Seligman put a bunch of puppies in cages and shocked them over and over to test classical conditioning; he rung a bell and shocked them. Over time they associated the bell with the shock. Next he put the puppies in a big cage with a dividing wall they could jump over, one half of the room had a shocking grid and the other didn’t. Puppies that had been conditioned upon being shocked wouldn’t attempt an escape – they’d just lay down and accept the electrocution. That is learned helplessness. (Puppies that hadn’t been conditioned hopped over the dividing wall and tried to find a way out. )

You have been conditioned to accept that you have no control over the bad things in your life. From education to the workplace to the slow ticking clock of climate change to these contemporary protests against police violence. As an individual, alone and atomized, this is most likely true. As a member of the working class, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

This is why it’s so important for your mental health and the well-being of your community to take the grillpill, do mutual aid, join or organize a union, repair brake lights for your neighbors, attend meetings with a local org, go to protests and rallies, recycle or go vegan/vegetarian for environmental reasons, etc. All of that will make you feel, on a deep non-conscious level, that you are doing something and you will begin to undo a lifetime of conditioning. And you'll be helping your neighbors and building socialism. None of those small-scale actions can be the end of your building socialism but they are effective starts.

Together, we are strong and capable. Doing good things for your community, asking what they want, organizing them so they start to feel confident in demanding that their injustices be redressed and demanding for wants and needs to be serviced, all of that can build class consciousness and the will to take power.