futon penguin 🐀 (@preeya@bigleaf.city)
bigleaf.city
Attached: 1 image RT @iHateCogsci@twitter.com Whenever people are like oh we need to empathize w/ incels, care about their feelings blah blah, I just think about what Lundy Bancroft said about abusers. They need to *learn empathy*, and this excessive focus on *their* feelings is a *barrier* to them learning empathy. 🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/iHateCogsci/status/1610409758120361984

Whenever people are like oh we need to empathize w/ incels, care about their feelings blah blah, I just think about what Lundy Bancroft said about abusers.

They need to learn empathy, and this excessive focus on their feelings is a barrier to them learning empathy.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/iHateCogsci/status/1610409758120361984

https://sb-ex6e14yir4.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/109/628/430/505/308/353/original/db370a81de5f1eee.png

But this is step 1 of "offering an alternative": recognizing that it takes different skillsets/social conditions to get them well-adjusted, because for whatever reason they're starting from a different psychological basis.

I agree that to some extent the whole idea of focusing on these guys is counterproductive. But focusing on them is not the same as making sure that our movement is equipped to deal with them effectively, without having to relive this generational moment over and over again.

They feel alienated from society because it feels unlivably complex, and they happen to fit enough heuristics of the power group that they feel entitled to deal with that complexity by violently maximizing their adherence to power.

The right takes advantage of this by a) being in power already, b) being the same kind of people, and c) happy to use these guys to further their own interests. So they offer the easy, accessible, lowest-common-denominator solution of just catering to that entitlement.

Of course "Be a good person" doesn't effectively compete. But that doesn't have to be the only narrative the left offers. We need the next step, a narrative that starts with "Be a good person" and builds it into a competitively epic cognitive reward mechanism.

  • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I don’t have a solution though, they need to meet more people, a lot more people, until they click with one. And the internet has moved a lot of people online instead of offline. I know pua types say that shit too but w/e I’m not advocating for the scum shit I’m just saying meeting more people definitely helps.

    Well like, I'm probably the most obstinate poster on here about this issue coming from the direction of being, well admittedly incel-adjacent; in that I have basically all the exact same fucking problems that they do (well, mostly I'm pretty sure), and that I'm not willing to accept the proposition that the particular Social Model that we presently have vis-a-vis the fundamental nature of interpersonal relationships (1) is actually necessarily the best one.

    The most useful thing that I think that I could have, is if there was some kind of organization that I could go to that would take an active & specific interest in my integration into some kind of definite community. As far as I know that's not a thing that exists in any way right now; y'know that's not what any "Leftist Org" that I'm aware of exists to do, or is really in any way set up to accomplish, and even if it were I'm pretty sure COVID has completely torpedoed that potential regardless. The only exception that I can think of is maybe Evangelical Church Groups, and organizations like the Mormons here in the US; which may go some way to explaining their outsized social & political influence beyond just the Oil Money (though to be fair they have a hell of a lot of that I'm sure).

    Now, granted; the fact that the only real organizations that I could point to that might be willing to actually serve that function are reactions is a legitimate cause for caution, I'd imagine. If set-up poorly, you absolutely can create a situation in which people who absolutely do not want to, or otherwise should not be around each other, end up getting essentially socially coerced into carrying on relationships; and that's something to be wary of. But honestly, I don't see how you grow "The Left", or really I should say a mass base of politically aware, active & committed Socialists without also trying to build a specific & definite community around that concept. And if you're doing one I don't see why you wouldn't also want to do the other.

    1. That they are at their base essentially Open Contracts between ostensibly Free & Equal agents, not at all unlike an employment contract really. And really if there's a through-line that exists between the old functioning of Patriarchy as being a system of the direct ownership of women & girls by male heads of households to today, I think that describing the current situation as something closer to an employment contract is not necessarily the worst metaphor. Either way, almost no-one is either of these things (neither being free from material constraints of life, the constraints of social expectation, or being materially equal to each other in any given capacity), but that doesn't come up in the question of whether or not this is a good model to base things on.
    • Ideology [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You've grown a lot since I first saw you. This is good.

    • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You might have the cart before the horse. First you have tightly knit communities that value each other as people then they develop political identities that reject atomization and placing thee individual above all else.

      • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        First you have tightly knit communities that value each other as people then they develop political identities that reject atomization and placing thee individual above all else.

        The problem is precisely that we don't have those; and also the people thrown off the land, out of their homes in the countryside & into the cities in the late-1700's, and mid-1800's also didn't have them when the first round of industrial revolutions happened. They built social clubs (which would then develop into tight-knit communities) around their identities as, yes aggrieved workers after the fact, and then leveraged that into political goals.

        What I'm saying specifically is that I think we should attempt to follow that trajectory.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The most useful thing that I think that I could have, is if there was some kind of organization that I could go to that would take an active & specific interest in my integration into some kind of definite community.

      Sounds like a sort of adult scouts organisation? Not necessarily focused on scout activities but yeah.

      I'm wondering if this would naturally be resolved if kids had more of this. Like the Young Pioneers in the ussr. I have a feeling fewer people would fall into inceldom if they had social organisations focused on teaching kids socialisation in the modern day.

      Maybe that's what's missing? A modernised variant of orgs that used to provide this kind of easy and widespread socialisation.