Jul 02 2008
The Totalist Mentality: The Activist’s Worst Enemy
The habit that can most readily undermine a free-market activist is – to coin a new term – the totalist mentality. The totalist thinks of everything in all-or-nothing terms. Either he must accomplish the entirety of his agenda and have all of his expectations fulfilled, or the results he gets are not worthwhile at all.
Reality does not work that way. Rather, all changes happen incrementally, and most differences in the world are differences of degree and not of kind. (This is not to say that differences of kind do not exist; they do, just not to the extent the totalist believes.) The key to successful activism is to work for movement in the correct direction, and try to make that movement of sufficiently substantial magnitude to more than compensate for any countervailing forces. Lamenting the state of affairs or the state of other people’s minds because they are not already at your ideal goal state is futile and will defeat your efforts.
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II
Editor-in-Chief, The Rational Argumentator: http://rationalargumentator.com
Writer, Associated Content: http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/46796/g_stolyarov_ii.html
Author, Implied Consent, A Play on the Sanctity of Human Life: http://rationalargumentator.com/impliedconsent.html
Author, A Rational Cosmology: http://rationalargumentator.com/rc.html
Author, The Best Self-Help is Free: http://rationalargumentator.com/selfhelpfree.html
