Here are two beliefs that are sort of haunting me right now:

Folk who try to push people to uphold principles (whether established ones or novel ones), are kinda an important bedrock of civilization.
Also, those people are really annoying and often, like, a little bit crazy

And these both feel fairly important.

I’ve learned a lot from people who have some kind of hobbyhorse about how society is treating something as okay/fine, when it’s not okay/fine. When they first started complaining about it, I’d be like “why is X such a big deal to you?”. Then a few years later I’ve thought about it more and I’m like “okay, yep, yes X is a big deal”.

Some examples of X, including noticing that…

people are casually saying they will do stuff, and then not doing it.
someone makes a joke about doing something that’s kinda immoral, and everyone laughs, and no one seems to quite be registering “but that was kinda immoral.”
people in a social group are systematically not saying certain things (say, for political reasons), and this is creating weird blind spots for newcomers to the community and maybe old-timers too.
someone (or a group) has a pattern of being very slightly dickish in some way, where any given instance is not that bad, so if you call them out for that instance, it feels out of proportion. But, they’re doing it a lot, which is adding up to a substantial cost they’re inflicting.

Society depends on having norms. Someone gotta uphold the norms. Someone gotta figure out where society is currently wrong and push for better norms.

But, it’s super uncomfortable to tell a bunch of comfortable people “hey, the behaviors you are currently doing are actually kinda bad, it’d be way better if you did this other thing.”

So, most people don’t.

The people that do, are people who are selected for a mix of “conflict-prone-ness” and “really really care about the hill that they are dying on, to an excessive degree.”

There’s a first order problem, where they are kinda more aggro than I/most-people think is worth putting up with about their pet issue. (Even if I’ve updated that “actually, that issue was quite important, I should internalize that principle”).

But there’s a second order problem that I’ve seen in at least a few cases, that goes something like:

Alice decides Principle X is important enough to make a big deal about.

People don’t seem to understand the issue. Alice explains it more. Some p...

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