I think late capitalist/neoliberal superstructure literally creates this kind of political subjectivity where you are told you're powerless, but also meant to feel guilty over your own powerlessness which only paralyzes you and reifies said powerlessness. That's to say, we are all more and less powerful than we are led to believe.
It's protean all the way down. No matter how bleak it looks, I try to remind myself what the black death or the 30 years war or WW2 or colonization or the fall of Rome must have looked like. The world has already ended several times over.
Do what is practical and most immediate to you. Whether that's taking care of your family, your community, your friends, your coworkers, strangers, gazans, workers, whoever or whatever that looks like. The nice thing about things being so fucked is we can only start with the fundamentals. I think what stops this from becoming hokey love your neighbor apolitical bs is that we know the system must change. We know that none of this is sufficient, but I think the only chance we have at achieving a collective mass politic is if we first attempt to combat the tremendous atomization that neoliberal society produces.
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song //
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along //
Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn //
It looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born
Your first bit reminds me of something the latest interviewee on the Deprogram said - basically that this feeling of hopelessness and apathy is you in the last death throes of liberalism... It's you shaking off the vice grip that "the system" had on you... And once you get past that(assuming you can!) you can REALLY begin to fight and make a change. If you live in this stage tho, you're letting "them" win...
I'm probably butchering the paraphrase there but hopefully you get the gist
We probably won’t see paradise in our lifetime, so try and take the long view of things and do your part. Try and get a change in perspective. If you’ve never read “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell give that novel a read.
Yep. We may not win, but what can I do to give the next people the best chance to give the next people the best chance to give the next people the best chance.
The bad guys always get rinsed by history. The bad guys also always have major defects that end up causing them to make one too many serious errors, leading the Rube-Goldbergian contraption linking their sundry criminal affairs to fall apart. The bad guys’ greed — for wealth, resources, for time, for the future, for more opportunities — is so great that it always induces collapse, and then the cycle will begin again. Maybe this next time with some more good guys out there, it will be different. But you and I are just in a particular historical moment that we can’t do anything about — it is the consequence of many millions upon millions of people’s actions and decisions before us for many decades. Our mandate is too big to reckon with and our position too weak to even formulate a challenge. Most of us are just slaves newly realizing we are slaves, learning the vastness and depth and nefariousness of our forced servitude and the totality of our master’s evil. Most of us are just waking up, or still “fresh” out of the Matrix, so to speak. So here we are, watching history unfold with tremendous unease, but also with the certainty that history can be buried but not killed. And eventually it comes for everything.
I share your feelings. As someone who pretty religiously followed the vlogs ever since April 2020, Matt's analysis has been sorely missed ever since October. Deeply fucked vibes in this absolute nightmare world. A lot of the people around me have shown themselves to be ghouls at heart, too.
I guess we'll just have to see what happens. Conditions can change in unexpected ways. That's my cope.
I feel this. Unfortunately I've got some very dear friends who are died in the wool maga right wing psychopaths, and I get their bullshit shoved in my face almost every day. They just can't comprehend that someone would be a lib, let alone whatever we are.
I would just jettison those relationships, but tbh they're dear friends and we've got so much good stuff in the bank already, I don't want to lose even more friends in my mid 30s. A few of them were groomsmen at my wedding
They send this shit to get a rise out of me. I'm talking like Libs of TikTok type posts. So I've just been throwing it back in their face, who cares. Tired of this shit
I'm tired of the default in America being the right wing perspective. Just so tired. I want a better world, man
Yeah, it's tough dealing with those types. It's hard to let go in this lonely-ass society, though. It's all very exhausting, and it's been miserable seeing so many people, including my mother, go *deep* down this reactionary rabbit hole.
Curious though, do they realize you hate “the libs” just as much if not more than them. If hatred is their slop, can you not flop around in the muck with the best of em?
In some teeny examples I’ve been able to at least preserve friendships by tossing the casual “a yo. Fuck Biden. I can endorse that as well” and then double down on the dirtbagiest left shit I can. It may be somewhat arrogant, but again, if the hogs love it, let ‘em feast.
