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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

> "why do you even care about this?" or "why is this so important to you?"

This is my tactic as well. I'm in New England and a coworker was once distraught that someone dismantled a statue in the south. I asked if they had any idea that the statue existed beforehand? They did not.

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I would imagine it's less about any given statue and more about it being indicative of a kind of cultural revolution. It's not necessarily a bad tactic, though imagine asking people if they knew George Floyd existed before the video. If people followed that heuristic and didn't get worked up into a frenzy then we wouldn't have had the riots and largest YoY increase in homicides in US history. Though I think the video was more a catalyst for unleashing the pent up frustrations of a populace forced under house arrest, living in fear of a virus, economic uncertainty, etc.

A person’s life has value, even if we aren’t aware of them.

So does a statue, just not as much.

Getting distraught about the destruction of something symbolic or culturally meaningful without knowing about it first before-hand is perfectly normal.

I found out about many of the artifacts for the first time in [1] after they were destroyed and was still upset by it.

Your question does not adequately reflect why someone should or should not care about something.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita...

"Why is this so important to you?" only works if you're asking someone who isn't already having an emotional knee-jerk reaction to something. Once they're past that state, questioning their position will probably just lead to them doubling down.

But maybe they did have a good reason to be distraught, they just couldn't articulate it.

This can backfire too, as often people are just looking to rant/complain as a means of venting.

Eg someone's frustrated with some problem they're facing, to shift their attention from that they instead start ranting about an irrelevant problem elsewhere in the world. Then you go and shut them down by asking them why they care.

It's important to recognize that their anger being irrelevant towards the issue also means that there isn't much lost by letting them vent.

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