A Life Lesson For You

[Lord J Esq]

So, I don't really post here very seriously anymore. The community got too young and the arguments got too old. But I've been back “in town” recently as a beta tester for Crimson Echoes, and now it has occurred to me that I have an insight which may actually be of some use to the younger crowd here. It's not even controversial. But it is serious.

Many of you are not active in politics. You're cynical of the flaws and corruption in our system, or you're just plain not interested. As a result, you may tend to be put off or even angered by people like feminists and environmentalists and gay rights activists, who take their causes pretty seriously and  tend to get in other people's faces about it. If you're one who doesn't have that kind of passion for politics, you may well feel resentful toward those who do.

I am comfortable generalizing that most of you take society for granted and don't realize it. I am also comfortable generalizing that most of you think you are more aware than you actually are. In time, you will realize this for yourselves. Today I want to tell you something that I hope will give you a better perspective with which to think about why people get involved in politics and social issues. It's very simple, and I hope you remember it for always:

If this society is pleasantly moderate, and comfortable to live in, it is because of the passion of extremists. Only those with extreme views have the perspective to push society in one direction or another. Your way of life was created by radicals who were rebelling against a more primitive, barbaric society than the one you and I live in today. The women's rights movement, the civil rights movement for blacks, the organized labor movement...they were made up of some pretty rough people, and those were pretty rough times in our history. It used to be the comfortable, mainstream opinion that women and blacks were lesser beings and deserved to be treated as such. When people began fighting to change that, it got on everyone's nerves. That turned out to be a good thing.

In your daily life, when you see someone arguing about a social issue, and you think to yourself that they're getting too serious about it, or that their opinion is too extreme, and if you look at them dismissively or resentfully and think to yourself that society is just fine the way it is and that there's no point for these people to be so rude and crass and radical about their activism, I hope you will stop and consider for a moment that your attitude is exactly the way most people in a society have always felt when confronted with a movement for social change. The way progress happens is that a few agitators make a whole bunch of people uncomfortable enough that the rules of society change. It's not a pleasant experience, not for the agitators and not for the ordinary citizens and bystanders. But it has to be like this, because our society has a long way to go before we could ever call it “perfect.” You may not realize the injustices and evils which still exist today, but other people do, and they are fighting to change things for the better. And there's a good chance it'll get on your nerves from time to time.

Now, not every radical is pushing a cause that is in your interest. That's why it's important to be involved in politics. But everything that is in your interest was achieved by yesterday's radicals. Everything you take for granted, was once the battlefield of a social upheaval. Food for thought.

[teaflower]

I understand that everything in our life is ultimately because of radical people. Gee, who would've thought of a democracy in an age of monarchs? Gee, who would've thought that people with a different skin tone other than white can think and do stuff and are more than property? Gee, who would've thought that people with parts inside them could think and act for themselves? And who would've thought to put them into school?

Really radical stuff, man.

Personally, I don't get much into politics. I don't talk fast enough for that sort of thing. But I try and stay in the know and try not to pass judgement unversed. I reserve my right to not agree with every radical Evangelical I meet and to not always agree that animals are people too and thus deserve the same treatment their human counterparts get, if not better. But sometimes I do actually agree with them. Sometimes.

[Daniel Krispin]

The ploughshare of evil?

[ZeaLitY]

The "exhausted land" is or was not necessarily good land.

[FouCapitan]

Animals are food not people, crossdressing men should not be allowed in the ladies' room, and we don't need to change society to be more appealing to islamic fundamentalists.

Seriously, I get what you're trying to say, but not all 'extremists' are right.  Some of them are dead wrong in their ideas, with little gray area.  I don't see how you can compare the far extremes of today to the struggles for equality of yesterday.  The main difference is that they made sense.  You can state that it's just current mindsets that makes me think that way, but the truth is the reason the abolishment of slavery and equal rights for women and so forth caught on is because they made sense before and during their time of establishment.  They weren't some bizzare new agenda thrown out by a select few, they were common sense solutions to past problems that the masses readily agreed with.

