Liberals are not people. all knowledge position ideal is just aesthetic. What matters is position in the machine, and how well you can justify it.
Fuck, it's why I chose my user name; I was a gifted kid, I've always been clever, but I've been homeless and walked off from partuvipation most of my life because that was never what mattered, never an asset when trying to interact honestly with neoliberal society. It was always just about how willing I was to be part of these machines, thought up by idiots, usually long dead, who just bad lots of money, and how far you'll go to justify it.
Absolutely. The levers they give you are all compromised and most will only cause harm.
Though I'd push back on dehumanizing liberals, lol. Their thought process is unfortunately very human and driven by conditions + successful self-interested mechanics of propaganda. Their actions are sociopathic, though usually not so per their own judgement. We must target them for radicalization as well as reducing their influence.
Are, I've met sociopaths,and while none of the ones I've met are comrades, they're at least out for themselves, which is more than I can say for libs.
The real questiom re: lobs is how do you get them to reclaim their humanity when they've built their entire self and 'moral' framework around justifying shit that is?
I get nervous once people start making judgement calls about who is or is not human based on anything other than genus and species. They are just as human as you, even if they make bad decisions that hurt themselves and those around them.
If it helps, I'm (usually) vegan and don't like meals that kill plants, prefer to stick to fruit and nuts when I can. 'not human' from me does not translate to 'killing this issubstantially more okay than killing me.'
It just feels like I'm a different species than libs. In more open emotional conversations I'll usually designate myself out with a statement like 'if that's what being a person is, I'm not one, and have no wish to be.'
Trying to distance yourself from them like that is still a massive problem. You have to remember you have all the same emotions, impulses, and potential that they do. You are made of the same stuff, in the same composition. You simply had the right conditions occur in your life to make you a leftist, not a liberal. Once you think your different then them, better than them, you've lost solidarity with other workers. There is no difference between your essence, you don;t have a leftist soul as opposed to a liberal soul. You exist in a different way, but the same is true between you and I, and we are both leftists. You have to remember you could be just as evil and wicked as them, you are the same species with the same blood and bones, and your fate will be the same in the end, whether your spirits wither under capitalism or prosper under socialism. You are a human being, we are capable of the holocaust, and we are capable of curing polio, and the October revolution, and the moon landing. Learn to love and embrace your humanity and your fellow human beings, or you will never achieve a worker's world.
It's certainly not 'essential, but then neither is the difference between me and a chimp, or me and a cat. Different strings of proteins growing in different animals. I'm well aware of the awful shit I'm capable of doing.
It's less about setting myself apart, more about expressing how alienated and other I feel about the whole mess. How much I feel there isn't a world for me. I built myself around ideas of what's right and useful and figuring out what's good to so I can make the world better soon can be a better happier person, then built a conscience to guide me, however haphazardly and ineptly, in that. About being entirely alienated from an entrenched world of people who find a system to be a part of, any system, no matter how awful, and build their self and 'conscience' around defending that.
Obviously I loathe them, at least a bit; it's destructive and awful. My statements of being apart can't help but reflect that bitterness, but it's not about essential difference, it's about being isolated in a sea of creatures that want to be CHUDs, that choose it over humanity every single fucking day-i recognize they have that choice, and if I hate them, it's because of that. It's about being alone, it's about having everything I've ever tried to build crushed by unspeakably petty monsters who, even when they're friendly, literally can't comprehend the most basic concepts of decency or compassion or justice-which is really gross when you try to date and someone you were just thinking about touching reveals they literally can't register a simple concept you've just uttered, despite knowing more than enough prerequisite information, like it literally just skips out of their brain. It's about forgetting what friendship and love and comeraderie even feel like, and wondering if I ever actually knew. It's about being too jaded to even really seek human connection, because everywhere I look is just more of that. Every time I try, every stranger I see, is just more of that.
