Don't change the world, change yourself

People often conflate two kinds of "don't change the world, change yourself":

• The gaslighting way:
  • "You're an idiot for talking about the fact that there's a housing shortage! Just get rich so you can afford a house!"

• The legit way:
  • If we want to abolish factory farms, we're going to have to eat less meat on average.
  • If we want to dismantle systemic racism, we have to be mindful of our own biases.

The main difference is:

• The legit way recognizes how systemic problems arise from millions of individual behaviors, and empowers us to change those behaviors.
• The gaslighting way promotes a zero-sum game: Instead of actually solving the systemic problem, it just gets everyone fighting for the privileged spot where you can be unaffected by the problem.