Absolutism and it's barrier to change

I'm a very motivated person. Through the prism of autism and learning the way the world works for the average person, I think that my life experiences have made me like that - If there's something I want, or want to achieve my first thought is "what do we need to do - to make this happen" and I'll own the problem, and sometimes other peoples.. because I want to help and I want to make sure I'm progressing my goals, wants and needs. 

Bear with me, I appreciate this might not immediately make sense to my subject heading. 

But, this thought process has given me a lot of really powerful tools both constructively and destructively to make stuff happen in my life. They're great when you're trying to affect change on material things, or things within your direct control and obviously less so the further away those surrounding things are to you in terms of influence. 

Over the years, this has helped me immensely with some things such as losing weight, getting a good job, buying my house, having a certain car etc. Which I'm really thankful for, but has made me really frustrated at some often small and very big things that would have such a big impact on one persons or, thousands lives but are simply unwilling to accept the reality of the situation out of principal, or inability to make a change that would perhaps benefit them in the long term. 

Sometimes, this is accepting that in order to make progress on something - you have to A. do something you don't want to / B. Accept the fact that a small change is better than no change / C. Look if the net effect of the change achieves what you want, even if the means aren't always what you'd do or want to happen.

Case in point, I'm hearing at the moment lots of people saying "what's the point in the covid jab if I can still get covid?" and it frustrates me as It's a very black and white viewpoint on it (ironic, as that's something autistic people are famous for) - my view point is, If I don't have the jab I have zero protection from the virus. And, even if I am not likely to get "seriously ill" from it and "survive it" why would I risk my health, unnecessarily? even if the vaccine had say.. a five percent protection against the virus that's five.. versus, nothing. Obviously a deeper conversation needs to be had if said vaccine has some serious side effects, and I know everyone thinks of say thalidomide and the issues that had.. but it's different. 

Just a word on vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine, barring the Pfizer vaccine are based on established vaccine science in a similar manner to how the flu jab each year (which is far-less effective, but much less questioned) works. Pfizer is different in that it's a form of gene therapy and teaches your body, what the COVID-19 proteins look like and was developed as a cancer cure/treatment. Some unease around the Pfizer would be understandable, but is a very very promising tool to tackling COVID, cancers and many other ailments to humanity.

But this absolutism, is making people sick. Even if they survive, they may pass it on to someone who does not or someone that is seriously ill. There is another issue here, that I want to tackle in another post which is short-sightedness. But anyway, slow vaccine uptake due to problems like these poses a real problem to true herd immunity which we'd only achieve at high levels of vaccination (for things like polio!) and is so easily fixed, by taking a jab which gives you (literally any, more than no) protection from serious illness. 

It's also worth noting, I understand that some are medically unable to have the jab. The number of these are so low, that is is not significant in terms of reaching heard immunity. And of course deserve understanding from others, that they are unable to be immunised. 

But, let's pivot here away from the pandemic because it's been done over and over and I just wanted to use it as an example of an "imperfect" vaccine being the key to the world getting back to normal. 

Politics. 

Yeah, I went there. Well, we're not getting knee-deep in politics here yet as that's a topic all of it's own. But, I will declare my political bias as being centre-left and that I would generally say that I am very open minded politically but my core beliefs are liberal. I'm a pragmatist, I want socialism within the reality of capitalism - anyway, back to the high-level topic.

We are at present in a real crisis, as our only credible opposition is being decimated. This partially due to a rise in populism, which is a massive problem. Seats in labour areas are being taken by conservatives, some times for the first time ever since the constituencies creation. Labour's leader seems lost and unsure where to attack the government on, for fear of piling on a government dealing with a pandemic. Their voter base bitterly divided into quarters, on Brexit and on "Blair" views vs more deeper socialism such as Corbyn's politics. 

The problem with all of this at a high level is that while Labour is dealing with this they are divided and conflicted with infighting. The other party can take charge and lead from the front, sometimes parking tanks on their front lawn (nationalising trains perhaps?) and surgically removing teeth from their manifesto. 

With no true opposition, the opposition feels free to behave how they want. There is no fear, for the loss of their jobs. They can chase populist policies, which make good headlines but that leave deep, non-sensical wounds in society. The cabinet's behaviour throughout the pandemic on this is just a perfect example of this, going to a castle and breaking covid rules during a pandemic? perfectly fine. Health secretary having an office affair with someone on the books, against covid rules? perfectly fine (yes he resigned, but Boris almost certainly didn't make him - he even said he accepted his apology and considered the matter closed). 

With all of this, you would assume that they'd all lose their jobs at the next election after all accountability is key. But polling is up and we have technically had 3-4 conservative governments in a row, with a majority at each time. There is no accountability. 

But, and my point on this issue is this: safe seats always fall to the same party. Now, that is because the majority of voters are re-electing the same MPs each election - regardless of their behaviour, or policies. Now if the majority of the country does this, then we have a massive problem - elections are won by handfuls of seats (we have over 600!) rather than hundreds. By a small set of voters, that turn up and change their allegiance.  

Our voting system is rubbish, but the only way to make it work is to use the system correctly. Vote out those that don't behave and not vote along party lines, even if it's voting for a party that has the highest potential to affect change. Voter apathy is high and turn-out is generally low (relatively speaking) showing that people don't see that they can affect any real change - and I, am one of them. Any vote for anything except for the two major parties is wasted and effectively lends a vote to your enemy, it is why I believe in spoiling my ballot and holding out for electoral reform.

I'm seeing lots of people turn on Labour, because they don't like Starmer. I'm not a fan either - but, as mentioned above he is our only credible alternative leader. There's no realistic hope of another party leading the country without electoral form. So, that's it. You want change? You have to accept the fact you might want a leader you don't love because - he's not as bad as the enemy. Every election that passes, we move further away from a credible opposition and until reform, it's all we've got. 

Absolutism, the search for the perfect socialist party is stopping us having even a husk of socialism now - in hopes of lots of it later, that will never happen. It's immensely frustrating to see society suffer because of it and sad to see labour seats lost to conservatives due to Brexit, I both understand it and find it immensely frustrating. 

I did declare my bias, further up in this post. But I would say this works both ways - any standing MP or councillor should be held accountable for their actions on either side of the fence. A safe seat in any party, is a bad thing - a credible threat, for the loss of their job is the only thing that will drive change. I live in a safe labour seat and don't vote for them! 

Something I've said for a while is "Any unchanging power is bad"

Wow, well.. I did go a bit deep! It's such a complex topic. The takeaway is that 20% of what you want, is better than 0%. It's how you achieve the things you want in life - or at least work at them, when they're big ones. But these are obviously massive societal changes, which I can't see changing - but.. I can do my bit and you do yours. I think about my choices in the prism of even if I don't like this now, will it make things better later? 

We have to start somewhere.. and not being able to run in the Olympics straight of the back of a year on the sofa is never realistic.

Or on a lighter note, would those pair of shoes that you like give you what you want more than the "perfect ones" you've never found?