Distractivism

page type::article thing type::activity thing type::concept thing type::manipulative tool

About
Distractivism is any form of activism that serves primarily as a distraction, either to raise morale (without actually improving circumstances) or to prevent people from carrying out actions that run counter to the goals of the "distractivist" (i.e. the entity promoting the distractivism).

Used maliciously, distractivism can be a way of preventing or forestalling desired political change by organizing people around an activity that has little or no effect.

Examples
In World War II, the British government enacted a program to recover metal -- especially iron -- from gates and fences in public areas, to be melted down to help with "the war effort". It was later revealed that this was totally unnecessary, as the amount recovered was miniscule compared to the amount needed, and that it largely served as a morale-booster to help English citizens deal with the hardship of the war. (Note: this story comes from our family history -- are there any other sources? --Woozle 15:01, 9 May 2011 (EDT))

Prayer can also be seen as a form of distractivism, in that it accomplishes little externally while apparently providing many people with a feeling of having done something to help, thus (1) satisfying a psychological need which might otherwise drive people to take real-world action and (2) diverting time and energy which otherwise might have been invested in such action. (This is one of the many ways that religion is used as a manipulative tool.)

Exhorting individuals to practice conservation while simultaneously taking some other action which undoes those efforts makes those individual efforts a form of distractivism, since better results could have been obtained by simply not taking the other action. For example: if a municipal government on the one hand encourages individuals to place bricks in their toilets and to take shorter showers, while on the other pursues expansionist policies which result in far greater water consumption, then the individual efforts at conservation are serving only to distract attention away from the real source of the water shortage (i.e. the municipal expansion).