It's not about wishing them ill; they do plenty of that themselves. If they were so different, they would be harder to hate. It's easier to forgive a dog that bites or a cat that pisses on my lunch than a human who does the same.
you keep operating within a false dichotomy of chud/humanity, myself/them, mind-working/lazy acceptance. You are also treating justice and decency like absolutes, they are not. They are products of the culture you live in. as are these people, as are you. Also, you're not alone. Do you see where you are? Stop putting up walls around yourself, and decrying your isolated state. Join an org, meet more like minded individuals, honestly just get some help, you're not talking like someone who is mentally sound. I'm not saying this to gaslight you or say "she's insane, ignore what she's saying." I'm saying the intense alienation you are describing is unhealthy and you need to deal with it. Also, a lot of libs can comprehend it. There;s a reason we don;t just call every lib a chud. Lots of people are well meaning, just too brainwashed to break out of liberal thought. Yes, it sucks we always have to put ourselves out there, always get burned to teach just the one out of ten we'll reach. But the important thing is that we can win. Focus on victory.
It's not a dichotomy. It's a bunch of entitiesthathave made very extreme choices somewhat pervasively, and another entity that has made very different choices as much as it could.
It would not be healthy to identify with something so thoroughly hostile to me.
I don't know how not alone I am here, but I haven't been here long and have formed no close connections. It does not change the fact of interacting with libs.
I haven't found any active orgs in my region. I check periodically.
I tried therapy, two psychologists in a row literally could not comprehend being part of an unjust system when it came up. They just, like, blue screened. I'm well aware that this is unhealthy; I wouldn't be upset if it wasn't, but you can't magically conjure a solution into existence with wishes and fairy dust. Sometimes all the food is gone, and all the leather shoes are eaten, and you can't find any rats, and you just starve for a bit. Hello rat friend, would you like to share a pot of tea?
'well meaning' in a framework of 'justifying being a monster', yes. I find conversations with avowed monsters and literal psychopaths more rewarding and more sources of genuine connection than libs.
I don't know if I believe victory is possible at this point. With the climate going how it is, and nuclear arsenals increasing, I feel like the hour is getting pretty damn late. I don't need to believe I can win to keep going, that's some lib hopeium bullshit, but I do feel isolated, I do feel other, and I do get much better reactions from libs when I interact with them sans respect, treating them like the objects they strive to be rather than the beings capable and deserving of respect honesty and autonomy they damn well should be.
Is it right to rob someone of their precious chains against their will? To take the only thing they really own while they scream and spit and claw at me in protest? The only thing they ever learned to make for themselves, and then promptly cauterized the parts of their brain that can take new information? The only thing they really love and cherish? Fuck if I know. I just try to plant gardens and shit so somebody can have a snack and shade after eviction.
Also, I really don't give a shit about 'workers'. People, things that can suffer not suffering pointlessly, the creation of meaning and expression, the flourishing of higher and more diverse consciousness. But workers? No fucks given.
who do you think are the people suffering? whose creativity is constantly stifled, and consciousness ignored? It's not the wealthy, I cna tell you that.
It's easy to sympathize with the obvious direct victims suffering in the literal meat factories or whatever of capitalism's industrial horrors has been conjured in your mind today. And that's not wrong.
But there are a couple things to keep in mind:
When you hold a chain wound so tightly, you too are restricted, you too are held by the chain, on pain of death. Yeah, it's worse to be a slave, but even in slave states, the tension of oppression creates a kind of cage for the masters. It's nicer, sure, but it's still a fucking cage. An argument could be made that it's a more complete kind of cage-the slave loses nothing of themself when their physical chains are broken, when they can laugh and cry and run without the masters whip biting into their flesh. But the master, and the overseer, have built themselves and their consciences to be blind to the humanity in their fellow homos (convince me it's sapiens, convince me that name fits), to be disconnected and terrified of freedom, to be uncomprehending of their own humanity compassion and love, incapable of any relation not touched with dominance and brutality.