Now my first statement may have been a lash-out against animal rights, gay movement, and religious fundamentalism.  I gave extreme examples, and I'm not saying I disagree with everything they stand for.  Animals shouldn't be abused, gays shouldn't be discriminated against for their life choices, and there should always be freedom to choose and practice your religion in peace.  Those things make sense.  It's when you take it to the extreme to where it doesn't make sense, that's when I turn around and answer "No, you're being stupid now."

Like you said, society will continue to grow and shape and change itself, following new ideals and new agendas.  But the people in general will decide as a whole which ideals are accepted into the norm.  The people tend to choose ideals which better them as a whole, which better humanity as a whole.  They do not choose the ideals which better a small group looking after only their own self interests.

[Lord J Esq]

If you think you are taking a stand on behalf of propriety, please be assured that you are in fact only repeating history. You simultaneously underestimate the difficulty of yesterday's advances and the worthiness of today's causes. You are therefore, and quite unsurprisingly, on the wrong side of history.

You make a point that "not all extremists are right." But, then again, I said as much in my first post, and to raise it again here is nothing but a distraction. Ho and hum, sir.

[ZeaLitY]

They do not choose the ideals which better a small group looking after only their own self interests.

And yet, tens of thousands of women willingly participate in religious organizations that only allow males to hold the priesthood or the authority of governing the church. The countless failures of what you describe in your quote is one of the best arguments against democracy and the rule of the majority. If we lived in a world full of people who concerned themselves with the course of humanity and sought out information and improvement, then we could have a true libertarian democracy. Instead, we've got Ron Paulites who somehow think that the US going on the gold standard wouldn't immediately destroy the entire world economy. We've got Obama supporters who who consider him absolutely infallible. And we've got Republicans who criticize the current administration's spending without daring to acknowledge the wild excesses of the previous President.

Underscoring them all is the entire group of people who just don't give a damn. Just as uninformed, uninterested workers enabled socialist and Communist leaders to commit evils in the name of protecting the proletariat in the 20th century, disinterested Americans allow the government and two-party system to cripple the efficacy of our government and nullify sincere political conversation in the 21st. To these people, the person who wants to abolish religion completely and cut off the serpent's head is equitably extremist as the religious suicide bomber the abolitionist condemns. They think the world's "good enough."

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt was an extremist. He broke up oligopolies and monopolies to protect the interests of the customer. He welcomed criticism of the Presidency, and wrote that women should be completely equal to men; that they should even have the choice of taking the man's name or not in marriage; that they should be paid the same. He did many other things that shook up the climate of his age to the point that someone even tried to assassinate him before a speech (and, being Theodore Roosevelt, he took the bullet and delivered the speech anyway before surrendering to his physicians). We take his gifts for granted, including the Food and Drug Administration that makes sure we don't drop dead from accidental poisoning or succumb to a tolerable "death by spreadsheet." And there are many more gifts, many of them despised during his day for being too extreme.

It's easy to write of all politics as corrupt, senseless hot air. It's easy to latch on to a few deceptively attractive economic ideas and parade them around without any sincere research into economics. And it's easy to hitch your wagon to a charismatic figure and ride his or her arguments regardless of merit. But to learn for your own edification; to become active of your own will; to nurture your own intellectual curiosity free from irrational prejudice, that's daring.

Nothing short of Zeal is "good enough."

[Lord J Esq]

The ploughshare of evil?

Krispin! This might be the first post of yours I've ever seen that wasn't edited by you afterwards. =)

[Zephira]

I'd have to agree with FouCapitan on this. And that first paragraph/line of his has to be the best political statement I have ever seen.

I agree that animals shouldn't be abused, and there are some serious overhauls that need to be made there. But, animals are not people. Animals are food. If the beef industry is eradicated completely, America will pretty much starve to death. Heck, if it comes to that, I'm moving to Japan.

