#i am prepared to risk being misunderstood to write this anyway because i'm seeing a lot of warning signs in people

[wild-at-mind]

Saw a post yesterday that I got the meaning of but thought the execution was a little misguided. Basically it was saying that you shouldn't shame people for not proving with posts that they are doing all kinds of activism around the war in I/P. But it said you shouldn't do this because maybe they are doing super secret potentiall illegal activism and it's not safe to post about. When in fact I would argue much more generally- stop writing things that attempt to shame people for not 'doing enough' activism-wise AT ALL.

I really don't get this because I've been involved in environmental activism groups for the past 4 years and the most common thing people criticise environmental activist causes for is focusing too much on individual change. (Whether this if fair or not is debatable- sometimes yes, sometimes it's definitely in bad faith, sometimes people are projecting massively, and also often they are talking about some manner of corporate activism or token 'good faith' gesture from big companies that doesn't do much and that environmental activists are alsp criticising.) Therefore now there seems to be a big resurgence in trying to make individuals feel terrible until they put their nose to the grindstone enough to solve huge, monumentally vast conflicts, I am fucking confused. Ok I am being a little flippant here but I keep seeing people who are clearly feeling quilt tripped out of their minds about not doing enough. It is very concerning. What exactly do these ranty posters expect???

There was a period in 2016-2017 where I was really trying to be more involved in activism for a number of social justice issues, but I was also in a massive depressive episode and dealing with a lot of issues with black and white thinking. The way a lot of posts on tumblr were worded like 'hey you! Fuck you because everything you're doing or may even contemplate doing in future regarding activism is wrong somehow! Oh what you feel lonely and isolated? Well don't even think about mixing with anyone local to you who cares about similar issues because what if they disagree with you slightly??? That can't happen! Best not risk it.'

I don't know why people write stuff like this but I honestly find it basically locks up my brain until I can't do anything at all. And judging by some of the recent posting I've seen on here I'm not the only one. I'm not so affected now because I'm on better meds, and now I know a lot of activists IRL which has helped. Once I had recovered from the depressive episode I started getting involved in local environmental activism, as that is the main type of activism around here, and ignored the little voice in my head that I learned from tumblr saying I should get involved in more social justice oriented causes (which plain don't exist round here FYI). Turns out that people who care about one cause care broadly about most, even if they don't always get it right, and being in activist spaces in person helped me turn off the 'oh my god what if these people are...imperfect??!' inner monologue.

No one should have to justify their level of activism to you or anyone else. I'm not even going to give reasons why they may not be able to do more because everyone already knows and also because the whole line of thinking is flawed. Not posting about something does not make you complicit in it. Not exposing yourself constantly to the most disturbing and horrible news coming out of Gaza does not mean you are looking away from injustice. If your brain says that then flip the script on yourself- tell yourself that you personally looking at these things does not help anyone in Gaza. You feeling like shit helps no one.

I think people are much more able to stand up for causes they believe in when they are not being ground down by miserable guilt tripping. I think anyone who wants to avoid this needs to also avoid going along with the logic of these posts. Whether someone is doing a tonne of secret activism or no activism- it's not my business, and it's not for me to try and judge their heart and mind. Or for any of us.