Don't sell yourself short. Stop thinking of yourself as 'dumb' and open your mind to your own potential.
can't speak for OP or the other dumbasses, but allowing myself to be dumb and to call myself dumb has been one of the most liberating and transformative experiences of my adulthood. As a former "gifted kid" under unrelenting parental pressure to be the best and smartest at everything, embracing being a dumbass in my 20s meant forgiving myself for the things that I'm not perfect at (or even good at), allowing myself to make mistakes, and no longer being wound so tightly that I'm going to keel over from a heart attack before 40. Being dumb and accepting that you're dumb about some stuff is really important to some people.
Yep yep yep nailed it. A 'dumb' person with a shred of self-awareness can spin circles around all these purported know-it-alls.
"I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing." - Socrates
I was listening to an episode of YKS and the guest asks JF something and he responded with "Oh, I don't know, I'm just some dumb hick." I was floored. Never even knew that was an option, specifically because the former "gifted kid" pressure you mentioned. I've been much happier realizing I can just say I'm an idiot sometimes.
YKS is Your Kickstarter Sucks, a podcast. JF is one of the hosts, Jesse Ferrar, famously @bronzehammer on Twitter.
Sooooo relatable. I also feel like rather than telling people they’re not dumb, we should be working to create content that is more accessible to people who struggle to understand complex issues. Not everyone can just make themselves sit down for hours and read Lenin, let alone understand it if they do.
I will NEVER stop describing myself as a massive waste of potential who doesn't deserve life.
Your awareness of your fallibility and willingness to learn and grow is dope af comrade
Fuck yeah now we need one comrades like myself who are just not very funny
You claim to be an unfunny leftist, yet your post is not a wall of text. Curious
Stav from Cumtown said something like this when he was a guest on Chapo. It was like "You can be a dumb guy like me and still be a socialist. I just don't want people to be homeless."
Having an open mind and knowing there's information you don't know is one of the smartest things you can do.
A wise man once said "I'm dumb as shit, I just think people shouldn't go homeless, you know?"
“I’m dumb as shit, I just think people shouldn’t go homeless, you know?”
Was that Stavros? I half remember this but I can't find the tweet
Yeah, the content is definitely there. Not only is it important to seek it out, but it's important to promote it so people who otherwose couldn't seek it out (for some of the reasons I've listed below) might find it easier, and to teach people by using it as a tool, again for those who aren't just 'stupid'', but who might have medical or learning related reasons for not being able to access theory. Building the strength of a movement outside of traditionally educated folk is super important. There are some many out there who would agree with us if it was phrased in a way they could get it, but are just as likely to be swayed by someone from the right if the answer is presented to them well enough.
It's really not that hard. Just get recommendations and commit to reading a book. This is a lib example but it was my doorway into reading theory - most Chomsky written stuff I find tough as fuck to read. So l looked around and found a book of transcriptions of him on radio shows and the like. 100x more digestable, and now I'm moving onto Lenin
That's great, and will work for the majority of people who have the time / resources to look around for more accessible shit, but we need to develop and promote theory resources for those who don't have this option. Examples include:
- Neurodivergent people
- People with reading / learning disabilities or those with ABI or other medical conditions
- People who struggle to read anything beyond a tweet or comic book level of density
I grew up in a poor as fuck background and was lauded as some sort of brain genius for just reading a book. There are a lot of working class people out there who need some further pushing to the left but just don't have the access or method. The right seems to have an easy and wrong answer for these people for all of their ills, we need to get there first.
I heard that during the Industrial Revolution there were workers who didn't know how to read but still wanted to learn theory, so they'd get people to read out loud to them and absorb it that way
Reading and discussion groups are great, as well as reformatting theory into mediums and modes that can be understood by all. We do it with complex things in Australia for people with ABIs (like voting, medical rights, etc) using simplified formats, but I think we could go even further. Push people into movies and TV shows that carry leftist themes, speak to them afterwards about how it links to theory. The joke about the Matrix being coopted by the right doesn't make me laugh, it makes me sad as hell - shit, that is such a simple and great entry point into explaining leftist ideas. Even if it isn't dense, complex theory it's important to bring those who can't or won't read theory along. Everyone suffers under capitalism, but it seems only the right is effective at radicalizing the great unwashed. Hope this makes sense, hard to type during a tea party with my toddlers.
Dude, they're dumb. Tell them to check out Engles' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific Made by a failson for failsons.
Hell yes. Capitalists will have you believe you need to have a PhD in economics to reject free market capitalism but there is no similar expectation that you understand anything in order to embrace it.
Anti-capitalism is for everybody, not just the well-educated and privileged.
Being able to realize how fucked the world is makes you infinitely smarter than the average NPC liberal, trust me about that.
It's kind of like what I tell people when they ask me why I don't want kids. "I'm responsible enough to no I'm not responsible enough to raise children."
