Ducking political problems requires forgetting one ever chose to duck

Evidence

Even if volunteers had calculated the cost of caring about the wider world, they would have had to forget that they ever did the calculating if they were to keep their belief in democracy afloat. Perhaps in deeply private moments, individual volunteers scanned a set of options before deciding to work on more ”do-able” issues instead of less do-able ones; and then forgot ever having made this calculation. But even if that is true, that process of political evaporation is itself interesting: they had to forget that they had convinced themselves not to care, and, lest they risk discouraging anyone else, the more public the context, the harder they had to try to make themselves forget. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 621

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the Ulysses/Sirens analogy from Elster’s Ulysses and the Sirens as pure rational precommitment; real-world self-censorship must be automatic and self-erasing. — connects to: Political violence can install self-censoring avoidance of future commitment — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 566
• DEEPTHINKING: Names a mechanism — the forgetting of one’s own pragmatic renunciation of care — that explains how avoidance becomes cultural and invisible to its practitioners.
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 621

Broader Connections

• Political violence can install self-censoring avoidance of future commitment #expands (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 566