Now that I’ve caught you with the clickbait title,
Basically every post has included some form of toxic self-hate, minus one or two mentioning exercise. While I do like being able to confront these in the first place, the purported goals and name of this community gives people who are giving the exact wrong advice far too much credibility, and the last thing these people need is a comment with the most upbears regurgitating individualistic self-help concepts at them.
If we’re going to keep this sort of community around, I suggest doing some serious research and basing it off of DBT, and integrating serious critiques of CBT style mental healthcare and improvement.
I am just some random nerd who is terrible at self-improvement at general, so I understand taking this with some serious doubt. But I just had to get this off my chest.
Thank you, WithoutFurtherBelay
This is literally the exact reason I made this comm. You can call it "revolutionary_behavior" or "how_to_be_a_better_communist" or "flurgle_bungle", the name of the thing doesn't change its character. To be able to do revolutionary behaviour, you must go through the self. There's no way to interact with the world other than through your own actions. Communities are made up of a lot of individual people, ideally all pulling in one direction. A community where all of those people eat healthy and vegan diets will be better than one where they do not. In the absence of a state-driven or society-driven initiative to propel these changes on a big, structural level rather than the individual level, we don't really have much choice but to take things into our own hands, at least in much of the imperial core where such large projects are generally anathema. Positive routines and good habits are important to establish, regardless of the framework in which you are doing them. Eating healthily and becoming fit is fairly necessary to be able to outrun cops or, if it comes to it, do a Long March. Your own eyes must read books (or listen to others) to learn information about how to organize a revolution.
It might be self-improvement, but you're not really doing it for the self, you're doing it so you can be a better and more effective revolutionary, and when these revolutionaries are combined, they can change the country they're living in and ultimately the world. Obviously if you don't believe in vanguards then your mileage may vary.
I don't want to cede the "self-help" or "self-improvement" ground to the right-wing by uttering the talismanic phrase "Organize your community and unionize" when like, you're not even approaching a mental or physical state where you could attempt to do that. I want to create a new ground, call it "self-improvement", and then use communist framings of those ideas that are actually helpful. I am monumentally sceptical of the monolith of self-help bullshit that has been spewed out over the last few decades and think 99% of it is useless garbage invented by CEOs who don't do any actual work, and grifters who are just trying to sell a product. There is no real salvation through the pathway of "merely become more disciplined and read five books a month titled like 'The 50-1 Method: How To Become A Better Boss." But like, going on daily walks and shit does actually help me and others, exercise makes me feel better, dressing nicely makes me feel more attractive, etc. We should take what is salvageable and ditch what is not.
I completely support your effort to get DBT in here over CBT, and other such methods that are disconnected from that massive tsunami of grift that is the modern self-improvement community.
If this comm was done by anybody but you, I would not have interacted at all with this comm. We could also yell at fashion, fitness and many many other communities with very similar arguments. Is there a MD running the covid comm?
i do think some issues were out of the comm's depth and should have been moderated. But the sidebar makes it clear that you are not getting experts' opinions for serious issues.
I can't wait for the revolution to reduce behaviour that is damaging to me. No political group can run a rehab program alongside taking on hegemony. Some have tried. No one can not play computer games for me. What an anonymous online group can do is providing limited emotional support.
Also, I acknowledge that I am incredibly priviledged to be able to address my minor habits and addictions. I want to put the time I gain back by this to good use and help other people or become more knowledgeable, not to flex my "discipline" (which consisted in being afraid of embarrassing myself in front of online acquaintances in no small degrees).
Finally, and this goes out to everybody reading this, interactions on Hexbear have become increasingly grating and the tone feels hostile. Maybe I am out of line here but I would appreciate a more constructive tone and way of discussion in general. Nobody needs to prove they are the smartest of them all and yell the loudest.
That's very nice of you, thank you.
Apologies for me perhaps not understanding the tone, but are you agreeing with me, disagreeing with me, or putting a series of points down that both agree and disagree? I also will freely admit that I am no expert, but trying to find an "expert" in this sort of thing who isn't a reactionary or actually busy doing their own job as a therapist or psychologist or whatever is like trying to find a needle in a planet-sized haystack. As Frank and WithoutFurtherBelay have said, bell hooks is the only person that I know of who is trying to weld together revolutionary politics and "improvement" (though, obviously and correctly, is framed towards community improvement as otherwise it can easily become narcissistic).
Nakiochi had a recent post about this, and I of course agree. I think there's generally a tendency (throughout most people who pay attention to news/politics, across society) to be the Most Bestest Politics and Geopolitics And Military Understander And If I Have A Single Bad Take Or Admit That I Don't Know Something Then That Is An Admission Of Defeat. Sometimes I fall into that paradigm but I do try and make an active effort to just admit that I don't know shit sometimes and need advice or a second opinion. I kinda loathe irony-poisoning after having it for so long.
agreeing. The demand for "experts" is not a serious criticism. The community needs to read things, but it's one week old and running on honeymoon fuel. Panicking about having a den of reaction on hexbear is a bit much rn
We should limit the scope of communities, as the sidebar sets out to do, instead of trying something a shitposting reddit-upgrade (with a good but small user base) will not be able to achieve. I am saying some discussions should have been intervened in earlier - a point where I guess I am agreeing with OP.
I wasn’t suggesting we have actual experts, just we need more people to read theory, like always
https://hexbear.net/comment/4460086
Yeah I’m clarifying what I meant by experts
Under no circumstances am I disagreeing with this. What I do think is that the way we approach these things is inherently all kinds of brainworm riddled, and the concept of self improvement strikes into the very core of the ideology a lot of us grow up in. When someone says “self-improvement”, tons of lib shit just starts spawning in people’s heads that they wouldn’t believe or say about any other situation. This isn’t a diss on you or the concept of improving oneself for our community (though the “for our community” part is something I find… kind of but as prospective revolutionaries it’s what we should be doing, at least for now. And I can’t think of a better model, to be honest), it’s a call for people to be extremely careful about how they think about the concept of self improvement in the first place.
It seems you already agree with me on a ton of stuff, so all I really need to say is that I don’t actually care that much about replacing the comm. I trust you know what you’re doing here and I doubt it would be much of an issue if we’re otherwise careful, and it gives us the opportunity to reclaim self improvement as a term, like I think you intend.