sylver_dragon

At this scale, the stick isn’t as solid as your intuition would lead you to believe. Instead, you have to start thinking about the force at the atomic scale. The atoms in your hand have an outer shell of electrons which you use to impart a force to the electrons in the outer atoms of the stick on your end. That force needs to be transferred atom to atom inside the stick, much like a Newton’s Cradle. Importantly, this transfer is not instantaneous, each “bump” takes time to propagate down the stick and will do so slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. It’s basically a shockwave traveling down the length of the stick. The end result is that the light will get to the person on the other end before the sequence of sub-atomic bumps has the chance to get there.

I work remote and my work has a pretty loose policy on webcams for meetings. If you don’t want it on, don’t turn it on. That said, when I am presenting or speaking, I like to have my webcam on. I personally find that the level of engagement is higher for speakers with their camera on, and so I try to extend that back to the people I am speaking to. I also find that the inclusion of visual cues helps with communications.

As for political spaces, my local congress person holds a regular townhall via telephone (not sure if she’ll keep this up if she wins the governorship this year) and I have never really felt the need to stare at her as she talks. I actually like the format as I can listen with my earbuds while doing something else. So, different situations can merit a different response.

Honestly, I think some folks make far more out of using or not using a webcam than it really merits. For those of us who are more introverted, having a camera on us can make us feel self-conscious. Though, I think using the word “trauma” to describe this is being overly bombastic. At the same time, I think there are some folks for whom the visual connection with a speaker or listener is also important and the lack visual of feedback from the other participants in the conversation makes the conversation more difficult. It’s just another of those areas where we are each going to need to make a decision based on the particular conversation and context. Interacting with other people is messy and is going to involve some level of discomfort from time to time.

Most of the folks I talk to hear agree with me that things are going wrong

That’s not surprising, though be careful on what the definition of “going wrong” is. For example, Emerson College recently put out the results of some polling part of which found that 67% of voters think the US is on the wrong track. It’s highly likely that 67% includes voters from all over the political map. But, while both a hardcore Trump/MAGA voter and a Bernie Bro voter might each say that the US is on the “wrong track”, we’d probably have trouble getting those two voters to reconcile on the color of the sky, let alone what the “right track” would be. Also, be wary of coworkers who actually just want to be left alone and will “go along to get along”. They will tacitly nod and agree with just about anything, so long as you go away and let them get back to work.

or that x,y, or z is a problem, but not enough to do anything about it.

Ok, but what is the ask? What are you expecting them to do? And why do you believe that they should be the ones doing it? Again, going back to my previous comment:
Maybe they do care about your thing, but they have their own “most important thing” and if your thing and their thing are in contention, they are going to pick their thing.

You may view things as so bad that everyone should be out in the streets protesting 24x7. They may not see it that way. They may put “protecting themselves” at a higher priority than protesting whatever it is you are upset about. This might be especially true if they have families to care for and that can drastically change how people prioritize things.

Once again, I’d go back to understanding their beliefs and priorities. Why won’t they do the thing you want them to do? It probably comes down to those beliefs and priorities being more important to them than whatever it is you are promoting. And again, I would note your complete dismissal of their point of view. They have given you some insight as to why they aren’t taking action:
" I want to do something, but I have to protect myself."

It’s clear they prioritize their personal well-being over the perceived value of whatever you are asking them to do. Why is that? What is it that you are asking them to do that they see it as risky? If your goal is to organize something, can you work to provide them the perceived safety that would get them over that hump? Do they have other issues and their answer is just a proxy to avoid an argument? I’m afraid I’m just repeating myself here; but, you need to really understand them if you want them to change their minds.

The first thing I would ask is, have you made any attempts to really understand what motivates them and why they believe as they do? Given your flippant dismissal of their belief systems, I suspect you have just mentally bucketed them and, instead of really trying to understand them, you fall back on your per-conceived notions of what you think they believe. Without that understanding, you will never be able to “make people care”, because you are not treating them as fully formed people with their own beliefs and priorities. You expect that, if you just yell at them loudly enough, they will come around. They won’t and, if anything, they will just dig their heels in further. To them, you’re this guy:

Not everyone has the same priorities you do. What you see as “the most important thing in the world” may fall much further down the list for someone else. They may not even see it in the same framing you do. Maybe they do care about your thing, but they have their own “most important thing” and if your thing and their thing are in contention, they are going to pick their thing. This is part of the reason we have politics in the first place, once you start dealing with other people and trying to decide what and how things should be prioritized and run, you are going to run into differing beliefs and priorities. It’s why most government polices generally suck and don’t get everything done. Because those policies are the result of compromise between people with different and often competing priorities. And yes, it may be that some of those other priorities come from bad information, though more often they will come from radically different base beliefs. And not understanding what those beliefs actually are means that you will not have any sort of basis for convincing them of anything.

Changing peoples’ minds is hard. But, it starts from a place of understanding people and not dismissing their beliefs. Step back from your outrage for a moment and try to really get in their heads. You may not agree with their position, but you need to understand how they got there before you have any chance of getting them out of it. And, maybe you can’t. It may just be that they have some foundational beliefs which are completely at odds with what you want to convince them of. But, if you know and understand that, it becomes much easier to walk away from the situation and not waste time and energy on a hopeless fight. And while it feels good to yell at people, that basically never works and only serves to push them further away.