I have a hypothesis related to this:
It's difficult to be outraged if you're running a system that a) takes care of your needs really well while b) making you way less a part of the problem and c) decouples you from 'the bad guys'.
I am way less mad about the bad guys now that I'm running ERE1 game, and I feel way less threatened by their shenanigans.
I also feel less of a need to be alternative. Before I found ERE I contemplated going going full DGR, or anarchist, or activist, or etc. I never did any of those things because I couldn't convince myself that any of those options were better than being a workaholic sustainability engineer. But if I'd been, idk, working some whatever job that had no connection to solving issues, I'd probably have gone further down one of those alt rabbit holes because I'd have had to do SOMETHING to take the burn off the cognitive dissonance.
But I finally feel like I've gotten my zone 0 personal life system roughly arranged in a way that's aligned with my values. And that is such an enormous mental relief that I wasn't even aware of. This is both a bug and a feature (a feature because it's nice not be so angry all the time, a bug because there's a danger of just coasting in chill mode now that I've got my own o2 mask on. Other people? what other people. Oxygen gets you high.)
And so angry and alt people who 'figure it out' become less angry and maybe less obviously alt.
And once you've been angry long enough, I think it's easy to get identified with your outrage and your alt identity, and to become very attached to the idea that we gotta take down the billionaires or whatever, and so it's hard to accept the O2 mask. It requires killing part of yourself.
https://permies.com/t/150190/change-world
Some people are devoted to 1 and/or 2. People who do 3... all of a sudden have nice lives and are busy enjoying their nice lives. I think 1 and 2 people see that and sense that there's a danger of becoming complacent, of sidelining themselves in The Good Fight.paulwheaton wrote:thing 1: Be angry at bad guys. It's a rigged playing field, but with enough people pushing hard enough all at once, there will be change. Brute force against the bad guys. It is a difficult path, but if we can get 100 million people to get to work we can do it.
thing 2: Sacrifice. If enough people suffer, the power will be stripped from the bad guys. It is a difficult path, but if we can get 100 million people to get to work we can do it.
thing 3: Viral luxuriance. All of the advantages of "thing 2" but the opposite of sacrifice. This is what I advocate. Come up with a solution that is so good that it saves people money and/or adds a lot of luxuriance to their life. The people that want change seek the change so they can get the end result and they happen to get the other benefits too. People that are less motivated by the global change angle, make the change for the direct benefits. It is an easy path, but if we can get 100 million people to get to work we can do it.
Paul wrote about being frustrated how hard it is to make option 3 actually viral, how hard it is to spread the word and get adoption. I think it's because a) so few people are going to pursue 3 enough to actually get it, and b) of those very few, even fewer are going to want to turn around and take action to spread/make the message viral.
Paul also wrote about how much he got personally attacked or ignored for putting himself out there trying to help people have nicer lives from a whole variety of people. I think it was 3 years ago he wrote about how he was done pushing so hard on spreading the message, he was just gonna take a step back and stop putting himself out there to get attacked/ignored. This dynamic is relevant to ERE2 I think...
ETA: ah, here. From 6 years ago. I'm not sure what his position is now, maybe someone else knows. But that post was before he published Build a Better World In Your Backyard so obviously he didn't permaquit.