[piva00]

Without loudly complaining there is absolutely no change. Shutting up has never improved anything.

Why would the only solution be "figure out how to make more money"? There are many professions where it isn't even possible to figure that out, should all of them just shut up and move? It's great you were able to go live somewhere else, for some it would be devastating to lose their sense of belonging, other people have different priorities for what they consider a happy life.

Sorry but I think it's even less conducive to anything to tell people to shut up, it's an easy cop out, a way to invert the blame while being thoroughly unhelpful.

[titanomachy]

I wasn't really telling them to shut up. I agree with most of their points, but there's a sense of helplessness in the writing that I don't like. I see some of my friends do this and it doesn't feel like purposeful, effective striving for a better world, but neurotic obsession over things that they are incredibly unlikely to affect.

I hope the complainers win, and I will join their fight in ways that make sense, but I'm also not going to spend my one short life doing the equivalent of being angry at the weather. I'm going to figure out how to live a good life within the world as it exists, and help out other people wherever I can.

Of course, I could be reading them incorrectly. Perhaps writing this like this fills them with purpose and holy fire, and this is how they live their best life.

[fluoridation]

I find it a little funny that you're doing the same thing you're complaining about.

[paulryanrogers]

Are they? One person is saying that complaining won't help (since presumably "we all know this already"). The other person says complaining will help (i.e. let them speak).

[piva00]

You might have missed the whole point if that's what you found funny.

I'm not arguing about not telling someone to shut up in general; my argument is against telling people to shut up, and not complain, when they have grievances about the state of things outside of their individual power.

[fluoridation]

>they have grievances about the state of things outside of their individual power

Yeah, that seems to be what the person you replied to was doing. They can't make other people not write these kinds of articles, after all.

[piva00]

Ok, we are doing semantics nitpicking so I need to spell it out even further: my main argument is against people telling others to shut up about societal issues outside of their individual power.

Can we continue the discussion from this or are we supposed to keep this going until we need to reinvent legalese to cover all bases and have a conversation?

[fluoridation]

That's not semantic nitpicking, that's just taking words at face value. I wasn't aware we could retroactively change their meaning when it became convenient. Can I try? What I meant by my original comment was you made a very eloquently put point that made a masterful use of irony in its rhetoric.

[piva00]

Taking words at face value and nitpicking on it while missing the forest for the trees is exactly what a "Technical Genius"-archetype does on online discussions, recommend the read if you never encountered it: https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-people-planet-a...

At no point I changed the meaning of anything I said, you required me to obviate what was already there because you wanted to pick a semantics discussion. Now that it's been obviated you decided it isn't good enough and that I'm changing meaning for convenience. Proving again that you not only missed the whole point but also is choosing to continue a semantics discussion, that's rather boring.

Again, I wholeheartedly recommend you reading the section on the "Technical Genius" of that article, you might identify yourself.