People feel powerless. Letting them know how fucked up our capitalist hell world is just makes them depressed and mad with you. “there’s no point caring about things you can’t change. All you’re doing is reminding me that everything is shit.”

So what do we do? How do talk about these things with people without destroying their hope? Do you just not talk about it? I don’t feel I’m ever helping anyone by dispelling imperial propaganda, it just makes them sad.

40 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
reply

This is a great answer, thank you

permalink
report
parent
reply

If the world is so shit, how come there are more bullet trains and rapid transit systems every year? Checkmate doomers.

permalink
report
parent
reply
35 points

Don’t tell people. Ask people. Be Socratic about it.

Questions are much better than statements. Questions create more questions.

“Why is it that when we do it it’s good but when they do it it’s evil regime?”

If you don’t get the answer you want, just ask more follow up questions. “Yeah then why is blah blah blah”.

Instead of telling people, say the same shit but with a question. It gets you a lot further through barriers and resistance.

permalink
report
reply
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

Yeah that’s kind of the goal.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Don’t tell people. Ask people.

Instead of telling people, say the same shit but with a question. It gets you a lot further through barriers and resistance.

This is the way.

permalink
report
parent
reply

0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.

I kinda struggle with this problem myself but pointing how Bolsheviks went from absolute lowest point to the space in 40 years gives me hope.

permalink
report
reply

:lt-dbyf-dubois: yeah that’s me alright.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

You are not a fuckup-atoo, you are owl

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Bolsheviks failed majorly like 3 times before it really popped off.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

The Irish fought for to throw off the British yoke for 800 years. Scotland and Wales still yearn for freedom.

permalink
report
parent
reply
25 points
*

I think this onion is far too nested to directly peel.

If you try to go layer by layer, well if you start at the top then there are far too many “but what about this” alley ways that it becomes a mess and if you start at the bottom it’s too radical a shift in world view to possibly compute.

You gotta pill people. It’s the only way. Find something that gets them to start asking questions, start asking the right kind of questions and you peel that onion for itself.

The other major thing is that it seems most logical to move immediately to facts first since we are operating with an empirical mindset which means we believe that truth comes from observing what occurs in the world.

Most liberals are not empiricists or are only weakly empirical with by far the dominant form of reasoning being rationalism, meaning they believe that truth mostly comes from inquiry in the mind more so than from what’s observed in the world.

It’s why it’s so difficult to move past ideas like “the rules say we vote to decide government and therefore we control government policy” because that’s a fine rational argument but they’re blind to the empiricist perspective that observes the system actually works in a different way despite what the rules say.

There’s an empiricist v rationalist split us vs the mainstream dominant liberalism, which has really gotten much worse since the fall of the Soviet Union, is more close to people like Hillary Clinton and Stephen Pinker. The Obama and the Al Gore optimists who are so confident in the rightness of their vision that they permit themselves any methods to enforce it.

This empiricist vs rationalist thing very much goes alongside the materialist vs idealist split.

The difference is an entire mode of thinking. It’s like someone who views a cuckoo clock as a series of delightfully synchronized events vs someone who views a cuckoo clock as a system of cogs and pulleys.

permalink
report
reply
24 points

Developing a culture of martyrdom is one way that oppressed cultures keep hope alive. A martyr isn’t a victim of an isolated act of violence. They’re part of a long, historical struggle against oppression. By tying the honored dead of the present to those of the past the suffering of the present becomes part of a long, deliberate struggle. The valor of the past is embodied by those fighting in the present. The deep and immediate awareness of decades, centuries, or even millennia of struggle allow people to view themselves as something bigger than an individual, as part of a great historical struggle. Knowing that many have come before you, fighting and dying for a better future they will never see, provides comfort that even if you fall others will take up the flag after you, and when the yoke is finally cast off you will be remembered and honored, and in a sense you will be present to partake of the cherished victory you did not live to see.

permalink
report
reply

askchapo

!askchapo@hexbear.net

Create post

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you’re having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

Community stats

  • 125

    Monthly active users

  • 7.3K

    Posts

  • 164K

    Comments