this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
68 points (93.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43970 readers
693 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If your political opinion begins with "why don't we just..." then its a bad political opinion.
If we could just, we would have already just. If you think you're the only one with the capacity to see a simple answer - newsflash, you're not a political genius. Its you who doesn't understand the complexity of the problem.
My partner lacked political engagement until his 30s for reasons so he occasionally has these hot takes. But he expresses them to me and I do feel bad because he's not coming at it from an arrogant perspective. It's ignorance, some naivete and also exasperation at a whole lot of shit things.
I have to gently explain to him why XYZ isn't that simple or black and white, or why his idea doesn't work - and the answer to that, 9 times out of 10, is 'because money/rich people/greed/lobbyists/nimbyism'.
I'm just slowly chipping away at his innocence and it feels bad.
Its great that you're helping to inform him! I have found the people who know the most about politics and global issues tend to talk less and listen more.
My responses to him are always prefaced with a big sigh. Because whatever I'm about to tell him is negative. And he often concludes with 'so how can you care about this/why do you give a shit if it's pointless' and I'm finding it harder and harder to answer that question.
Ignorance truly is bliss
Adam Savage had a bit where he pointed out there is practically zero times when to you should start a sentence with "why don't you just". My first instinct is to patiently listen & respond but I'm slowly turning into "why don't you just stop, think & rephrase that"
I've always interpreted "why don't we just X?" as a shorter way of expressing "I think I would like X. Is this a good idea? If not, why? If yes, what are the barriers to making it happen?"