If libs are people, then the masters are just as worthy and needy of liberation as their slaves. Not as urgently in need, perhaps. Certainly not as accepting. But worthy.
And the surplus class, those kept away from the means of production and brutalized, a constant threat simultaneously of surplus labor and what will happen to you if you don't work, and a 'lower' thing to disdain, a shoe to step in so you don't feel the rock bottom we all know you're on quite so viscerally, so you sympathize with those above you and see the means of your (assuming you're a worker) oppression as being your protection-from them.
I'm of the opinion that they should be helped first if possible. Even if it's harder. The 'workers' are people and deserve more than they get, certainly, but they are in less urgent need.
Myopic focus on "workers" strikes me as cruel myopic and selfish. You can do better. Or you can't, and I'm disappointed in you I guess.
Radicalization requires jostling. Personal jostling. Some people get there "on their own" by jostling themselves, but most require something that smacks them in the face.
Many of the impetuses that would do this are outside of our control, like losing their job, losing a loved one to privatized healthcare, seeing cops beat members of the press. For those cases, we can be loud and present and available to capitalize on their politically vulnerable state. Someone who wouldn't listen to anything you had to say about cops is suddenly ready to hear about defunding and abolition or maybe even the function of mass incarceration re: American capitalism.
The other is to do the jostling ourselves through agitation. To make the contradictions clear and obvious and to challenge them to reject the sociopathy implicit in their views that they usually cannot recognize. For example, I've had good luck radicalizing family members with frank discussions of the human consequences of imperial violence that's usually brushed under the rug. Some were mainstream libs that are now SocDems and some were SocDems that are now quasi-Marxist socialists that like Richard Wolff.
Other forms of agitation are also invaluable. Organizing boycott campaigns like BDS, organizing protests and sit-ins, presenting principled socialist candidates that know where to stick blame for the failures of liberalism, joining pickets, etc etc. It all helps.
Liberals are not people. all knowledge position ideal is just aesthetic. What matters is position in the machine, and how well you can justify it.
Fuck, it's why I chose my user name; I was a gifted kid, I've always been clever, but I've been homeless and walked off from partuvipation most of my life because that was never what mattered, never an asset when trying to interact honestly with neoliberal society. It was always just about how willing I was to be part of these machines, thought up by idiots, usually long dead, who just bad lots of money, and how far you'll go to justify it.
Absolutely. The levers they give you are all compromised and most will only cause harm.
Though I'd push back on dehumanizing liberals, lol. Their thought process is unfortunately very human and driven by conditions + successful self-interested mechanics of propaganda. Their actions are sociopathic, though usually not so per their own judgement. We must target them for radicalization as well as reducing their influence.
Are, I've met sociopaths,and while none of the ones I've met are comrades, they're at least out for themselves, which is more than I can say for libs.
The real questiom re: lobs is how do you get them to reclaim their humanity when they've built their entire self and 'moral' framework around justifying shit that is?
I get nervous once people start making judgement calls about who is or is not human based on anything other than genus and species. They are just as human as you, even if they make bad decisions that hurt themselves and those around them.
If it helps, I'm (usually) vegan and don't like meals that kill plants, prefer to stick to fruit and nuts when I can. 'not human' from me does not translate to 'killing this issubstantially more okay than killing me.'
It just feels like I'm a different species than libs. In more open emotional conversations I'll usually designate myself out with a statement like 'if that's what being a person is, I'm not one, and have no wish to be.'
Trying to distance yourself from them like that is still a massive problem. You have to remember you have all the same emotions, impulses, and potential that they do. You are made of the same stuff, in the same composition. You simply had the right conditions occur in your life to make you a leftist, not a liberal. Once you think your different then them, better than them, you've lost solidarity with other workers. There is no difference between your essence, you don;t have a leftist soul as opposed to a liberal soul. You exist in a different way, but the same is true between you and I, and we are both leftists. You have to remember you could be just as evil and wicked as them, you are the same species with the same blood and bones, and your fate will be the same in the end, whether your spirits wither under capitalism or prosper under socialism. You are a human being, we are capable of the holocaust, and we are capable of curing polio, and the October revolution, and the moon landing. Learn to love and embrace your humanity and your fellow human beings, or you will never achieve a worker's world.
