And now we’re into the billion different schools of ethics thing again. No, I didn’t want to be responsible for the innocent people who would die as a result of this hypothetical situation where I have the ability to kick off a bloody revolution. So if there’s a way to stop fascism and techno-slavery without risking the lives of the people I would be trying to save, I would prefer to go with that option.
That option doesn’t exist, though, you’re just hiding behind vague notions of “ethics” to justify inaction.
What inaction? I’m acting locally, I’m volunteering, I’m raising my kids to be skeptical of anyone who suggests that empathy is weakness. You’re saying this like there’s an actual option that I’m choosing not to take. I’m saying, if I were somehow able to choose the way the change occurs, it wouldn’t be in a spray of bullets. But it’s not like that option is actually available to me.
You seem to be defending a position you know won’t work, though.
No. I’m advocating for us to try for the best possible version of our future. It may be inevitable, but I’m not interested in hoping for a world where we consider the loss of a hundred million people under the final spasming throes of a dying capitalist oligarchy to be an acceptable loss. Yes, it would be ultimately the oligarchs’ fault, but I still couldn’t live with myself if I were the one advocating for it.
Nobody is advocating for that, though. Revolution is very rarely that bloody, you need to look at historical example.
I was hoping that my ad absurdum example was clear. I just meant “a very large number.”
Either way, I certainly hope nobody is seriously advocating for that. It would be quite bleak if that were the only way change could ever occur.
Revolutionaries can’t just “do a revolution,” we prepare for it so we can succeed when it happens. This is how revolution has occured historically, and there isn’t really a way to avoid it with any reasonable chance of success.
