askchapo

Repeatedly kick them in the shins and tell them they just have to accept it and their conditions won’t improve

I don't talk to such people. There's no reason engaging with someone that only talks to you in bad faith

Marxism is not Utopian. Marx's whole point of writing was that he wanted to prove that socialism is not Utopian. The socialists and communists before Marx were Utopian.

It is the conservatives and liberals who are the utopians and idealists. As you pointed out, utopianism is when you have vague immaterial goals. A liberal will look you directly in the eyes and say that their goals are "freedom" and "democracy". Those are not real things. Those things are immaterial and cannot be measured. These words don't even have concrete meaning.

Workers owning the means of production has a material definition. It is not utopian. It is a material goal that can be worked towards and achieved.

The reason that reactionaries say that Socialism is utopian is because they don't want it to happen. Liberals know that socialism is good and achievable; they want preserve the exploitation of capitalism.

"The Romanovs didn't shoot themselves"

Unironically? "Even if there wasn't a chance of winning, I'd still fight."

Usually "Ok, have a nice night" and go hand the leaflet to the next person i see

I wonder the same thing about folks like that. Idk if there's one explanation that fits them all. Maybe some are mostly fine under the current system and they lack empathy and imagination so they genuinely don't care and can't understand why you do. Maybe some do know things are shit, even for themsleves, but acknowledging it means they have a responsibility to be part of changing it. And that's too much for them to bear. And even if they wanted to, they don't know how.

Everyone's favorite Red Sails article gets into something close to this regarding why westerners so easily and readily believe absurd nonsense about other nations

Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off... This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody.

Maybe it doesn't explain every instance, but I think some sort of strange coping mechanism like this explains some of it. Its easier to think you and the change you want is naive and silly and God's in his heaven and all's good enough in the world than to face the implications of what the change you're yappin about would entail.

And with my parents, family, and other people of that generation specifically I've found them to be very nihilistic and giving no fucks about much that's not in their immediate sight. They didn't grow up with powerful working class institutions. And all they know and have been told about unions, radical political parties, communism, civil rights and social change is "they all fail - best to focus on yourself".

If the world is doomed and there is no improving it, then at least we can make those responsible suffer

Call them unserious and self-interested

Parable of the starfish. I can't fix the world, but doing what i can matters to those I was there for.

Also the fash love it when we give up and don't try. Why would i make their job easy?

I block and move on online and in real life I say "if people under British colonialism thought the same then we wouldn't be free today" since I live in a former colonized country

I tell them its much more unrealistic to do nothing and accept defeat. Things get worse and then things get better. That's the cycle. Progress isn't linear.

Now either join us or go shut the fuck up in your little pitty corner while the mature people actually handle the problems.

As you can see I like to take a duel approach. If they keep taking I'll start barking and yelling like a dog until they shut up. I don't got time for their shit.

There is one force more powerful than anything else known in the human psyche: spite.

When someone says its hopeless, so why try, let that in turn turbocharge your spite-o-meter.

Say fuck it I'm gonna make the world even betterer now.

I make fun of them. I call them pessimists, I point to the Matt Bors comic

If I need to be more serious I point out the times and places that what I’m suggesting has demonstrably worked (The USSR oversaw the sharpest rise in standard of living in history, things like that)

I don’t even know anymore tbh

So many people do everything against their own interests, and the propaganda is excuse is starting to fall flat. You could figure this shit out if you stepped out of your echo chamber for 5 Godamn minutes

Wow, rare I meet another person who accepts climate change

I mean, "Oh wow, sucks to suck" works pretty well

It depends on the reason why they think it's unrealistic. Can you actually show them evidence of what they can do to make the world a better place? Right here, right now. Not hypothetically, not historically, but materially right here, can you grab them by the hand and guide them to how to make the world a better place?

I think asking: "If the world can be made a better place, then why haven't I been able to put forward a noticeable effort in doing so?" Is a lot more proactive. You have to start with yourself.

We live in a world where victims are made to put up a show, to entertain, lest they be deemed below the worth of an animal. Or does none of this matter and we're conditioned, by the system, to waste our life away arguing with each other, instead of building something together? At the end of the day everybody's a liberal and will choose their flavor of the flock.

Have you ever heard of salt? Like what you sprinkle on food? There's a point pessimistic realism turns into a sort of negative cope.

Fascists don’t think that, they never tell people trying to organize them ‘who like caaaaares man, just shut up and accept it! You have to like it!”.

The only people who are told to just shut up and be happy with whatever is going on are leftists. Go ahead and try to pull a South Park on any part of the right, they will laugh you out of the room.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT3Q85IvtDs