askchapo

I have been discussing my beliefs with a set of close knit friends I've acquired over the years, practically they participated in community building and aren't against my beliefs. With the elephant in the room being that they think it's simply not feasible, due to our various life experiences.

Their main argument that I can't get through is the fact that, at the end of the day, we all will justify one life over another. Which inevitably causes hierarchical divide. They believe that all of us come up with our own way to cope with this reality of the world, with our own individual set of beliefs and reasoning.

And it's difficult for me to argue against them. I can't deny the fact that in order for many people to survive they're forced to fawn, they're forced to give up their individuality and study your behavior, study what kind of things you react to well and what you react to poorly. I have to intentionally hide my needs, my flaws, develop a connection with you and then I have to trickly in the things I actually care about, which now because I've built a connection with you, will make you empathize with me and might encourage you to keep me alive.

Am I wrong to prioritize my own survival? And how do you define survival: is it just the fulfillment of biological function and living under no threat of violence?

I have an incredibly difficult time figuring out how would socialism immerge in a world full of hypocrisy. Everyone wants me to contribute to their cause, they have their own set of priorities, their own families and friends, are they more important than my friends, my family? That's who I've been fighting for.

If the only people willing to help me are your enemy and you're unwilling to do anything, should my family suffer for your sake? I see Anarchists and Left Wing Nationalists constantly being shit on, yet they're the only people who helped me despite our disagreements. Socialists who I interact with treat me like an automaton who is to obey their order.

How can I convince the most vulnerable people to have faith in a project that doesn't even acknowledge their worth or existence? They have lost all faith in socialism not because they haven't read the books. Marx was mandatory in school for my parents generation still, they made thousands upon thousands of people read this great theory of yours so why did it fail?

But that's not what this is about. I am just genuinely lost for how to convince people, they won't budge because they can immediately see though the hypocrisy and call it out. I can't do anything but to agree with them. What am I supposed to tell them? I have already overcome so much of my personal desires for the sake of the people and there's just more problems and more problems every year. The more I sacrifice the more of a fool I look like. Everyone is literally begging me to stop helping people at this point and call me weird for not treating myself. And I have been wanting to stop so badly I wish I had the time to read the fun books or do something exciting.

And that's why I struggle to convince anyone. They know that you will walk right past me and consider me a fool for not doing the same to you. Seriously how is this possible when the only choices I have is either devour myself for the sake of people who watch it happen and don't do anything or watch on how other people perish in front of my own eyes and I choose to value the people I care about over them.

I really want to believe socialism is possible, but I don't see the experience to back it up. Somebody please change my mind.

I've been getting involved with PSL and decided to apply to join. One thing I think is really important that I don't know how to ask them without sounding like a straight up fed is: "what is the plan to turn class consciousness into revolution?" like, I'm willing to do all these typical organizational efforts but only if there's actually a plan towards revolution and not just some nebulous hope that enough class consciousness will just make a revolution happen. If anyone from PSL can illuminate this for me I would really appreciate it. Obvi, don't like put yourself or the org in danger by answering, so if you need to be vague that's alright.

I don't even know if I'm allowed to ask this here tbh. If not, mods feel free to remove this post

There seems to be a bit of hubbub about this but I know nothing about either candidate or Hungary other than what I have been told today. Any Hungary understanders in the chat?

Screenshot is just there as an example of how I feel most people treat others wanting privacy

I've always been a naturally private person. It comes from living with a mix nuerodivergence and trauma. I'm a massive dork and don't like to share that side of myself with just anyone IRL. I don't like being perceived and judged. I avoid social media unless I have to use it, and when I do it's with maximum privacy settings. You might think I'm loud and obnoxious here, but that's only due to anonymity

But I'm wondering that if people are going to think I'm some sort of shady creep for doing this. How am I going to be a good leftist and get involved in my community if every form of communication people use requires a live feed of your personal life?

How can I set boundaries in a society that thinks it's fine to have access to your personal life? Do I just have to make peace with the fact that I can't mask how much of a doofus I am from the world or everyone's going to think I'm up to something bad?

I hate this panopticon. I hate that everyone is cool with total surveillance as long as daddy capitalism is doing it

Like how do you fit all the Chinese characters on a Chinese laptop, wouldn't that take up a shit ton of space?

Sorry I'm a big ignorant American who barely speaks English so I got no fucking idea.

Bernie fucked me and sold my shit to the DNC, now I get several spam texts and voicemails every day. How do you stop this, cause it's making me wanna do a luigi.

