I think personally the big thing leftist thought has done for me is gave me the mental toolkit to unlearn the idea of “ meritocratic/meritocracy”. We don’t live in a remotely fair world and the idea it is in any sense fair and justice is disproven in just about every leftist text, thinker, speech, figure throughout history. We get some hints about it in religion text (Speaking as a Christian) but we don’t really see how to break it down outside of personal virtue and kindness (which are cool and good but not a scaleable solution).

I really think it super dope that leftist thinking give you the tools to understand and see the Matrix we live. I also really like how it shows you ways of addressing it.

What are things you think leftist thought has improve your life? Big or small?

  • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I agree that there's a pretty common "fuck you, got mine" mentality about emotional growth even within leftist spaces, but I'm not as sure about the Just World Fallacy lingering part

    I mean, I'm not sure I ever see anybody get what they deserve. The relationship between what I assess somebody to deserve and what they actually get isn't even inverted; it's nonexistent. Instead, I think it might have more to do with the complicated landscape of hierarchies of oppression

    What I think you're talking about - writing people off as lost causes - makes more sense in the figurative trenches of social politics. To start with, it's complex to analyze a system where everyone is exploited, but in categorically distinct ways that also, often are distinctly better or worse than each other. Within that clusterfuck, I think most of us have some experience with trauma from people with power over us, and can get defensive over our right to cut ties with those people.

    Add, to the complicated subject and many of our personal stakes in it, the extremely human temptation to be sanctimonious, and you get a whole lot of "lol, incels are never gonna fuck" bullshit that manages to both denigrate ordinary people anxious about their social prospects, as well as denigrating the abuse victims they wind up having a whole quiver-full with at the end of the pipeline