Think part of it too is that it can be hard to see how to effectively take action beyond voting. And for many people that - and small to moderate financial contributions - is really the only effective thing you can do. Which is hard to deal with given the stakes.
FWIW I think also a non-trivial amount also getting mad at folks who are making the world better in small steps because it reminds them that raging about it online isn't making the world better /at all/
I think it legitimately drives people insane that their neighbor who is cringe, actually votes, and donates $20 a month to a cause they like is actually doing more to make society better than someone typing in all caps how they will lead the revolution
fwiw, it's also the same basic dynamic as all those dads for whom "being a good dad" is this one giant performance of guns to protect their family (or prepping or whatever) but mundane systematic tasks like loading the dishwasher or getting kids ready for school is beneath them
the world is made better by a lot of people doing the work to do little steps in the right direction, not by one person shouldering the entire weight of the world in one giant push. But folks fantasize about the latter because it lets them be the main character, and hate the former which denies it.
I often imagine a movie where the hero dies at the end, after which a 6th-Sense-type reveal shows that all the hero’s successes were only due to the ordinary actions of background characters, and the hero was finally done in by no longer having anyone else around. But people would hate it.
(Wakes up after death in morgue)
Angel: so you know how you had five senses
Me: taste touch sight smell and
Angel: hearing, yes
Me: ok
Angel: so good news you've got a sixth sense now
Me: oh cool like invisibility
Angel: balance. It's sense of balance
Me: ...
Angel: ...
Me: ...
Angel: you're welcome
In parallel also that if A Great Push is attempted and doesn't work well, at least you did your part and tried and now you're done whereas the real work of lots of little things always has both victories and defeats so you don't get to righteously quit.
George Eliot, Middlemarch:
...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Incrementalism is also sustainable. When you organize to achieve one policy goal, you end up building the political infrastructure to get the next one. And the one after that. If one person gets tired or leaves there are others to take their place, no one person becomes irreplaceable in the movement
Look at how many people live in disorganised hell, because they can't bring themselves to put things "properly away", when they could achieve that by just moving things "closer to away" each time they go in the right direction.
Or by putting 5 things away today and 5 things away tomorrow and 5 things away the day after that until they eventually reach the point where the 5 things you put away today are the same ones you took out today
This review of a book on the apparently rather dry topic of municipal socialism arrived in my inbox this morning, and it seems absolutely relevant here, about lots of people doing small steps in their own places: www.h-net.org/reviews/show...
I was just having a similar discussion on Mastodon and thought of the same parallel! Democratic practise, like parenting, is a huge and constant task, and isn't fulfilled by discharging one single task, like voting or handing out weekly pocket money.
