For sure. I almost included something in my comment about "I guess this is what getting old is like", losing your idealism as you age. But equally, maybe not. If I'd grown up in, I dunno the 60s? I would have witnessed enormous leaps in technological possibility and enormous increases in standards of living, personal freedoms, yadda yadda. In my youth it felt like there was a viable future where tech enabled radical positive changes in society. Instead we concentrated wealth at the top of society at historically unprecedented levels.
I wouldn't call it "losing my idealism," but, rather "understanding that everything is a lot more complex than my simple young mind could deal with."
I'm probably more "idealistic" than I have ever been; it's just that I no longer have the silly "Let's just do this one simple thing" attitude. I've just found that getting places is always a lot more difficult than we think. Usually, it's people, and all their messy personal issues, that gum up the works.
The good news is, is that I am actually accomplishing more than I did, when I was younger. I'm devoting less energy, and it is often more frustrating, but shit gets done. A big reason, is that I understand myself, and the people around me, a lot better than I used to. They are no longer "NPCs" in my Game of Life.
As to the article, I seriously feel for the author, but I am not exactly in their shoes. I don't have anything against them, but their cause is not my cause. I don't have a dog in this race. I have nothing at all against trans folks. Many of my friends are varying types of LGBTQI+ folks. If I'm not going to bed with them, then who they love, and what they do, when I'm not around, isn't my concern. I'd usually like them to be happy, and support their choices, as long as they don't interfere with my life. I'm even willing to go out of my way, in some cases, to support them (that's what friends do).
The one thing that is almost guaranteed to make our cause to go floop, is insisting that everyone else is either with us, or against us. This is especially annoying, when our cause is important to only a small minority of stakeholders.
For some reason, almost everyone in our life ends up in the "against" column, and many of them started as people that actually supported us, but weren't willing to go much farther than that. So now, they are actively working against us, as we declared them to be "enemy combatants." The "woke" stuff caused exactly this reaction. It's not just left-leaning stuff, either. Activists of every stripe, do the same thing, and then act all puzzled, as to why everyone seems to be against them.
As Dr. Phil might say, "So...how's that working out for you?"
> The good news is, is that I am actually accomplishing more than I did, when I was younger.
How are you making that happen?
This is an honest question.
As I've gotten older, and developed a deeper understanding of the intractability of the world's problems, this change in perspective has cratered my motivation. It was one thing to give my all toward what seemed like it mattered, back when the scope for possible change still appeared to be great enough that one could imagine living in a better world: but knowing now that no matter what I do it's just going to be more of the same old bullshit, with maybe - at best, and this unlikely - one or another of the rougher edges on the great, awful machine of exploitation and suffering which powers our civilization slightly filed down, so that maybe a couple of people here and there don't get hurt quite as badly as they otherwise might have, while the core of the process continues crushing the life and beauty out of the world, unchanged... it's difficult to muster up any real energy to do anything about it. I still go through the motions, when it seems like I must, for conscience's sake; but I don't believe in it anymore. The source of my past effort is all gone.
I miss that past self, but I can't imagine how to believe that any possible accomplishment would actually matter anymore, enough to justify putting my back into it. What's your secret?
Well, speaking only for myself, I'm a lifelong member of a benevolent organization that provides many ways to do good works.
I can assure you that the work I do, makes a pretty big difference in some lives. We're not out to change the world. We're only trying to police our own area*.
Being older and more experienced, means that the work I do is much more effective, and much more economical (we don't have a lot of means). It also means that I work well with others, and am much better at team stuff.
*> “I was in the Air Force a while and they had what they call “policing the area.” And I think that’s a pretty good thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area then we won’t have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there. And look around you and see what needs to be changed.”
> The one thing that is almost guaranteed to make our cause to go floop, is insisting that everyone else is either with us, or against us. This is especially annoying, when our cause is important to only a small minority of stakeholders.
Masterfully said, I'd love this to be the pull quote here.
The real trouble starts when regular people allow the "purity test" type people to have any sort of power or influence instead of laughing and ignoring them like we should. This can result in a destructive purity spiral, even over seemingly trivial issues.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the US government coming after people because of who they are is a lot more worrying than some knitters in terms of "people getting access to power".
To demonstrate that you're in the "in group", it is not enough to simply support most of what they are into. You must take a potentially expensive position that demonstrates your absolute support.
That's exactly what you're doing with your own rhetoric, you know.
My "rhetoric" about the issue which Donald J. Trump spent something like 1/4 of his ad spend on. I didn't pick it to sound extreme. I picked it because it was very important to how politics will play out for the next 4 years.
If you don't like what Trump does now, you can thank Kamala's attempts to ingratiate herself to trans activists back in 2019.
This is genuinely absurd. 99.99% of the time the issue of 'where do female identify rapists belong' is brought up, it's because someone who disagrees with the broader point is trying to create some kind of gotcha.
It happens constantly online. Leftist A will say something about respecting gender self-identification and then rightwinger B will manipulate the conversation so that the leftist is now trying to defend putting biological men in women's prisons [1]
It's incredibly disengenous and bad faith.
[1] regardless of your moral position on this issue, there's a fuckload of other awful things about american prisons that these type of people are rarely concerned about.
You're missing the point because you're too wrapped up in left-right. The comment above about virtue signaling devolving into extremism could easily be re-written for the social issues relevant to 1500s Europe, 1790s France, or any other time and still be true.
