Active tensions
Folks, I’m going to be doing a bit of preaching here. I’m seeing a few things out there I don’t like, and I feel the need to say a few words about it. Yes, some of it’s mirroring what I’ve been saying on the STIVE YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsEFbjapoK23Gjukt4hdfrA ), but after some of what I’ve been seeing recently it bears repeating.
Over the past year or so, I’ve seen large numbers of various “activists” and “concerned citizens” going to the extremes when it comes to making their sentiments and opinions known and advocating for their particular causes. Neither extreme is particularly productive, and can even be counterproductive.
One extreme is what has been termed “slactivism”, the process of making one’s sentiments known while doing as little as possible to accomplish this task (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism ). The term is used to describe situations in which people come to believe that token tasks, such as changing their social media profile image to a specific image or in a specific fashion, wearing a specific item or color, or re-circulating a particular image or message, is all one needs to do in order to contribute to the cause. It’s not that the people who do this are incapable of doing anything further; it’s that they simply fail to display any further effort because they believe the minimal effort they have engaged in was sufficient.
So what’s the issue with slacktivism? Consider the following hypothetical. A college student wishes to do something to make the world better. They have enough money to afford a $5 purchase plus sales tax. One option, the “slactivist” option, would be to purchase a large box of safety pins and distribute said pins across campus so that their fellow students can wear these pins to display solidarity with _____. Another option is to purchase 10 cans of off-brand chicken soup for donation to the local food bank. The former option may lead to warm feelings, but the latter will lead to warm bellies. Hence the issue: “slacktivists” often have the ability to do so much more than what they do, yet fail to actually do so and so rob the causes they could be supporting of their time and resources.
The other extreme comes in the use of violence and threats thereof to silence the opposition. In this extreme, a person is so motivated to action that they don’t mind committing felonies in the name of supporting their cause and suppressing all others. Someone who is motivated to this extreme thinks nothing of walking up to someone who holds opposing views and sucker-punching them. When groups of these individuals band together, we end up with outfits like Antifa who by all rights should be on some terrorism watch list somewhere.
The fact that they’re using the tactics of fascists to fight mindsets that they regard as fascistic is apparently lost on these groups; in the case of the Berkeley riots, I suspect that certain individuals have skipped their world history classes. Also lost on them is the fact that in the world of public opinion, whoever throws the first punch loses; the person they’re attacking may be [adjective], but the person throwing that sucker-punch is *violent* plus [adjective]. The end result is that as bad as their target may be, the target ends up looking better by comparison. Oops.
It’s understandable to want to do something to change things. But folks, we need to remember that change actually requires doing something without making the world worse. It means getting off of the couch, but not to punch people.