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Trying to find a single explanation for the motivations of a large group of people will lead to overly simplistic explanations. In the case of the protests I e
by noelwelsh 6y ago
Trying to find a single explanation for the motivations of a large group of people will lead to overly simplistic explanations.
In the case of the protests I expect people are turning out for at least a few different reasons:
* this is an issue they are concerned about, and now there seems to be sufficient attention on it to actually cause change;
* this is an issue they are concerned about, and they have nothing else to do given the coronavirus lockdown;
* they're bored and it could be fun;
* it could be an opportunity to cause destruction (videos suggest a number of police see the protests in this light).
In terms of protests and riots being a symptom of a sick system, that is absolutely the case. History has many examples of change that was only brought about by the large scale demonstrations (e.g. women's suffrage, civil rights). In a better system this would not be required. Effecting change that is not in the interests of the ruling class is incredibly difficult in most of our democracies.
- austincheney 6y agoI hear what you are saying but it seems insufficient. You are suppling a carefully considered highly cognitive set of decisions as answers to qualify non-cognitive group convergence. For example anger/dissent and group convergence are completely orthogonal. This is probably a form of conservatism, which is logical considerations as evidence to qualify behaviors after the fact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_(belief_revision) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_(belief_revisio...
- noelwelsh 6y agoI'm using my own experience attending protests. As someone who is concerned about a number of issues, but not sufficiently concerned to base my life around those issues, I'm willing to show up when it seems my presence will contribute to an effort large enough to be noted. My observations of others at these events is that there are many different motivations. Some people base their identity and social life around protesting. Some people are there for related but distinct causes (e.g. when protesting the Iraq invasion we marched ahead of a group who carried signs calling for Palestine to be freed). Some show up to take selfies to show their friends.
- austincheney 6y agoWere you attending protests about systemic racism or police brutality before two weeks ago? They were certainly there to participate in.
- noelwelsh 6y agoI'm in the UK. I cannot recall any recent protests against racism or police brutality (apart from the current ones) that I might have joined. There probably have been some, because racism and police brutality are certainly issues in the UK, but they did not get enough coverage to register with me. The most recent protest, prior to the current ones, that I can recall is the Extinction Rebellion. The most recent protest I did attend was against leaving the EU, for which one of my motivations for attending was to take a stand against the xenophobia that I see as a core part of the Brexit platform.
- thebean11 6y agoIt seems perfectly rational, or if not rational at least intuitive, that momentum of a movement would increase participation from people who already agreed with the movement, but weren't doing anything about it. I guess I'm not totally sure what point you're trying to make, what's your theory exactly?
- austincheney 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23427232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23427232 People are coalescing into groups more so for non cognitive behaviors than for deliberate premeditated concerns but when confronted by that reasoning deflect. When confronted they don’t deny it or excuse it but instead argue defense of positions that were never in question.