As I clearly think, given what I said above, most of what trans people want is obviously fair and just. To go through life, being treated as their preferred gender, and not facing discrimination of various kinds for that choice.
But that isn't where we are. Instead we are in a world where Kamala Harris was, completely unforced, recorded talking about protecting trans rights in prisons back in 2019. Trump ran ads showing those clips with the tagline, "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you." And now Trump is President.
Is it being brought up now as a gotcha? Absolutely! But back when Kamala was running the first time for President, SHE brought up her support for the policy. Unforced. Because it was how to signal her support for that issue. And now we're all paying the price for how activist extremism creates backlash.
So now you're arguing that it's all kamala harris and those darn leftist's fault for bringing up trans rights and if they had just shut up, everything would be peachy keen?
Like, I'm genuinely not trying to create a strawman, I'm just rephrasing literally what you said.
I'm reminded of MLK's quote about white moderates here...
It's not a left versus right issue, not really. Most of the feminists arguing against gender self-id are on the left.
This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain why gender self-id policy is so harmful to women.
Often, the person advocating for gender self-id hasn't spent any time considering this impact at all. The detriment to women and girls isn't even on their radar. So it's worth explaining.
It changes views, too. I've personally witnessed several people rapidly undoing their support for gender self-id when they see evidence of the deleterious consequences. Though more in real life than online.
Conversations like those are the reason why support for policy that prioritizes gender identity over sex is dropping like a stone.
> It's not a left versus right issue, not really. Most of the feminists arguing against gender self-id are on the left.
In the sense that the vast majority of all feminists of any kind are on the left? Is there such a thing as a rightwing feminist? JK Rowling?
> This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain why gender self-id policy is so harmful to women.
This is literally the point I was trying to make about these types of conversations. It's extremely tempting to argue with your blanket assertions of 'detriment to [other] women and girls', but now instead of talking about the person in the article's very real concern about being discriminated against while working or even being attacked while socializing, we're talking about some extreme hypothetical about women's prisons.
Also, it's weird how often people are completely silent about the treatment of female prisoners... until it's related to transgender issues. Or female athletes for that matter. If you were actually worried about it, there are probably bigger fish to fry.
> In the sense that the vast majority of all feminists of any kind are on the left? Is there such a thing as a rightwing feminist? JK Rowling?
There are some feminists who reject the left-right divide and don't place themselves anywhere on it, as a response to the male-dominated political system. It's not a very popular view but it exists.
JK Rowling isn't one of them, she has left-wing views and describes herself as such.
> instead of talking about the person in the article's very real concern about being discriminated against while working or even being attacked while socializing, we're talking about some extreme hypothetical about women's prisons.
Sadly it is not hypothetical.
If you believe that supporting gender self-id positively addresses the concerns of males like the blog author, then you should also be willing to consider the documented and evidenced harms to women and girls.
And certainly if you wish to understand why there is such significant opposition to policy that prioritizes gender identity over sex.
> Also, it's weird how often people are completely silent about the treatment of female prisoners... until it's related to transgender issues. Or female athletes for that matter. If you were actually worried about it, there are probably bigger fish to fry.
One might also wonder why policymakers haven't fried these bigger fish that would improve conditions for female prisoners and female athletes, and instead have chosen to introduce gender self-id policy which demonstrably harms women and girls while privileging males.
> One might also wonder why policymakers haven't fried these bigger fish that would improve conditions for female prisoners and female athletes, and instead have chosen to introduce gender self-id policy which demonstrably harms women and girls while privileging males.
If you keep repeating this, maybe you'll convince some people who desperately want to believe it.
And I don't really need to wonder why. Because they obviously don't care except when they can invoke "won't somebody think of [the women]" as a convenient excuse to achieve political power.
It's exactly as dishonest and intellectually bankrupt as "advocating for the unborn".
> If you keep repeating this, maybe you'll convince some people
I have helped some people understand the full impact of such policy, yes.
In my experience, it depends on whether the person I'm talking to has an interest in the wellbeing of women and girls, and is even slightly open to challenging their current understanding with new information.
> dishonest and intellectually bankrupt
Evidence-based and built upon feminist principles, actually.
That might be true, for a while. But I bet many of us have parents that are old enough that are, in uncontroversial, non-political ways, losing their ability to view the world accurately. It's not all that easy to convince them that yes, they are in cognitive decline, and we are doing their best to consider how the version of themselves 20 years before would like us to tackle the decline.
Even in less obvious cases that don't involve old age, we often call something growth, when we should just say change. Sometimes we are all just more set our ways. Others, our "learning" is just abandoning principles so that we can follow random emotional fancies. Knowing when we are actually seeing the world more accurately, instead of being wrong in a different way, is quite challenging. We all want to think we are getting better, which is precisely whi we are blind to the ways in which we aren't. The convenient story often defeats what is actually true, but inconvenient.
At the end of the essay he says "I’d be a better startup founder today than I was in 2015" and my thought was, yea but YC is biased towards college kids. And then I saw your comment and I think something clicked for me. But maybe the ignorance and pliability of youth really is required to make the crazy bet on the startup dream.
The youth has energy and are naive and will take a bad deal. They will work hard while others will make money off their work. Also, the author is not a man.
The federation judged that even a college athlete who gets a major concussion cannot be offered a bottle of water for free, “because it could be assimilated to a wage”. No, really, college athletes are worse than unpaid.
also known as growing older ;-)