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I think this piece really speaks to a fundamental internal conflict playing out across the challenges of our time: when issues critical to the future of humanit

I think this piece really speaks to a fundamental internal conflict playing out across the challenges of our time: when issues critical to the future of humanity are ignored by the people in power, the political systems in place refuse to regulate those in power, and your average citizen is too concerned about their day-to-day struggles to enact the systematic changes required to hold politicians and plutocrats accountable, what are we to do?

onecommentman 6y ago
I’d imagine if you truly personally believe in those projections strongly enough, then you personally need to dedicate your life to addressing the underlying causes in an effective way. By you doing something positive and concrete. Think global, act locally. But personal action here would be you actually doing something. Something positive, if you want to be taken seriously. Not suggesting others do, but you personally. When you’ve dedicated enough time (years) to that personal action, then you develop the moral authority to ask others, who have day-to-day struggles, to dedicate their limited resources to help to broaden your (now successful) action. Think Jimmy Carter. You do something direct and positive (build homes for the needy, actually hammering nails), and when that something is good, others follow. It’s a core cultural value of engineers to champion this sort of concrete strategy. I think the readers of HN lean towards the engineering side of things. Jimmy Carter was an engineer.