Nothing but a ventpost. I’ve been touching grass and really doing heavy org shit within the empire for a while now and while some comrades are incredible and synthesize theory + human empathy perfectly, others seem to just grandstand as these “scientific beings” that really are just emotionally bankrupt and care zero about anything but “resolving the next contradiction” which is just fucking ridiculous and cult-like.
The world isn’t so simple to view things in just this framework and to think that ML-ism will give us all the answers is not only stupid but anti-ML. I am struggling heavy at this point and I beg all of you who are organized to be reasonable and kind to your fellow humans. We aren’t just comrades, we are friends, and if you find yourself becoming robotic or forgetting that, you’re not a “consolidated communist” you’re just fucking traumatized and lacking emotional availability.
I’m going to be taking a break from org work for a few months because of this and some other mental problems, but not before dealing with weird comments about individualism and disappointment and some serious reservations about continuing as a real life communist period.
Eat me up in the comments about how I’m a liberal, or let me know your thoughts otherwise.
While I agree entirely, a part of me wishes I didn’t.
Not all people are my “fellow” humans, at most they’re “humans” (and they are) but that’s the most I can give them. And here in the imperial core the bar is so low, and yet so many people fail to meet it. And I’m still kind (unless someone is a ghoul I’ll be kind unless given a reason not to be) but I feel nothing positive from it towards such people (not that that’s the point), rather I feel silenced, and it eats at me when I have to see the results of the “unjust peace” (not that what’s going on in the world or even within the cores can be remotely described as “peace”) and live in it, particularly with the Sinophobic sword of Damocles hanging over my head (ethnic Chinese myself), or with literal industrial genocide going on and the west goosestepping towards WW3 and open fascism.
I don’t have the emotional availability to deal with all the… microaggressions (that may not even necessarily mean anything or be intended), or the “western-isms” or just plain liberalism. I can be kind and will be (unless given proper reason not to be- it would be so much easier if it were just simple that way) but I only feel I lose something from it. Honestly I feel I need to just insulate myself within (or rather, from) this society and live, or get the hell out (which may be a necessity if things get bad enough).
Sounds depressing, but it’s more of a flip of a coin or something (and if politics and all the demagoguery landmines present in the current cultural context don’t get brought up it’s probably going to be fine). Sometimes there are decent people and I’m reminded of why I like people, other times I’m reminded of just why I’m so utterly repulsed, disgusted, and alienated with this society (even if perhaps my issue is more with the system and context than necessarily individuals who may or may not be so offensive- I can hold my ground if nothing else). Helps that I don’t speak too much with just anyone (and intend to become more selective yet, for my own mental health’s sake), I suppose.
I can’t pretend to understand the part about being ethnically Chinese in the imperial core, as I definitely qualify as “white” myself, but the part about “unjust peace” resonates with me in some way. I don’t know if my mind is going to quite the same places, but there’s something about the normalcy of things in the US that def eats at me. One expression of this where I notice it is, of all places, dating apps. I don’t know what it is about it, but seeing profile after profile that has all this individualistic language about a personal lifestyle, while perhaps the most documented-in-real-time and widely publicized genocide in history is being funded and enabled by the US, is such a disorienting feeling. There’s the odd profile here and there that mentions it, maybe some of it’s my locale, but it’s like overall, this juxtaposition of liberal individualism against the realities of what is happening in the world. Like the implied assumption is that the current system works and will keep working and everybody will sort of get to do their own thing if they try hard enough for it, and it’s like, are many of these people putting on a face but don’t believe the system is going to last, or are they sleepwalking through it in a political education sense of things.
And I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’m doing the best I could be doing in my own case, with regards to these things. I might be doing the best I can manage right now, but I can probably work to do better going forward. And I think that’s part of the disorienting feeling for me too. Like having one feet in and one foot out. But I can never unsee everything I’ve seen and I can’t ever feel normal going back what it felt like before I was more aware of what’s going on in the world beyond the imperialist bubble of propaganda. And the fact that I can’t means it’s all the harder to relate to a lot of people. So I can put on a face and do the individualist lifestyle dance to a point, but sometimes it feels like putting on a brave face for a kid. I know that would probably sound demeaning to people and places it applies to, but it’s the best analogy I can think of at the moment. It’s like this thing of pretending things are normal when they aren’t because it’s too upsetting to others if you don’t at least try to, to a degree. That doesn’t mean I never bring up the issues I care about, but it’s like, trying to find the right balance of being able to meet people where they are at in order to have any chance of moving the needle and taking a principled stand. That is hard, when the default position for so many in the US is confident spew that contains various levels of barely-contained vile; and I’m not even talking about people who are openly fascist or whatever. More just the stomach-turning nature of liberalism.
I used it because it resonated with me as well (it’s a term described by MLK, lambasting “white moderates.”)
Personally you nailed it- everyone knows (for the right or wrong reasons- hell, nowadays most can recognize at least some of the right reasons) that the system is wholly unsustainable, and wholly unjustifiable. Anyone with the decency to recognize it (sadly this is less common) can recognize the sheer and utter horror of the system- something that has always been present, but which now has reached such intolerable levels once again not seen in a century. And people are sleepwalking, or even if they are aware, trying to look the other way, and it’s like living in an upside-down, bizzaro world.
Maybe it sounds demeaning. In truth (while I’m aware sometimes there are good reasons- maybe even “oftentimes” depending on context) it’s both accurate and deserved IMO. We’re doing the song-and-dance while modern-day Hitlers like Genocide Joe, Holocaust Harris, and the mean orange man (and the league of western fascists- equally irredeemable ghouls ranging from Macron to Trudeau or Scholz, etc) march us all to armageddon (and compared to what else is on the table, that may be an optimistic outcome- a quick death). And as you said, the default position- even if it’s not fascist, or even has some awareness and criticism of liberalism, is still just poisoned, biased, or will happily look the other way (for “peace,” after all) as all of the above trample over any notion of basic human decency.