Some examples of things where “raising awareness” crowds out actually addressing a thing would go a long way toward helping me believe the argument.
In the area of sexual assault the “raising awareness” crowd focuses on narratives like rape culture and makes it very hard for any researcher who wants to study which interventions actually work because when they publish that one intervention that people believe in doesn’t work, they might get attacked for being unwoke.
Nobody, invested into raising awareness of mercury poisoning but they invested into raising the awareness of problems with CO2. The Obama EPA managed to do great work on reducing mercury poisoning but little progress on CO2.
But for most people, direct action isn’t really possible, beyond being more aware of it, supporting it financially, and reacting more compassionately when observed (aka “raised awareness”).
That’s not true. Taking direct action against homelessness is inconvenient but giving a homeless person a couch to sleep on is an action that’s available for many people. I have one friend who actually did that. The amount of impact a person has with taking direct action is a lot higher then that which most people who raise awareness of homelessness have.
More generally it’s however not competition for the same cause. When we focus on those things we can directly affect we do often focus on different causes then if we cause of what we can’t directly affect but for which we can only raise awareness. There are benefits to be gained by people putting their efforts into what they can directly affect.
I’ll fully agree that “raising awareness BADLY or raising incorrect awareness is a mistake”. Direct bad action is also a mistake, and neither has anything to do with levels of abstraction or simulacra.
Note that I also agree that there are PLENTY of cases where direct action on a topic is necessary and beneficial, and where “raising awareness” is unnecessary because those who can impact it are already aware, or because the awareness would be misleading.
I don’t think that generalizes at all to “we should not raise awareness” on any (or even most) topics that affect a large swath of humanity. But I’m less sure of that than I was yesterday, so thank you for the discussion.
In the area of sexual assault the “raising awareness” crowd focuses on narratives like rape culture and makes it very hard for any researcher who wants to study which interventions actually work because when they publish that one intervention that people believe in doesn’t work, they might get attacked for being unwoke.
Nobody, invested into raising awareness of mercury poisoning but they invested into raising the awareness of problems with CO2. The Obama EPA managed to do great work on reducing mercury poisoning but little progress on CO2.
That’s not true. Taking direct action against homelessness is inconvenient but giving a homeless person a couch to sleep on is an action that’s available for many people. I have one friend who actually did that. The amount of impact a person has with taking direct action is a lot higher then that which most people who raise awareness of homelessness have.
More generally it’s however not competition for the same cause. When we focus on those things we can directly affect we do often focus on different causes then if we cause of what we can’t directly affect but for which we can only raise awareness. There are benefits to be gained by people putting their efforts into what they can directly affect.
I’ll fully agree that “raising awareness BADLY or raising incorrect awareness is a mistake”. Direct bad action is also a mistake, and neither has anything to do with levels of abstraction or simulacra.
Note that I also agree that there are PLENTY of cases where direct action on a topic is necessary and beneficial, and where “raising awareness” is unnecessary because those who can impact it are already aware, or because the awareness would be misleading.
I don’t think that generalizes at all to “we should not raise awareness” on any (or even most) topics that affect a large swath of humanity. But I’m less sure of that than I was yesterday, so thank you for the discussion.