It's certainly not 'essential, but then neither is the difference between me and a chimp, or me and a cat. Different strings of proteins growing in different animals. I'm well aware of the awful shit I'm capable of doing.
It's less about setting myself apart, more about expressing how alienated and other I feel about the whole mess. How much I feel there isn't a world for me. I built myself around ideas of what's right and useful and figuring out what's good to so I can make the world better soon can be a better happier person, then built a conscience to guide me, however haphazardly and ineptly, in that. About being entirely alienated from an entrenched world of people who find a system to be a part of, any system, no matter how awful, and build their self and 'conscience' around defending that.
Obviously I loathe them, at least a bit; it's destructive and awful. My statements of being apart can't help but reflect that bitterness, but it's not about essential difference, it's about being isolated in a sea of creatures that want to be CHUDs, that choose it over humanity every single fucking day-i recognize they have that choice, and if I hate them, it's because of that. It's about being alone, it's about having everything I've ever tried to build crushed by unspeakably petty monsters who, even when they're friendly, literally can't comprehend the most basic concepts of decency or compassion or justice-which is really gross when you try to date and someone you were just thinking about touching reveals they literally can't register a simple concept you've just uttered, despite knowing more than enough prerequisite information, like it literally just skips out of their brain. It's about forgetting what friendship and love and comeraderie even feel like, and wondering if I ever actually knew. It's about being too jaded to even really seek human connection, because everywhere I look is just more of that. Every time I try, every stranger I see, is just more of that.
It's not about wishing them ill; they do plenty of that themselves. If they were so different, they would be harder to hate. It's easier to forgive a dog that bites or a cat that pisses on my lunch than a human who does the same.
you keep operating within a false dichotomy of chud/humanity, myself/them, mind-working/lazy acceptance. You are also treating justice and decency like absolutes, they are not. They are products of the culture you live in. as are these people, as are you. Also, you're not alone. Do you see where you are? Stop putting up walls around yourself, and decrying your isolated state. Join an org, meet more like minded individuals, honestly just get some help, you're not talking like someone who is mentally sound. I'm not saying this to gaslight you or say "she's insane, ignore what she's saying." I'm saying the intense alienation you are describing is unhealthy and you need to deal with it. Also, a lot of libs can comprehend it. There;s a reason we don;t just call every lib a chud. Lots of people are well meaning, just too brainwashed to break out of liberal thought. Yes, it sucks we always have to put ourselves out there, always get burned to teach just the one out of ten we'll reach. But the important thing is that we can win. Focus on victory.
It's not a dichotomy. It's a bunch of entitiesthathave made very extreme choices somewhat pervasively, and another entity that has made very different choices as much as it could.
It would not be healthy to identify with something so thoroughly hostile to me.
I don't know how not alone I am here, but I haven't been here long and have formed no close connections. It does not change the fact of interacting with libs.
I haven't found any active orgs in my region. I check periodically.
I tried therapy, two psychologists in a row literally could not comprehend being part of an unjust system when it came up. They just, like, blue screened. I'm well aware that this is unhealthy; I wouldn't be upset if it wasn't, but you can't magically conjure a solution into existence with wishes and fairy dust. Sometimes all the food is gone, and all the leather shoes are eaten, and you can't find any rats, and you just starve for a bit. Hello rat friend, would you like to share a pot of tea?
'well meaning' in a framework of 'justifying being a monster', yes. I find conversations with avowed monsters and literal psychopaths more rewarding and more sources of genuine connection than libs.
