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by sagichmal 1707 days ago
I’m not sure why you think people who care about justice draw that energy from the same pool that motivates their work, as if it’s a zero-sum calculus. It isn’t. People who think about things systemically tend to apply that perspective in all of their practices. And that’s the value.
2 comments

The problem is when people who care about justice harasses co-workers because those co-workers doesn't care as much about justice. That has a very negative effect on those co-workers regardless if this has a negative effect on the harasser.
You’re right, a lot of people also know that the biggest impact then can have is participating in their local community and not by joining in on shallow sloganeering.

And there’s another more pernicious problem. People can care deeply about justice but have very different views on how to achieve it. It takes more than a lifetime to sort some of these issues out, and anyone with a bit of maturity has had their mind changed enough to have a bit of humility and know it’s not something you can or should do at or through work.

The problem with the sort of political activism that passes for personality these days (not limited to one side) is that it conflates bromides that everyone basically agrees with with specific contentious policy prescriptions on which there is little agreement.

Or: it has the positive effect of changing their minds, and improving the world.
You can't actually believe that harassing and stressing out one's coworkers over a political agenda has a positive effect, changes minds and improves the world.
The art of influencing people.
I'm not sure why you think people who care about justice harass coworkers as a matter of course. It's strictly the opposite, in my (considerable) experience.
You're assuming that everyone that think about things systemically end up with the same views. I don't think that's true.
Most do, though, because there does tend to be a more correct position on this class of stuff.
I don't think that's the case at all. What is even a "more correct position"? Isn't that just following the consensus?