As for the gay rights movement, I really don't see why everyone hates gay people so much. I do think their life choices should be respected, but that still doesn't make them women. Pay attention to the signs on the bathroom doors, they're there for a reason.
But then again, some men might be uncomfortable being eyed/hit on by gay people in the bathroom. If this keeps up, it probably won't be long until we have four bathrooms: Men, Women, Gay, Lesbian.

Anyway, if the movement will actually do some good overall, then it's worth fighting for. However, there are still some movements that are just ridiculous (for example, a person complained about Christmas trees in airports, so they were taken down).

[FouCapitan]

If you think you are taking a stand on behalf of propriety, please be assured that you are in fact only repeating history. You simultaneously underestimate the difficulty of yesterday's advances and the worthiness of today's causes. You are therefore, and quite unsurprisingly, on the wrong side of history.

You make a point that "not all extremists are right." But, then again, I said as much in my first post, and to raise it again here is nothing but a distraction. Ho and hum, sir.

Consider myself told off then.  Your say so makes my opinions completely wrong.  My apologies for dirtying your shoes with my filth o lord J.

[ZeaLitY]

We are all walking fossils. Right now, our entire system of dating still dictates that sexually active men are players and sexually active women are sluts. Our entire world is still sexist in countless other ways. There are so many innumerable things still backwards with the human race!

I don't think people should age or die beyond a certain prime maturity, for instance. That's an extreme position! Religion says we gotta die, and a bunch of weaker spirits who aren't so religious still rationalize it by calling it part of the human condition. Well, fuck that! The honest scientific initiative to stop aging and death has my full support.

Simple, simple things about the human condition are still awaiting the touch of a few good extremists who will be regarded with ill feelings because they're shaking up what other people have already called "good enough."



Humanity's going to move forward! Who's with me in daring to create this shining future!?

[Daniel Krispin]

The ploughshare of evil?

Krispin! This might be the first post of yours I've ever seen that wasn't edited by you afterwards. =)

It was brief enough.

Your statment remided me vaguely of Nietzsche's points on the matter, which is why I felt compelled to say what I did.

ZeaLitY, yeah, exactly. I must admit to the logic of that argument.

[Lord J Esq]

And that first paragraph/line of his has to be the best political statement I have ever seen.

Really?

Consider myself told off then.  Your say so makes my opinions completely wrong.  My apologies for dirtying your shoes with my filth o lord J.

Forgive me for making an example of you. You just so happened to provide me with a ready example of the very type of attitude I had been speaking about. Perhaps I should not have bothered to correct you, as it has only served to distract from my topic post. Your opinion is, of course, completely understandable, and I am not asking for your agreement.

[Uboa]

Animals are food not people.

Well, I agree that animals are not people, but animals aren't food either.  They're animals (and are also for some reason ridiculously prone to polarizing classification).

I do agree with the point you made in your post, just had to poke at that.

[Uboa]

If you think you are taking a stand on behalf of propriety, please be assured that you are in fact only repeating history. You simultaneously underestimate the difficulty of yesterday's advances and the worthiness of today's causes. You are therefore, and quite unsurprisingly, on the wrong side of history.

You make a point that "not all extremists are right." But, then again, I said as much in my first post, and to raise it again here is nothing but a distraction. Ho and hum, sir.

I don't think he was taking a stand on behalf of propriety.  I guess I understand what he was getting at because I can't stand the way some activists go about what they do.  As a former vegan (I still only eat, say, an ounce of meat per day at most, and no eggs or dairy  -- had to quit for health reasons) I was and still am repeatedly put off by some of the far-out acts and nigh thoughtless stances of major animal rights organizations.  There comes a point when some "activism" does nothing to further any sensible movement. 

I'm not politically jaded.  I love websites like change.org.  I still argue all the time on behalf of minimizing animal product consumption and other green ideas.  But, I have to agree with the notion that there are certain limits to expectations and actions that some activists don't take into account.