They used to float around the internet around 5 years ago but i can't seem to find them again.

Mine do. My dad has Raynaud's Syndrome and I wonder if I didn't develop it too. Like today for example I have really thin gloves on my hands since it's cold in the house. I feel like a dolt typing on the computer with gloves on but the opposite is my hands being numb.

Whenever talking about industrial/economic decline in Europe, this talking point is mentioned, along with others ofc.

Sectarianism aside (to a degree), how are the orgs you work with engaging with neighboring leftist and progressive organizations in your area? Zooming out, how are they working with international comrades?

Obviously the "western" left has some wild issues with sectarianism, how much does that impact collaboration in your org / geographic area? I'd really love to see a more concerted effort to get organizations collaborating, even if in the short term we don't have a Comintern per se. Its kinda bizarre how little cross collaboration we see so there is so much recreating the wheel across many orgs, and it feels like such a waste of time, energy, and labor in general.

Orgs don't need to agree on tactics, but it would be nice to see some rough merging together of strategies. nothing concrete or mandated necessarily, but something where established orgs can share their experience, newly budding orgs can learn more quickly from their comrades, materials and resources can be shared to a degree, etc.

For example, if I talk about "magic", most of you will tell me I'm wrong without even asking me what I mean. You might even insult me.

How common is this? How much of this conversation is actual communication vs just a string of triggering phrases that we react to?

How much of Lemmy is people just barking at their own echo?

Relevant to the question of why more people aren't organizing in response to everything that's going on.

I relate to this personally. We constantly tell ourselves to focus on what we can control, and that's what I do. I try to organize with my local orgs, push people I meet left, talk unions at restaurants and businesses all over, and avoid spending $ at BDS companies. But I also have family and a stable job that I actually like for the first time in forever. I feel like I don't do enough but also the risk of doing more is so great I understand why I keep to "safe" things.

IDK how France does it. How did the Bolsheviks pull it off? I know the Chinese peasantry were under much worse conditions than burgerlanders. Are people like me essentially "paid off" by the material conditions 🤔

I’m mostly interested in a general overview on the bounds we know of on what topics can be (de)politicised (without immediate societal collapse), how its status of politicisation in different societies came to be, and what the effects of (de)politicisation of certain topics are on the political engagement of the general public.

Would love to know people’s thoughts as well on this topic.

For example: in my liberal education I learned that political engagement in the Soviet Union was different than in current liberal democracies. It was more focused on a local and community level rather than a national one. Supposedly because that’s where people had more influence compared to in liberal democracies, where national elections grab the attention of a large part of the population and direct their energy to national issues. As I said, I learned about the Soviet Union in liberal education so I don’t fully trust this analysis to be true without more reliable backing. I would love to learn more.

I see this moon launch as an exorbitantly wasteful, nationalist project. No money for healthcare and housing, but plenty of money to boldly go where man has gone several many times before.

When I bring this up with liberal friends and family, they give me a sort of incredulous look and talk about how wonderful and scientific and non-political it is. I don't mind being the "you've gone too far left" guy, but you talk to the same people about military spending and they're right on board.

Is someone here able to diagnose my crankiness and explain why this is actually a good use of resources? (Will also accept echo-chamber validation and ways to use this to increase class consciousness, if offered.)

I see this moon launch as an exorbitantly wasteful, nationalist project. No money for healthcare and housing, but plenty of money to boldly go where man has gone several many times before.

When I bring this up with liberal friends and family, they give me a sort of incredulous look and talk about how wonderful and scientific and non-political it is. I don't mind being the "you've gone too far left" guy, but you talk to the same people about military spending and they're right on board.

Is someone here able to diagnose my crankiness and explain why this is actually a good use of resources? (Will also accept echo-chamber validation and ways to use this to increase class consciousness, if offered.)

Please answer quickly!

Edit: I accidentally typed "100 days" instead of "10 days"

Let's say, hypothetically, I run a soup kitchen. We get donated goods that are mostly things about to expire, or considered too "imperfect" for sale. That is; things which are perfectly fine to eat, but businesses usually throw out, and will probably be less generous with as the crisis hits.

I can anticipate now that demand will increase on the soup kitchen's services, while simultaneously our inputs decrease....

I guess this may be an intractable problem, really. Other than trying to build new connections in the community, which usually takes a lot of time and energy, there's probably nothing that can be done. But, people on here have given me very thoughtful and clever answers before, so figured I'd ask.

I refuse to believe not even Lenin has been adapted into a manhua, it cannot be real [that it hasn't been done so yet], so how do I find it?