You know, the types who think leftism is unrealistic and pure utopian idealist fantasy
I don’t understand these types. The type that seem to sneer at the idea of making the world a good place. If it were up to them we wouldn’t build shelter from the rain or invent cures for diseases. When the world is shitty, you make it less shitty, that’s the whole point of life or you might as well be miserable and live like a cow who has made peace with the slaughterhouse instead of trying to escape it.
I’m tired of people who pathologise good things and have a weird boner for hardship
“The world sucks. Grow up and leave rebelling against reality behind!”
I’m tired boss
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.
Right I was probably using utopian losely, in the “A utopia to me is society that doesn’t suck ass” way rather than the textbook way
My comment was my answer to the question in the title. I was not correcting you. The comment is what I would say to people who think “people who think that making things better is naive and delusional”. I think people who believe in concepts such as “freedom” and “democracy” are naive and delusional.
Ooooh I get it now!
ty ty
Call them unserious
and self-interestedI 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”.
Oh, I realized you ask “what to say”. Not “why do you think…”
Idk. I wish I knew. But I think knowing why they think that could help with figuring out how to get them out of that hole. Maybe they need to be presented a real path to change, or a path that feels realistic to them.
I wish I had an answer for you. It’s all of our jobs to figure it out.
It’s all good my syntax can be all over the place sometimes.
But yeah it’s a tough one.
“The Romanovs didn’t shoot themselves”
Unironically? “Even if there wasn’t a chance of winning, I’d still fight.”
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
It was an instruction.
ⓘ
and post to chapo dot chat
and i don’t regret a second of it
Usually “Ok, have a nice night” and go hand the leaflet to the next person i see
This is what I’d actually say and every other reply is what I’d say in the imaginary arguments in my head.
If the world is doomed and there is no improving it, then at least we can make those responsible suffer
TO THE GUILLOTINE!
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 mean, “Oh wow, sucks to suck” works pretty well
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.
Honestly given the ludicrous positions liberals have been forced to contort themselves into in the name of their incoherent ideology, I think it’s high time we stole the “Adults in the room” shtick from them. It’s never been easier to do.
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)
Repeatedly kick them in the shins and tell them they just have to accept it and their conditions won’t improve
Wow, rare I meet another person who accepts climate change
“Trying to fix climate change is delusional. We should just accept it as inevitable.” Boils my blood to no end. As someone who studied it, knew what needed to be done and than had to watch everyone just decide that it was easier to let it happen because the idea of ending capitalism is apparently not as realistic as collapsing the entire biosphere
As someone who studied it, knew what needed to be done and than had to watch everyone just decide that it was easier to let it happen because the idea of ending capitalism is apparently not as realistic as collapsing the entire biosphere
Most of us do here, I don’t think you’ll find a climate denier on fediverse
i deny that climate exists.
It’s all a plot by big sweater and big umbrella to sell more
To the gulags with you!
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?