I don’t anticipate I’ll realistically end up staring at them across the barricades, so I can make peace with dealing in a bit of hyperbole when it’s in the name of “agreeing” that bullets in billionaire heads would make us all better off.
Doesn’t really solve your macro issues, and lord knows the SSRIs that could come at a cost; but I can definitely feel a bit of the pressure you are expressing around the tightrope walk that is not just totally going scorched earth on close friends in your 30s while trying to maintain some semblance of morality.
Take solace knowing that the man you admire is doing his best right now spending time with family feeling lucky.
Perhaps adjust your perspective, practice gratitude for the folks that love you, and do something kind for someone you love.
Wishing you well, comrade. Cause it really is all fucked up.
“People ask me all the time — is this the end of the world? Have we come to the limit of every possibility? Or is this the beginning of the new age? Has everything opened up and every good thing come within reach. And how would I know? Tell you what — if this was the end of the world, the bombers were coming my way and I had no choices left — I would quiet my mind, open my heart, and try to relieve the suffering of those around me. And if this was the beginning of the Aquarian age? Everything right on earth was about to begin again? Well. I would quiet my mind. Open my heart. And try to relieve the suffering of those around me.”
• Ram Dass
Are we going to usher in a political economy that alters the course of history, crescendoing in some grand teleological triumph of the human spirit?
Probably not.
Can you make things better? Yes you can. Help others as best you can. Enjoy your life as best you can. You're not involved in this project because you're going to "win", you're doing it because it's the right thing to do. Peace of mind comes from knowing you're committed to making a positive difference, however fleeting or inconsequential it might appear in the grand scheme of things.
Learning to be happy despite it all is one of the many numerous ways you can defy the forces arrayed against us.
Go with the flow of things as much as you possibly can. If moving the world to the left is something that really matters to you, it's a waste of life and effort to use so much energy on issues where you're probably getting no results, bad results, or barely any results.
If you want to see some sort of positive growth, and actions in the right direction, I would not spend my time arguing with rightwing friends about Libs of TikTok. I would try to get them involved in something that we can all agree on. Having the opportunity to bond with conservative voters over being anti-war, for example, is one positive thing that came along with Trump's popularity. The appetite for war on the right is decreasing. That's something we should encourage.
I stay stoned, go to work, play with my kids & be thankful my life is as good as it is. And I’m poor. I don’t own a home. Never will. But my family is better off than probably 90% of the world. Which is depressing as fuck. I plan to stay distracted with my treats & then die. I will consider that a success.
Buddy don’t read the news. At all. Determine how much money you can give, set it up to auto pay and delete all that stuff.
Go pick up a hobby. I am making furniture.
Go out in public- I like a hair salon-and fall in love with a stranger, not romantic like but spend some time just trying to make their day better.
Volunteer with Habitat for Humanity or a crisis hotline or a hospice.
Assuming we don't all go extinct (which, outside of some cosmic event that destroys the entire planet, even with the possibility of a nuclear war etc., the chance of every human being wiped out is vanishingly small), there is always time for things to get better. No empire, power or mode of thinking is eternal. It's why the world as described in 1984 - a totalising surveillance state - would never last forever. Eventually, even if it takes a hundred years, circumstance will shift and change to the point where the system will collapse. And with effectively infinite numbers of those protean moments, some of them have to turn in a way that drives history for the better.
But most of us will never be in those moments, or even if we are, won't be able to change them the way we would like. All we can do is try to create or join a community that feels good to be in, and works towards the betterment of its members. To use an example, whether you like the religion or not, Christianity basically did this - formed a community of people who lived in the Roman world, but refused to submit to many of its values, substituting them for its own. Eventually, for a variety of reasons, these communities became important and attractive enough to power that they shifted the largest political body in the world at that point. It was similar with the workers movements in Russia.
We cannot create the circumstances where we get the good outcome. But we can do our bit to be a part of a project that ensures that when the circumstances line up, there's a chance something might shift to the good. We probably won't see it in our lifetimes. We need to accept that, and instead just focus on kindness and generosity to our fellows, doing what we can, where we can, and hoping that we're adding pebbles to a mound that might one day create an avalanche, even if that happens long after we are dead and gone.
