and less effective than picking my battles and figuring out how to thrive within the evolving landscape.
People will experience anger, anxiety, fear, and then submit to those with power unless they protect their independence.
Agree with the first half, disagree that “protect their independence” is always effective at all, let alone most effective. I’m a huge fan of Gurri, and it seems clear that power is shifting, not just to a different set of elites, but away from elites and toward less-well-described models.
This means that I can be _simultaneously_ supportive and afraid. The mob is frenemy—I agree with them more than the previous elites, but I’m not sure humanity is actually capable of self-rule, so I really don’t know if the resulting power equilibrium will end up actually preferable. As such, I’m going for change—the current hill-climb hit a maximum, let’s jump somewhere else. Maybe it’ll suck, and take a few generations to try something else. It _probably_ won’t do any more permanent damage than the track we were on before.
Note that this has been true of every regime in history—power comes from a mix of trust and threat. The only “safe” action is to give up all your power, which is unacceptable to many of us. Without everyone (including me) being both smarter and more conscientious than we are now, this is with us for a long time yet.
Hmm. This is a little categorical for my tastes.
I care deeply about individual injustices and the systemic features which encourage/allow them (in pretty direct proportion to severity and frequency; I care about the system mostly because I care about the individual behaviors and impacts).
I _also_ care about orthogonal (and only-slightly-correlated) things, and need to balance my energy between object-level and system-level disagreements. Fighting to make the battle lines match my preference is more exhausting and less effective than picking my battles and figuring out how to thrive within the evolving landscape.
Agree with the first half, disagree that “protect their independence” is always effective at all, let alone most effective. I’m a huge fan of Gurri, and it seems clear that power is shifting, not just to a different set of elites, but away from elites and toward less-well-described models.
This means that I can be _simultaneously_ supportive and afraid. The mob is frenemy—I agree with them more than the previous elites, but I’m not sure humanity is actually capable of self-rule, so I really don’t know if the resulting power equilibrium will end up actually preferable. As such, I’m going for change—the current hill-climb hit a maximum, let’s jump somewhere else. Maybe it’ll suck, and take a few generations to try something else. It _probably_ won’t do any more permanent damage than the track we were on before.
Note that this has been true of every regime in history—power comes from a mix of trust and threat. The only “safe” action is to give up all your power, which is unacceptable to many of us. Without everyone (including me) being both smarter and more conscientious than we are now, this is with us for a long time yet.