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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

voting is a form of trust. If you can not trust, then why vote? I am suggesting everyone boycott these popularity contests and stick to actual change within their communities. the effort they spend on this bullshit could go a lot further elsewhere...

the problem i see with all your arguments here stem from your manichaean approach. for you it's all "good vs. evil", and everything has a moral weight, but it's not just that, but it's Absolute Good vs. Absolute Evil, so you must not only take sides but you must take them in an absolutist way. you're saying "my way or the highway", basically.

reality however doesn't work that way. it's delusional to pin moral judgments on non-human events. most good and most evil fall into a huge grey area. and then good actions have bad consequences, bad actions have good consequences, you try to fix something and something else breaks. there are unintended outcomes from every act. so it's a constant struggle. "bad people" can do good things and "good people" often do shitty stuff. there are no absolutes.

and then, in order to make changes with large numbers of people you must make compromises. human progress is a slow, hard road. you cannot "impose good" instantly, by will. as if you had some kinda transforming ray. so it's a struggle, but it's not the absolutist one you imagine it is. and those who have tried to imposed absolute good (with various "revolutions") have ultimately unleashed terror upon the populations they sought to redeem: robespierre, mao, pol pot, the ayatollahs, the madman hitler, lenin, stalin, castro, etc., etc.