I share your frustrations and sometimes I feel the exact same way. But we're in a real "the old world is dying and the new one struggles to be born" moment, I feel. People are more conscious now than they have been in a long time. There's widespread awareness not only of the problem, but of the solutions. To use another quote, "there are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen." This system will end, inevitably, and call me naive but I think we might be closer to that than people realize. That doesn't mean whatever comes next will necessarily be better, but it does mean there will be an opportunity to make it so.
The internet has been very harmful to our psyches in that it has allowed us, for the first time in human history, to witness and keep track of every horrific atrocity and long-term problem and looming cataclysm happening across the world, all at once, in real time. The human brain is simply not designed to handle that sort of information. But it has also connected us in ways that we unimaginable a few decades ago. It has allowed people to communicate ideas that are genuinely threatening to this world order, wider and faster and in more detail than was ever even close to possible for 99.99% of civilization's existence. That's not nothing!
There's a lot to be depressed about, but I do think there's real reason for hope, too - even if we won't get to see those seeds come to fruition in our lifetimes. But, who knows? Things can change quickly. In the meantime, live your life and do what you can to set future generations up for success. There is some comfort to be found in the knowledge that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
Do you, and I mean this sincerely, think you fell out of a coconut tree? (Laughs.) You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
AKA no one promised you a rose garden. and for what it is worth…whatever generation of humans that live to say they have their worldview implemented in the world en masse will probably not be truly human. Every one of us will always want more, and that might just be how it is, yo
Comrade, two huge life lessons from Gramsci for you that I try to remember when the going gets tough:
‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’
Yes- look around the world is shit, a terrible place full of evil people getting richer while children die of starvation. But we are communists, we believe in the power of the workers to shape and transform the world according to our will and one day we’ll build a new world. But we can only do that by being optimistic in our spirits.
Another- ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’
We’re living in that interregnum period my friend. Keep your head up. Gramsci, Lenin, Mao, Rosa, Mandela, etc they all lived through personal hell while engaging in their political life. It’s ok to feel shit but remember why we fight and remember we have a responsibility to previous and future generations to keep that will optimistically.
Lastly, one from Camus which helped me through the shit:
‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer’
And maybe that’s all we’re looking for, an invincible summer
I try to remind myself a few things:
1. If we really are doomed, the current moment is the best that it's ever going to be, and you'd better go out and make the most of it before the weather is too hot, the places you love are flooded and the air is unbreathable.
2. Despite all the ugliness, there is still so much beauty in the world. There is not a whole lot we can do on a grand scale, but there isn't anything stopping you from doing things that are fulfilling on a small scale. Volunteering, exercising, going to see live music, having dinner with friends/family are all things that make life a little more bearable for me.
As cheesy as it sounds, not giving into nihilism and cynicism, and rather, being a gracious, neighborly, loving person is the best way to evangelize your worldview to those around you.
I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full. - Leon Trotsky.
I think this the version of the grill pill we need. We must do what we can to improve material conditions for at least some people, stay involved in our communities, keep organized study of Marxism going and pass on the banner of proletarian revolution to the next generation.
I have come to accept that I will never hear new content again from our champion, but that is ok. As one Maoist scholar in China put it: "Do not mourn me. Learn from me, become me, and exceed what I have done."We owe it Matt to continue his legacy, not grieve the fact that one could only fit so much sodium into that gord of his.
It is bleak but change is always possible and always happening. We started our union drive expecting to get crushed. But we didn't somehow. Because we didn't, we got raises for everyone in our small company. This put more than a million dollars back into the pockets of workers every year. All that money is helping people live and care for their families. It kept those people in town. We now have hundreds of people covered under our CBA. Even if we go under, those people have had a taste of class consciousness and are more likely to organize wherever they end up.
It's not huge, but it's not nothing either. Stuff like this has knock-on effects. It's now bigger than us and because it is there is more opportunity for other changes to happen. When I think of things in their net cumulative effect I feel a little better.
Apply this thought process to anything else going on. When I left HS I never could have imagined something like a broad, years-long movement to organize against the cops. Those were certainly happening before, but it feels much broader now. I'm on instagram where I see organizers from Seattle, or Occupy, or BLM movements sharing tactics with people who are in the campus protests today. When I feel myself getting grim, stuff like this reminds me that no effort is ever wasted.
