Breaking what's fixed

[azurelunatic]

Yes, that post was alarmingly passive-aggressive, and I'm sorry about that. I figured it was safest to blow up like that than the other way, which would have been bad.

But, my dear friends, the next time you see an idealist getting mad/upset/hurt that this broken world we live in is broken? Please think before you scold them for believing that the world should be a better place than that. Odds are that they already know that the world sucks, and pointing out that the thing that they're mad about is hardly unique is just rubbing it in. It's really the opposite of helpful.

I'm not trying to ignore the big ways the world sucks when I point out the little ways. When I blow off steam about the world sucking, I don't intend that you should get outraged about the thing I'm outraged about, unless I specifically say that I think everyone should be outraged. If you're not outraged already, don't bother. My reactions aren't yours, and I probably already knew that.

Comments

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Mmm, speaking as a fairly dedicated non-idealist, I think it has a lot to do with the way idealists and realists scare each other. Most utopias scare the crap out of me. It's not so much that I don't think people know the world sucks. It's more that a lot of the proposed fixes, when I think them out to their (probably unintended) logical consequences, seem a lot like "we had to destroy the village in order to save it".

Most realists want the world to be better; we're not idiots who think that nothing can ever be changed. But we think that changes need to be done one at a time and slowly and tested out to see if they work, like bug fixes, and that lots of them need to be opt-in, with people adopting them after they see that they're good. The idea of going out and making large opt-out (or no opt-out) changes to the world we live in because PEOPLE ARE HURTING OH FUCK makes us scared because we've seen how that's worked out in the past: it doesn't usually mean that PEOPLE will stop HURTING OH FUCK, it means that a different group of PEOPLE will be HURTING OH FUCK.

[azurelunatic]

I can see sharply smacking down any proposed fixes. I am still baffled and hurt when people smack me down for noticing that the world sucks.

[lacey]

Can't say it makes sense to me either.