I used to think of that as a conservative sentiment, but now I see it in people of all types. They just differ in the X in "X will save the world" (wokeism, markets, a return to tradition, racial purity). It's participating in totalizing "final solution" thinking
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I now interpret the warning more broadly as a) Resist the messiah complex. If you think the whole problem is yours to solve, you are part of the problem. b) Resist collectivized messianism. If you are part of a "crowdsourced" messiah that thinks it has a solution that's worse
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Not only will you personally not solve the "whole problem". Even your idea of the best collective will not. In fact, everybody alive today, taken together, tribal warring and all, will only make a small dent on a small piece of the problem, which is not even a coherent whole.
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The idea of "saving the world" goes toxically, epically wrong on the very first step. It is the very act of defining everything "broken" in the world as part of one connected big problem instead of a zillion little ones, is what creates the biggest problems.
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Find a nice bunch of people tackling a nice little piece, and then take your little piece of that little piece. Everybody alive does that too. A cohort of humanity collectively adds maybe a dozen little pieces to the problem of making the world marginally better every generation
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Even the most vaulting ambition of a single human, if grounded in legitimate capacity for doing huge things, is never "save the world" scale (and I reiterate here, that stated that way it's not just an ill-posed problem, it is a big-problem-creating posing).
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Rather appropriately, this train of thought itself randomly fragmented into 3 disjoint pieces. Glueing piece #2 here, on hyperpluralismhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1120932160259510272 …
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Piece #3 is my 3 stooges theory of what's happeninghttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1120939062188097539 …
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The world is not yours to save. You have an obligation to NOT try to save it.
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End of conversation
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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