Social improvements that don’t create countervailing negative forces

 Let us say you favor policy X, and take steps to see that policy X comes about. Under many conditions, people who favor non-X will take additional countervailing steps to oppose X.  And in that case your actions in favor of X, on average, will lead to nothing.  In the meantime, you and also your
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Let us say you favor policy X, and take steps to see that policy X comes about.

Under many conditions, people who favor non-X will take additional countervailing steps to oppose X.  And in that case your actions in favor of X, on average, will lead to nothing.  In the meantime, you and also your opponents will have wasted material resources fighting over X.

This argument is hardly new, but most people do not like to consider it much.  They instead prefer to mood affiliate in favor of X, or perhaps against X.  They prefer to be “fighting for the right things.”

Perhaps visible political organizing is most likely to set this dynamic in motion.  Everyone can see what you are doing, and perhaps they can use their actions to fundraise for their own side.

That is one reason why I am not so thrilled with much of that organizing, even if I agree with it.  Of course there are other scenarios here.  Your involvement on behalf of X might just be flat-out decisive.  Or perhaps the group against X is too resource-constrained to respond to your greater advocacy.  That said, those descriptors (and others) might apply as well to either side of the dispute, your side included.  Scaling up the fight over X might cause you to be the one who simply flat out loses the struggle.

It is worth thinking which kinds of “small steps toward a much better world” do not produce such countervailing effects.

How about “being positive and constructive”?  Does it generate an equal and offsetting amount of negativity?

How about “trying to get people to be more reasonable, yet without offering a substantive political commitment bundled with that”?  Does that in turn motivate the crazies to work harder at making everyone go insane?  I am not sure.

What else might be effective, once these strategies are considered?

Does “refuting people” fit into this category?  Yes or no?

Which activities should you be abandoning altogether?  Or perhaps trying to do in secret, rather than publicly?

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 Education, Philosophy, Political Science, Uncategorized