Basically just reading a lot of people's posts, books, articles, listening to podcasts, etc. It took a year of just absorbing leftist culture online to learn the general lay of the land ideologically. That said, making mistakes is a much faster way to learn if you can deal with the momentary shame of having a bad take.
Do you have any examples takes you've been downvoted for?
Normally when someone gets downvoted they did one or more of the following 3 things:
- They were a bigot.
- They were unironically a lib or chud.
- They criticized a different flavor of lefty without any understanding of the person they are criticizings worldview.
- They made a devastating point and their interlocutor could only cope by downvoting, pretending it was for 1-3.
its hard to know what is bigotted or lib sometimes and implicit shit comes out.
I mean ofc people struggle it’s definitely learned and deprogramming is necessary for alot
have all and only my experiences, inclinations and attendant beliefs and values
Acknowledgement is the first step. Everyone says dumb shit sometimes. Anyways, good replies here.
Don't be embarrassed, keep asking questions. You aren't dumb if you're learning new things via these experiences, nobody is right all the time, and hell, this is the internet, there's a lot of people high on their own supply on the internet.
As for the downvotes, that bums me out, I'd rather people talk to you than just throwing out a downvote and leaving you with your apparently "wrong" takes uncorrected.
I like to think that some of my best learning has been on here and /r/cth when I've been overconfident on a point and had someone put me in my place. The more time I spent posting the less it would happen.
It's maybe possible my social lizard brain has just adapted to not say things that draw ire from this anonymous community, which if true would be a horrible way to form a worldview :/
Reading and understanding theory - having a cohesive ideology and understanding how you got to those positions. Then you can have a conversation, see where you came from, and lead them to where you are through a thought process. And also not be concerned if someone doesn't think the same way.
The big part of that is to understand that there is a wide range of opinions on the left, and though we all have the same goals, it's fine for people to have disagreements on details.
The discussions are not about convincing each other, but about introducing your ideas and learning from others to further refine your viewpoints.
Anyway, hope that helps.
i think immersing yourself completely in other communities, from anarchist to tankie to liberal to conservative and even fascist, helps a lot with understanding exactly their arguments and where they'll come from when arguing with you. you should probably do it in moderation though beacuse there's only so much you can read and immerse yourself in before you'll want to blow your brains out.
but overall, understanding exactly where someone's coming from when you're speaking with them helps a lot.
Tell those fucking dorks to shut the fuck up. They don't know shit, probably. Who knows?
