Can't even fucking talk to any of my various therapists about this shit. No I can't just "not think about stuff I can't control". I'm autistic, have severe general anxiety, and pretty bad ADHD that medication only marginally helps. I've already improved immensely and stopped worrying about most things.
Except this one.
I organize too don't tell me to do that
Also texts about revolutionary optimism didn't help either. All that shit was a hundred years ago in a completely different state of world
A Paradise Built In Hell by Rebecca Solnit. I consider it a good counterbalance to The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. She analyzes disasters, the government response, people on the ground, and comes to a revolutionary conclusion: The worse it gets, the better we become (with caveats, which she explores too). I came away taking communal disaster preparation/organizing more seriously, and using it as a Trojan to introduce Leftist ideas in regular people. Both books complement each other; Klein dissects the Elite ideology and history with violent shock tactics, and Solnit analyzes the community response as well as the Elite Panic over the community response.
Also interested in this bc becoming a commie has ruined me as a person
Right?? I was actually so much happier and mentally healthy before it's insane
Hexbear must answer for this ngl. It's like putting on the shades from They Live
Walking around the food jailgrocery store is an ordeal.I blame shitty US propaganda. Straight up I never would've been radicalized if they never did any propaganda but the moment I started paying attention to the news, I started to do research on the ClA because that's where so many sources ended up pointing to
Really? I was so frustrated and confused and aimless before. Now it feels like life has a really deep meaning and purpose, even if victory is so far off.
I can agree with and appreciate this, it's sort of a personal issue I guess. I'm incapable of not spewing leftist talking points whenever someone brings up something relevant, which leads to me basically quoting the manifesto at people like a freak. It just won't leave my brain, you know?
I've reflected that most of the friendships I've made throughout my life were made largely because I thought they were a good person, and deep down I enjoyed being around them. And that meant that on some level they had a progressive valueset. If they had a liberal valueset, the friendship wouldn't be very strong, and if they had a reactionary valueset, I would avoid them. Progressive values are kind of a baseline for being a good person in my book.
People I thought were "just nice"? Disproportionately made up of socialists and some social democrats or broad "progressives", and largely people who are but don't realize it yet. People I thought were "just mean"? Overwhelmingly reactionaries.
Philosophy underlies values, and values underlie politics. Something on top can run the other direction, but it will eventually be steered by the current. This cannot be stopped, only delayed.
Also because of how I've made connections in 5+ years of organizing in radical scenes, most of my friends are radicals.
Most people are primed against communism, where even if they would support it if you described it without labels, as soon as they see the label they'll bail on it. So, maybe talk about equality and affinity and solidarity and altruism and realizing human potential, in broader terms. That's probably what Che would do.
On the one hand I peaked emotionally during the pandemic when I was not yet a teen or Marxist. On the other hand I understand the world a whole lot more and what needs to be done. You should see how people feel that care and know a lot about the environment but don’t understand capitalism.
You're so young lol
I used to be kinda like that. Since my teens I'd been drifting further and further left in terms of political position, sans any theory or material understanding. It was frustrating not understanding much, yes, but now with
I'm like, Wow! Everything is horrible all the time!maybe they mean that they were not yet a marxist but out of their teens?
I’m 15 and spend a significant portion of my time reading commie stuff lol
Braiding sweetgrass is excellent. If you do audiobooks, consider that. The author is wonderful to listen to.
Wish I knew. I also struggle with this
I will say though, the core ideas revolutionary optimism are still just as valid, and there are modern works on the subject that could probably give a more modern take on it. Even in most bad climate change scenarios there will still be human societies that need to organize themselves one way or another, and its not like the deteriorating climate will make capitalism any more attractive...
The Deluge by Stephen Markley helped.
The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin helped much, much more...
Enjoy living a high carbon lifestyle and the fruits of empire money
You can't change it, enjoy it
Yea I've tried that the last 2 years, all that gave me was a complete inability to relate with most communists because of my nihilistic lifestyle and a drug addiction
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I've enjoyed "This Life" by Martin Hagglund. It's more about secular life / faith. It's helped reframe how I view struggling for something I feel is important, but his politics are democratic socialist so there's a bit of authoritarian fear mongering
I have found that learning about appropriate technology meets these criteria for me.
Reading about how we can (and in some cases did) produce food, clean water, shelter, heat, lighting, and clothing using just the available resources in the proximate environment is something that makes me feel more capable, makes the means of production seem much more within reach, makes capital-ization seem rather silly and less feasible, makes democratized resistance seem possible, and makes me confident that we have more than enough technology and resources to assure a decent quality of life for 8 billion human beings.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ Also, Poor Proles Almanac podcast.
If past books didn't work you might try suggestions here, but what helped for me was more changing the local systems I'm in. That means focusing more on the moment and in the current task in doing i.e. work, stuff that is relevant at the moment, that with friends, doing therapy and having used a couple of meds, however the integration of friends and structures which focus me on the moment and my body sometimes helped.
Yeah...that's ok.
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtaTzFmAabk