Voices for positive action

[rebeccmeister]

One of the biggest things that rowing has taught me is that if you become focused on the negative ("Don't look at the bottom of the boat, don't be late to the catch, don't sky your blade"), you will have a hard time making constructive changes to your rowing. When I am rowing, so much of my energy is devoted to physical movement that it can become challenging to process auditory information, and what winds up happening to many people is they wind up hearing "____ look at the bottom of the boat, ____ be late to the catch, ___ sky your blade."

Instead, effective coaches focus on the positive change they are trying to promote. Instead of "Don't slouch," they say, "Sit up tall." Et cetera.

This is something I have a hard time dealing with in the current political climate. Many people are having strong reactions to all of the proposals for radical changes that are spewing out of the big house in Washington, DC. Yes, we'd like to put on the brakes. But what do we have to offer instead as an alternative? This is just as important, if not more important, than shooting stuff down. There need to be constructive visions for change. Policies and platforms.

Here, for instance, is a proposed idea that California take the lead on single-payer health care.

Where do you see evidence of strong voices pushing for positive action?

Comments

[sandokai.livejournal.com]

True but it's hard not to want the alternative to be a Democrat in the White House.

[annikusrex.livejournal.com]

one example i've seen lately is california pushing its weight around: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/business/energy-environment/california-upholds-emissions-standards-setting-up-face-off-with-trump.html

it's hard when positive change would mostly require massive collective action. one can dream up all sorts of policy ideas but putting them into action on any sort of scale requires political power. so i would think people working to put people into office would count.

[scrottie]

This is something I'm trying to straighten my thoughts out on.

You can get an echo chamber going for something positive. A lot of people will "like" in support but I suspect that they're thinking to themselves, "good luck, you're going to need it".

When positive things are tanked by selfish interests, people really don't notice. That's the normal scenario. Some people will try to use that situation to affect change -- "see, this elected person backstabs us every time, so we need to do better than voting straight ticket". That's concrete, but it isn't positive. And if efforts get tanked, people tend not to re-volunteers or follow movements. They follow things when they succeed, even if in some small way (eg successfully putting up art, or successfully creating conversation, even if nothing immediately changes).

Only posting positive stuff, you get pegged with the hippie stereotype, where anything other than what's currently happening is quickly and easily branded as unrealistic.

But you need a posse to draw from to find people to help with efforts (eg, putting up art, or guerilla way-finding signs), and a posse, at a certain size, starts venting hopes, frustrations, complaints of betrayals, discussion of strategy, etc.

Any positive message encounters huge amount of resistance. "If you aren't going to vote, instead vote for the hopeless candidate you like" quickly gets attached and framed as a negative.

Mostly people are realistic and know enough to round-down to knowing that they aren't going to affect anything (but will likely vote straight ticket in the general) and don't even want to hear about it.