Centrism.md

⚠️ Content warning: some subjects of the page are thoroughly riddled with bright propaganda that has people raging and preaching all over the networks and sometimes offline.

While I do try to approach the issue with a cool head, I’m bound to upset somebody who happens to have already adopted a system of values that conflicts with my own. Amusingly, this would very likely happen regardless of the views I hold, as no two people are alike. Some consider this to be an indication of strength of their beliefs, a point of pride. I consider that folly out of arrogance and inclination to oversimplify.

Proceed with caution. If you can’t, navigate away from this page elsewhere right now.

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Still with me? Okay.

I often very much want people to care less about things. Especially things they don’t know much about but yet feel obligated to have a strong opinion on.

I have a complicated relationship with politics. I haven’t found myself to be in agreement with any specific political movement. Many of them have strong points, but get very slippery as the same principles are applied indiscriminately across the entire political landscape. Not by everyone, but by sufficiently many that make arguments for their favorite political direction.

I’ve found that much of what I prefer value-wise can be labeled “moderation”, in the very literal sense of the word, a process of being moderate, pushing people to care less. Because from what I can tell, the most distress is caused by people aggressively pushing beliefs that aren’t even theirs — but prevalent in their social circles or picked up on a whim from a source that looked trustworthy enough.

It is a somewhat nihilistic position grounded in rational reasoning that helps minimize stress in interactions with people. Which some would call selfish, in a very literal sense of the word — for the benefit of “self”, with no negative connotations intended. (…because over the years the word “selfish” became synonymous with “too selfish” for whatever the speaker wishes to claim to be a shared value.)

Centrism

This approach, when put towards just about every ideology with a name on it, turns out to pull against it. Because it happens with practically every ideology, the point being pulled towards is a center of sorts. Hence the name, centrism.

This position makes any sorts of extreme ideologues very unhappy and is usually laughed at by them as “equivalent to not having an opinion at all” based purely on not wanting to hopelessly engage in a debate with them. The good news is that most of the sincere ones aren’t extreme, are actually open to discussing specific points and acknowledge assumptions, weaknesses and trade-offs in their beliefs. These are people you can actually learn something from.

When it comes to action, there is only so much a person can be savvy in and can cause any significant impact. I think the best use of time is picking a few areas of focus and mostly ignoring the rest. Now, how many areas to pick will absolutely depend on an individual. But it’s not a single choice, it’s an ongoing process with areas entering and leaving the focus area as time goes on and the world around changes.

Opinions of others

When faced with dry criticism backed by evidence, it’s sometimes easy to slip into an idea that the other side is just trying to bash you and make you feel miserable in order to stroke their own wounded ego.

Ironically, it can also be the exact opposite: a way to protect your wounded ego by assuming they care so much to hurt yours. Unless you have a serious leverage over their resources, they probably don’t care. Neither should you.

Try taking criticism for what it says. Don’t be afraid to discover something bad about yourself — it’s uncomfortable, but it’s how we get better. Comfort yourself with the thought that an honest investigation might in fact prove the critic wrong. It’s a win either way.

Oppressed minorities

Being queer or of a particular race or gender should not be a burden. That said, it should not be a benefit either.

I like to think about the systemic oppression and reaction to it as a pendulum, and I choose to pull it towards a stable neutral position that, by and large, doesn’t care about traits of the person that don’t pertain to the subject of specific discussion, job position or any other scope that would inherently involve traits of their personality. There aren’t actually that many of those (percentage-wise).

Some consider this a form of oppression, through inaction in the face of oppressive forces. I disagree — the victims of said oppression just aren’t the target of my efforts and so they never get to observe me help them. Because the oppression forces are. Because I’m certain this will withstand the test of time much better than pushing the pendulum in a particular direction at all times. Because that, in time, will just swing the pendulum the other way and oppress another group. Quite possibly, to the same or even greater extent. So in a rush to solve one problem we may create another.

How do you stop a physical pendulum with minimal risk of swinging it even harder the other way? I find in the physical world the easiest strategy is to pull when it starts moving towards the center. And it will, in the absence of other forces. So step 1 is to weaken those forces, step 2 is to carefully guide it towards a stable equilibrium. If we instead reach a point of equilibrium with several forces pushing against each other, the situation will be highly unstable and any party’s weakness is going to crash the thing right into them.

My stand is against needless exclusion, not inclusion. They’re close, but not quite the same. Inclusion seems to often boil down to representation rather than acceptance.

Self-undermining “activists”

I’ve encountered people that aggressively demanded preferential treatment solely because they belong to an oppressed minority, and when refused, blow up (figuratively) and start dishing out insults and baseless public accusations of supposed “bigotry” in large amounts, probably hoping to overwhelm their “adversary”.

Ironically, though they usually claim to stand against oppression, exactly that kind of behavior discredits their alleged cause. And at that point it becomes difficult to tell, whether they’re secretly conspiring to undermine that cause of theirs or are just fighting for it in their own hot-headed way without understanding that they’re making the situation worse.

When in doubt, start addressing the audience rather than the character yelling at you. And try not to slip into the idea that the entire minority is hot-headed like that based on your interactions with them. Because that’s a variant of survivorship bias that can easily trick you into frowning at people for no good reason.

Religion

Religion-wise I’m agnostic/pantheistic.

I don’t see how personifying “the powers that be” explains anything. The world is as it is. If it makes easier for someone to perceive the world as a “person” in their head, that’s their call; though they should be aware of just how little they know about that “person” to judge their motivations or intentions.

Religious texts are usually very open to interpretation or outright self-contradictory — making them seem like a convenient way to justify any course of action with a quote that should somehow carry more weight because it comes from a religious text. This is a manipulation tactic. Proverbs are used in the same way (seriously, try punching in “contradicting proverbs” into a web search engine of your choice) and in that respect can be seen as micro-religions — useful as a tool for those who know proverbs from both sides to manipulate those that don’t.

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