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wife and I were talking about [controversial topic] recently and trying to figure out how we feel about it – and I found myself saying, it& #39;s important that we distinguish between degrees of bad. a 39°C fever is bad, yes, and a 42°C fever needs immediate hospitalization
when triaging X cases, statements like "all X are bad" are not very helpful. the more serious a problem, the more clinical and careful you have to be with the precise meanings of your words, because mixing things up ends up depriving the worst-affected of the help they need
it& #39;s ~true that everybody is going through difficult times. the experience of pain, etc can be quite subjective
and: a person screaming about a papercut obviously doesn& #39;t deserve priority over a person who& #39;s stoically enduring a gunshot wound
and: it gets murky in the middle
and: a person screaming about a papercut obviously doesn& #39;t deserve priority over a person who& #39;s stoically enduring a gunshot wound
and: it gets murky in the middle
"deserve" is a messy word and I don& #39;t like to use it
thing is we have limited resources (time, attention, supplies) and we& #39;re forced to make difficult decisions involving trade-offs
i& #39;ve noticed that more than a few people prefer to abdicate responsibility vs taking ownership
thing is we have limited resources (time, attention, supplies) and we& #39;re forced to make difficult decisions involving trade-offs
i& #39;ve noticed that more than a few people prefer to abdicate responsibility vs taking ownership
I& #39;ve written about my own experience working through this myself. It& #39;s very real that people would rather endure F outcomes + blame others/circumstances for it, than be personally responsible for getting a D or C outcome. And all of this gets meta and murky *fast*
it& #39;s generally considered impolite to over-scrutinize people& #39;s relative agency, capability, etc. in "peacetime", we have polite fictions where we pretend there aren& #39;t huge disparities in the influence that people have over outcomes
feels like we don& #39;t live in peaceful times rn
feels like we don& #39;t live in peaceful times rn
there& #39;s also often this knee-jerk assumption that anybody talking about things like agency and power must be some kind of sociopath or fascist. I... understand the association. People tend to struggle to separate wartime/peacetime mindsets, and so groups tend to hot-swap leaders
I don& #39;t mean to judge other people poorly for their imperfect handling of crises. It& #39;s certainly tempting to do that, but I know from experience that it doesn& #39;t make anything better. We have to receive people where they are and challenge them (meaning ourselves) to be better
If you read memoirs of soldiers – and even civilians living through wartime – a sort of recurring narrative violation that emerges is that people actually kinda miss the chaos. Bad times are horrible, but they also reveal who you can really count on https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/988605782307495936">https://twitter.com/visakanv/...
I do not mean to romanticize war. As a soldier myself, I think the most important trait in a general is the desire to avoid war as much as possible, and who deeply appreciates that the fundamental point of strength is to *minimize* bloody outcomes