I don't know if I believe victory is possible at this point. With the climate going how it is, and nuclear arsenals increasing, I feel like the hour is getting pretty damn late. I don't need to believe I can win to keep going, that's some lib hopeium bullshit, but I do feel isolated, I do feel other, and I do get much better reactions from libs when I interact with them sans respect, treating them like the objects they strive to be rather than the beings capable and deserving of respect honesty and autonomy they damn well should be.
Is it right to rob someone of their precious chains against their will? To take the only thing they really own while they scream and spit and claw at me in protest? The only thing they ever learned to make for themselves, and then promptly cauterized the parts of their brain that can take new information? The only thing they really love and cherish? Fuck if I know. I just try to plant gardens and shit so somebody can have a snack and shade after eviction.
Also, I really don't give a shit about 'workers'. People, things that can suffer not suffering pointlessly, the creation of meaning and expression, the flourishing of higher and more diverse consciousness. But workers? No fucks given.
who do you think are the people suffering? whose creativity is constantly stifled, and consciousness ignored? It's not the wealthy, I cna tell you that.
It's easy to sympathize with the obvious direct victims suffering in the literal meat factories or whatever of capitalism's industrial horrors has been conjured in your mind today. And that's not wrong.
But there are a couple things to keep in mind:
When you hold a chain wound so tightly, you too are restricted, you too are held by the chain, on pain of death. Yeah, it's worse to be a slave, but even in slave states, the tension of oppression creates a kind of cage for the masters. It's nicer, sure, but it's still a fucking cage. An argument could be made that it's a more complete kind of cage-the slave loses nothing of themself when their physical chains are broken, when they can laugh and cry and run without the masters whip biting into their flesh. But the master, and the overseer, have built themselves and their consciences to be blind to the humanity in their fellow homos (convince me it's sapiens, convince me that name fits), to be disconnected and terrified of freedom, to be uncomprehending of their own humanity compassion and love, incapable of any relation not touched with dominance and brutality.
If libs are people, then the masters are just as worthy and needy of liberation as their slaves. Not as urgently in need, perhaps. Certainly not as accepting. But worthy.
And the surplus class, those kept away from the means of production and brutalized, a constant threat simultaneously of surplus labor and what will happen to you if you don't work, and a 'lower' thing to disdain, a shoe to step in so you don't feel the rock bottom we all know you're on quite so viscerally, so you sympathize with those above you and see the means of your (assuming you're a worker) oppression as being your protection-from them.
I'm of the opinion that they should be helped first if possible. Even if it's harder. The 'workers' are people and deserve more than they get, certainly, but they are in less urgent need.
Myopic focus on "workers" strikes me as cruel myopic and selfish. You can do better. Or you can't, and I'm disappointed in you I guess.
Radicalization requires jostling. Personal jostling. Some people get there "on their own" by jostling themselves, but most require something that smacks them in the face.
Many of the impetuses that would do this are outside of our control, like losing their job, losing a loved one to privatized healthcare, seeing cops beat members of the press. For those cases, we can be loud and present and available to capitalize on their politically vulnerable state. Someone who wouldn't listen to anything you had to say about cops is suddenly ready to hear about defunding and abolition or maybe even the function of mass incarceration re: American capitalism.
The other is to do the jostling ourselves through agitation. To make the contradictions clear and obvious and to challenge them to reject the sociopathy implicit in their views that they usually cannot recognize. For example, I've had good luck radicalizing family members with frank discussions of the human consequences of imperial violence that's usually brushed under the rug. Some were mainstream libs that are now SocDems and some were SocDems that are now quasi-Marxist socialists that like Richard Wolff.
Other forms of agitation are also invaluable. Organizing boycott campaigns like BDS, organizing protests and sit-ins, presenting principled socialist candidates that know where to stick blame for the failures of liberalism, joining pickets, etc etc. It all helps.
I'm not saying activism is useless, I'm saying that using language on libs is not a helpful form.
And also conversation is alienating, unsatisfying.