There’s a lot of people on here who are part of what I’d call losing causes, causes that run counter to the consumerist capitalist mono-culture, I.e. socialism, veganism, FOSS, anti-car urbanism, even lemmy and the fediverse.
I want to know what made you switch from being a sympathizer to an active participant. I believe it’s important for us to understand what methods work in getting people involved in a movement that may not have any immediate wins to motivate people to join.
EDIT: A lot of people objecting to my use of losing so I’ll explain more, all of these causes benefit from popularity and are weakened by there lack of adoption and are thus in direct competition with the capitalist consumerist mono-culture, a competition which they are currently losing.
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Socialism on a small scale cannot solve the inherent issues of a capitalism that surrounds it.
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Veganism benefits from more people becoming vegan and restaurants and grocery stores providing vegan options.
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FOSS, or more specifically desktop Linux, benefits from more people being on it and software developers designing for and maintaining applications for it.
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The more people that use transit, the more funding it gets and the better it gets.
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the fediverse benefits from more people veing on it and more diverse communities so those with niche interests besides the above causes can find community here.
On the flip side the capitalist consumerist alternatives to all of these benefit from there popularity and thus offer a better value to most people. The question is about what made you defer that better immediate material value in favor of something else.
I still object to your definition of losing. Ethics diets are on the rise, and if Linux became less popular at any point that’s new information to me. I’d say we’re underdogs but things are going well.
As for actually answering, I think I just have a weird attachment to abstract conceptual correctness. Or rather, other people don’t seem to, and that’s why they can ignore things like animal welfare and creepy digital mega-corporations even if they know, on some level, that it’s inconsistent with their stated priorities and values.
I’ve always been on the fringes, as a child even, hard science fiction with nobody to discuss with. Making your own decisions based on the best data, changing my mind on data, but not consensus, this were the early memories in my life. The great hard core scifi authors echo this message over and over, really hammer it in.
While these may not be losing causes, they are not mainstream… and in relaxed wisdom of years I realize not being mainstream doesn’t mean wrong, but nobody is incentivized to push them. All we know of human history is what survived in writings scattered around, lucky enough to survive the ravages of time… being the crazy guy who writes everything down, makes copies of all their books, has two libraries in different locations… wasn’t a popular choice I’m sure, but it was the choice that survived.
Open Source - This is intensely popular, not by sales, but by what survives and gets used for decades. The perfect algorithm locked in a dusty cabinet doesn’t advance humanity long term, imperfect open source that echos forward because its open and free does… This is why i think the permissive licenses are for software that will have the biggest impact.
Ketogenic - Very unpopular, fringe and rejected by traditional consensus, but the benefits are actually there.
Lemmy - It’s not a losing cause, its just got low marketing… its the only way for open communication to last into the future. If it ain’t federated it might as well be written in the sand.
I wouldn’t say Palestine is a losing cause. All the ones I listed are minoritarian, some in the low single digit percentage of people, especially in the US. A majority of people in the US and a large majority of the world want a ceasefire. It’s not failing due to lack of popular support, its failimg because a small minority of very powerful people really want this genocide.
Because I’d rather be right than win. Nice to be both, but the former is a higher priority for me.
I wouldn’t really consider any of those ‘losing causes.’
None of us have a crystal ball and know what the future will bring.
