Lifestyle Radicals: The Parasites Who Will Destroy Our Civilization If We Let Them
Consider for a moment two paradoxes in modern politics (I have chosen, intentionally one from both left and right wing issues):
1. It is a well established fact that nuclear power can turn our electric system nearly perfectly carbon neutral (Proof: France). Yet, seemingly paradoxically, many (but not all) of the environmentalists most concerned about climate change are also strongly opposed to using this already developed and proven solution to the problem.
2. It is a well established fact that unwanted pregnancies, and the abortions that go with them, can be massively reduced by providing sex education in middle and high schools, and by making a variety of contraception methods available for free and over the counter. Yet in a similar seeming paradox, many (but certainly not all) of the pro-life opponents of abortion also oppose sex-ed and distribution of contraception particularly to children in middle and high schools.
Question: What is the cause of these paradoxes?
Answer: Environmentalism and the Pro-Life movement, are infected with a certain class of parasite that I call "Lifestyle Radicals". They are not the only such political or social causes that suffers such an infection, but they are probably the most visible easily diagnosed examples. So what is a Lifestyle Radical?
Lifestyle Radical: (N), A person who uses a cause or public problem to advocate, as a solution for that problem, a coordinated lifestyle change or social change despite the fact that other, non-social, non-lifestyle mediated solutions can be demonstrated to be either sufficient or superior. The Lifestyle Radical sabotages the agenda of the larger cause and thus functions as a parasite diverting resources and attention from more viable solutions to his lifestyle or social agenda. [1]
When one understands the concept of Lifestyle Radical parasites, the reason for their resistance to certain potential solutions to the issues they have attached themselves to (nuclear power, sex ed and contraception in the above examples) becomes only too plainly clear: These solutions actually solve their respective problems WITHOUT large scale rearrangement of the way people live their lives!!!!!!! Nobody would have to install efficient light bulbs! Nobody will have to give up casual sex! Nobody would have to turn off their lights on Earth Day! Nobody will have to get married and live in a traditional nuclear family! Nobody would need to know, or care, how much energy their house was using relative to their neighbours! Nobody will get to feel morally superior! Nobody would have to feel guilty about being Caucasian westerners living in a consumerist culture! What about the Children‽ What about the Baby Seals‽
The LAST THING Lifestyle Radicals want is a viable, non-social, non-participatory, solution to problems that could be adopted in such a way that 99% of the population wouldn't even notice. Not coincidentally, these solutions that they dislike are also the approaches that WORK. (Mark that, we'll come back to it in a moment). Lifestyle Radicals are ultimately not about solving problems because a solved problem provides no excuse for them to promote their target-lifestyle.
So how do we fight Lifestyle Radicals? They are parasites, and as with all parasites, the key is to promote an immune response that will induce their hosts to reject or expel them. The trick to recognizing Lifestyle Radicals is built right into the above definition: they divert resources and attention from superior non-social and non-participatory solutions. This is the part that makes Lifestyle Radicals parasites, and it's the one trait that they all share and that they can't shed. Therefore, we should encourage organizations to develop antibodies that target that exact trait. The trick to that is simple education. The following are FACTS (A fact is defined as something true in a manner wholly independent of politics.):
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Lifestyle change requires behaviour change which in turn is EXPENSIVE, HARD, POLARIZING, VIOLENCE-INDUCING, and SLOW. Examples prove the point: It is impossible to get users to not open every little attachment emailed to them. It is hard to stop people from harbouring racial or sexual stereotypes. It is intensely difficult to get people to actually work-out even after they have already spent good money on a gym membership. It has been agonizingly slow to reduce the rate of smoking in the US from 40% to 15%... literally taking half a century and tens of billions of dollars.
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Technology changes do not require behaviour choices and thus are CHEAP, EASY, INVISIBLE, NON-RESISTED, and FAST. Once again, examples prove the point: It was easy to make sure every computer in the world was sold with antivirus software pre-installed upon it. It was easy to make discrimination based on race and gender illegal (law IS a technology). It is amazingly easy to get people to exercise if they are catching Pokemon while doing it. It was instantaneously fast with trivial expense to require cigarettes be sold with filters and only slightly more expensive and slow to make a myriad of safer nicotine delivery systems from patches, to gum available (and indeed the bulk of the reduction in smoking rates can be attributed to these tools rather than behavioural out-reach efforts).
These two facts, combined with the understanding that Lifestyle Radical are parasites, constitute a vaccine that will allow organizations to mount an immune response to clear their own ranks of Lifestyle Radicals. They'll do this, even if they are not opposed to the lifestyle agenda of the Lifestyle Radical. It's simply not in their own interests to be used for such an agenda because such organizations exist to achieve objectives, and lifestyle and social methods are just about the worst methods available to achieve anything at all!
The wider we can disseminate these simple facts, the more various organizations can harden themselves to infestation by Lifestyle Radicals.
Note how disseminating these facts does not itself cause one to become a Lifestyle Radicals one's self. I'm not advocating FOR any particular direction of progress. I am merely educating you about proven methods that work, and proven methods that fail, when it comes to achieving progress in any direction. If you find that there's somebody in your organization that refuses to accept strategies and tactics that are successful towards your stated and shared goals, and instead doggedly sticks to failing approaches... well, now that you can recognize such a person and understand the danger that they represent to the organization and its goals... I'm sure you'll figure out, all on your own, how to deal with them!
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Notes:
- Many people will, at about this point, speak out loudly about the many worthy things that have been achieved with social and lifestyle changes... that's not the point. It is the rejection of better solutions in favour of social and lifestyle change as a method for achieving something else that is the point where Lifestyle Radicals become parasites. If you are in favour of a lifestyle or social change yourself, but don't want to be a parasite on other causes, then start a movement with NO OTHER GOALS. I imagine it will look something like a religion.