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Cake day: March 2nd, 2024

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  • I think of it like this:

    Lacking fundamental critique of the political economy, they believe the liberal narrative of the market and democratic institutions would bring about a fair or good economy.

    Either you stop believing that, wich comes with quite a reorientation towards your own society, history and biography with significant social consequences ("what are you, a socialist now?) and mental stress (radical opposition is not exactly calming).

    …or you assume there is something disturbing your otherwise functioning order and ideology from the outside. Damn those immigrants, if it it wasn’t for them there would be more jobs, higher wages, less crime and I’d finally get all that trickle down.

    This latter is the energetically more efficient choice for each individual, and importantly, this really is true - as long as there is no collective perspective of systemic change, wich of course in turn only materializes when people make their bet for the possible, not the actual.

    This perspective doesn’t really exist atm, it’s not in sight and nobody talks about it. This is the result of anticommunism and a massive failure of the left.

    We need to be couragous and make room for utopian thought while giving opportunities to experience and try solidaric socialization. This makes not being idiot a convincing alternative.


  • Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I’d advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good’ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I’m sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)

    Also “how to conduct yourself as a leftist” sound strict af and kinda deterministic.


  • “Strawman” - and then you just go with “vegans”… so all? Most? Some? Or maybe just the tiniest percentage? I think you understand for wich ones my argument applies and how “strawman” doesn’t, cause numbers. You know, if you pay attention…

    Ok lets cut the rhetorics, I was trying to be sincere. I think you might wanna pay some more of that attention (omg sry I stop now) to “dialectic”. This does explicitly not mean you can turn the thing around and solely look at the other side.

    So of course no change ever happens if all those one persons don’t do anything. But they will only change history if they change the underlying structures. To do so, they have to overcome their individualistic constriction and reach collective agency.

    You gotta organize. The market won’t do, since it is THE form of organization that makes everyone a single player. Both, in their acting and in their consciousness.


  • This statement (about everyone single personal effort) only becomes meaningful when you take into consideration why people don’t. If you do, you will encounter the dialectics of structure and “personal choice” and how complicated history is and how it is not at all about “everybody make a small change in their life”.

    The liberal feverdream of individual solutions for structural problems is bound to end up in “I buy good groceries”.

    And, eventhough veganism is a good thing to do, this is why I’m personally so annoyed by vegan communities.

    I dont know if reducing your personal sin count or whatever is a substitute for radical critique and political action, or an add-on, so I didn’t downvote. But maybe it explains some of it.


  • No great wisdom either, but my main thought about this is that games are designed to keep your dopamine coming (maybe overly nature scientific way of saying: they are exciting, rewarding).

    Other activities can do that to, but some are rewarding in a more subtle way or more on a long term. Like, not “ringring yOu fOuNd DIAMOND!!”. So in comparison with games they might not trigger your motivation (dopamin?) as quickly.

    On the other hand they are probably better at making you feel more general connectedness, belonging, sense, emotional diversity, etc.

    So my advice (wich I struggle alot to follow myself) is: Avoid or limit the other dopamine traps like random scrolling and give yourself and the not-designed- for-dopamine-optimization-world some time, some patient goodwill. This might make that good ol’ world shine bright enough to not get bored all the time.





  • 3 - Participating in and commenting on the voting mechanism is just one bit of the overall development of political, social and cultural history.

    What seems to be “normal” or “acceptable” or “possible” to a given person/part of a population, is the outcome of discourse and maybe more important: concrete options.

    Tangible options to participate in something solidary that’s useful and provides meaningful participation, make left values and ideas soo much more credible and “in reach”.

    IMO these options and experiences can at the moment only really be created from below. Neither corporations nor the government (any time soon) will provide the people with democratic economic solitutions, neighboorhood solidarity, labor organization, collective housing, social movements etc.

    You are so much more than voters. You can organize the practical and ideological negation of the BS you oppose so rightfully.

    Be it a better third option or leftshifting the dems, anyway the whole voting part of history will become more fun that way, too.









  • kwomp2@sh.itjust.worksto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneFrench rule
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    2 months ago

    Well my point is just it’s neither fully determined as in ahistoric rule nor random as in “changes all the time” or “everyone has their own singular definitions and concepts”. And in between there is the sweet spot of understanding, interpretation and development…


  • kwomp2@sh.itjust.worksto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneFrench rule
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    2 months ago

    Objective and socially constructed isn’t a ‘hard’ contradiction.

    Yes of course language evolves and so on, but in a given time(period) it needs to be interpretable more or less independently from the specific actor (a dictionary ensures this, even though it needs to be updated regularly).

    In other words yeah sometimes language comes up with new stuff. If it would do it all the time, it wouldn’t function


  • kwomp2@sh.itjust.worksto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneFrench rule
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    2 months ago

    This is a week analogy… french only works as a means of communication because it has internal rules that are objective (as in different people understand the same/very similar thing when hearing/seeing a symbol/word).

    Singularity of experience is cool, but anything social requires communication/synchronization.

    Even though gender is used as a box or definition people are forced to fit into (and this is bad), reducing human experience to a blackbox kind of singularity is a highly individualist take.

    You can work on understanding each other without forcing anyone to fit into your definition…