Hacker News Reader

Comment by m_fayer | Hacker News Reader

I agree that it’s an outlier viewpoint but I’d love it if we moved past categorizing everything along this cartoonish left-right axis.

How about: “deep within a humanist paradigm” categorization, or something like that.

View on HN

I'm tired of this insane political activism that permeates everything, and I don't want to play dress up with it. I rather call it out when I see it.

You'd fight political activism using more political activism?

If it's political activism to say "different people can have different jobs and that's okay", then so be it. What a controversial take, I know...

I think you’re taking the “job” bit too literally. As someone else said, “responsibility” might be a better term. We all act (vote, talk, help, purchase etc) and have the ability to do so in a way which is ethically informed. You could say it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that the important jobs are being done by someone.

Yes, we all have a various moral obligations. Do all of us have a "responsibility" to make the world safe for our most vulnerable individuals? No. A barista will make a hot coffee when asked, knowing it can hurt people who might spill it. A barista does not have a "responsibility" to make only medium-heated coffee. At the same time, there are people in the world who try to make good tradeoffs with regards to coffee temperature (e.g. MacDonalds corporate, or lawmakers setting an upper limit to allowed coffee temp). So at the same time, one person might make an effort to make coffee safe for vulnerable persons, while another person might just have a responsibility to serve coffee at whatever temperature was decided by the other people. Different people can have different responsibilities in the world.

I'm tired of the activism too. I would love to have less of that and more complex discussion that acknowledges the myriad takes on political organization, political economy, economics, basic ethics, etc. that are out there. Forcing everything into left-vs-right isn't calling out activism, it's turning discussion into ideological conflict.

I think you have a point here and maybe my conduct here wasn't the best.

Thanks for saying that, I’ll try to remember for when it’s me in your place.

You realize that is also a political position? You can't escape politics. Being against political activism just means you're pro status quo.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com