“I’m knittin’ like a fuckin electric nan”
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It’s small now, but growing. You can’t scroll infinitely for new content. It’s grown a lot in the time I’ve been here. The smallness can be a positive if you work to have genuine interactions with people. There’s no “karma” and some instances have disabled down votes entirely. You have sometimes subscribe to more than one community of the same topic (each on a different instance).
You aren’t exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. “The Left” commonly answers the second with an idea called ‘eternal revolution’. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”? See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
Protests aren’t always for the “benefit” of nonparticipants, as much as for those taking part. Being surrounded by people with the same concerns as you who are also willing to take some kind of action is very heartening. Not only does it bring joy to people who may otherwise feel powerless or overwhelmed, it presents opportunities for making connections for further organizing.
Without public protests, you may have a lot of individuals that believe they are alone in their outrage. Feeling this, nobody will ever act and so be defeated without ever fighting at all.
You see it as lying. Most people do not. What you are interested in may seem “random” to the other person and vice versa. You have to start somewhere in order to find that common interest. As the main comment said, you can look for clues like maybe they’re wearing the T-shirt of a band you also like. I agree that you should not be pretending or feigning interest. You should be trying to genuinely find areas of common interest.
It’s good that you know what you desire and value. It might help you to understand that many (most?) people do not consider small talk to be dishonest in any way. Think of it like this: I see someone who sparks my interest and I want to get to know them better. Let’s say I walk straight up to them and say “I saw you and you sparked my interest, and I’d like to get to know you better.” OK, well what comes next? How do you get to know someone (total stranger) better? It’s going to involve talking about random stuff until (hopefully) you both end up feeling comfortable with each other. The other thing is about that first part (“I saw you/wanna get to know you”) is heavily implied by you walking over and saying hello.
Nothing says you have to believe the same thing everyday, or even moment to moment. Think of your spirituality as kind of story, or a painting, or a song that you sing to yourself. Wouldn’t it be boring to sing the same song every day? There isn’t just one “greatest” song/poem/story/painting because you can’t fit all human experience or emotion into just one of them. I like to treat spirituality this way. Play with your relationship to life’s mysteries. Make an art of it to entertain and comfort yourself.
To be clear, I have some core values that I don’t change, and these inform my politics and how I interact with other people. When it comes to things like death, “the meaning of life”, the origins of the universe etc, I’m most comfortable with fluidity.