I think there are probably two main criticisms of slacktivism: the one is that its motivated by vanity and public performance rather than by actual caring, and the other is that the mere appearance of action comes to stand in for actual action. Ill address the former first. If the intention is what matters, then all the well-meaning people who say Oh, Id love to help, but Im just barely making it myself would be virtuous, and all the people who actually do something, but who take excess pride (however you define that) in doing so do not. I think thats wrong. Here, Ill take the consequentialist over the Kantian line, but with an Aristotelean addition: Getting people to act like decent people through public performance, praise, and external motivations is good not only because it produces good results, but also because it helps to develop habits of charity and to produce an internal incentive structure that mirrors this external one. Regarding the latter, the basic claim is similar to the particular notion of compassion fatigue. The model is that we store up a certain amount of giving a shit and then discharge that compassion, after which the well, run dry, must be given time to refill. I reject the well model, and would prefer to put forth a muscle model. In my view, the more you use your compassion, the more developed it becomes. Its true that momentary fatigue may be involved, but we would be just as wrong to say that clicking and commenting means less action as we would be to say that going to the gym makes you less athletic. And this is not merely a theoretical claim, but one with empirical support: those who engage in slacktivism are more likely to engage in activism than those who do not. This, of course, makes sense on the social capital model as well. Another way to put my view here is in Freudian terms. The common view of slacktivism is that it is a cathartic action which mis-spends our stored ability to care on actions which help no-one. I think the right view, however, is in accord with Freuds discussion of cathexis—what we are doing through these actions is engaging in an emotional *investment* which forms an attachment to an object of ongoing care. This is not a flowing-out of energy, but a taking-in of an object of love; a way of learning to care about a new thing as ours. This points up a, to my knowledge, hitherto ignored part of the effectiveness (affectiveness?) of the challenge—in the shock of the ice and by undergoing this trial, it will be hard for these participants not to think of this as one of *their* issues, as one of *their* charities. Not unlike running or undergoing other physical trials for charity.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 01:09:57 +0000