To be fair, I can see where you're coming from. I had the same reaction as you reading the article at first. In some profound sense yes, ideologies are simplifications of reality and people who have treated those simplifications as absolute truth have gone on to do horrible things in the past. Nick's trying to explain he doesn't have that certainty that other wild activists can profess.

Neither do I, but I'm also aware of the pitfalls of complacency. I realized it myself when I was so depressed about politics I came up with the statement "Political ideology is useless - the world can only be saved through art." It sounded so simple, so beautiful, so intriguing, so right, but eventually I was forced to accept it was a quasi-delusional belief I had invented to ease the psychological burden of responsibility.

Nobody has to save the world, but we can all do our part. Fighting a little bit for what's right is better than having a drum circle.

edit: while I was thinking about this, I saw a post in a meme group on FB about Mercuse, one of the Frankfurt School intellectuals. He wrote the book One Dimensional Man where he argues that society can wear people down people's political impulses through comfort. That brought me back to this because it's easy to just be the artist and have fun.