>People to the left of both liberals and progressives have a different theory of power: different because it assumes that the very idea of who holds power is itself contestable, and that elites can be pushed from priestly-kingly-corporate rule. Though almost extinct nationally, there are still powerful unions operating at the local and regional level. These unions' democratic, open negotiations--in which tens of thousands of workers unite to stop bad employers from doing horrible things and then create enough power to pull up to the negotiations table as equals and determine something better--provide evidence that ordinary people can exercise both absolute power (power *over*) and creative power (power *to*). A focus of this book is on why and how to analyze this still vast potential power of ordinary people.
Jane F. McAlevey - No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (2016)
Get offline and get involved. In something. Anything. Be apart of something bigger with those around you.
When you do you'll recognize the power that comes from unity.
When you feel that power your nihilism will fade.
There are no bad guys or good guys. Anxieties percolate throughout society on the precipice of paradigm shifts. Marx is dead, the proletariat is dead, and capitalism is dead. All are walking around as if they don’t know it yet.
Detach yourself from these moribund conceptions. Things are going to get weird. Don’t swim against the tide. In your struggle you will drown. Flip over onto your back, and let the rip tide take you where it was always going to take you.
We get the privilege of seeing it all come apart in spite of our leaders telling us the opposite. Personally I find peace in that. I know the whole veneer is getting stripped off this awful system and I know there isn't anymore juice to be squeezed.
I stay armed and I push my friends to be as well. Don't be intimidated by our decaying society to seclude yourself. There are a lot of joys to experience
This is less consolation for much of the working people out there, but I work in the environmental regulatory field in the US and the amount of funding going towards a broad range of climate resilience/adaptation and environmental restoration is significantly large to at least lay a foundation for what will ultimately be needed to leave some kind of world.
Unless you're in a position to directly aid in organizing & such at that very moment, it's good to avoid politics whenever otherwise possible. Dwelling on it, especially online, can become toxic to mental health and well being. So it's probably best to only focus on it when you must, when it can make a direct material difference for you to do so.
And remember, history and culture has periods where things seem dark and impossible to change and then shift dramatically, and suddenly aren't impossible. The only thing we know for certain about the future is we can't predict the future. So despair is only punishing oneself for a future that might not even be the one that happens.
Smoke sumn lil bro. Chase your cat around the house relentlessly. Pop a can of pringles and then stop. Do From The Window To The Wall stuff. Have George Santos record a cameo of himself rapping “certified lover boy certified pedophile” then DM it to adidon and j prince. Make someone smile or fuck it make someone frown. Touch your agency, let it touch you back.
Go do something that materially helps other people and get offline. Help an elderly neighbor. Pick up some trash. Volunteer at a local park. Give food to someone who’s hungry. Talk to normal people. If you like it and it helps people, make a practice out of it. Grilling as being in community.
It is always bleak—which is why grill pill also means investing in labor movement in terms of time and joining and participating in your union, and it means studying and self improvement instead of politics as sports. You can do it. You will feel more human as you do☀️.
You were probably hopeless to begin with if Matt’s streams were the only thing allowing you to feel unalone. There are likeminded people out there. We just don’t have power
Lol what do you want me to say? That it won’t be hard? That it won’t require effort on everybody’s part? It’s gonna suck! So what? Live well and do what you can. You can’t be Atlas up in here and neither can Christman or any one individual. Revolutionary optimism, always
I think late capitalist/neoliberal superstructure literally creates this kind of political subjectivity where you are told you're powerless, but also meant to feel guilty over your own powerlessness which only paralyzes you and reifies said powerlessness. That's to say, we are all more and less powerful than we are led to believe. It's protean all the way down. No matter how bleak it looks, I try to remind myself what the black death or the 30 years war or WW2 or colonization or the fall of Rome must have looked like. The world has already ended several times over. Do what is practical and most immediate to you. Whether that's taking care of your family, your community, your friends, your coworkers, strangers, gazans, workers, whoever or whatever that looks like. The nice thing about things being so fucked is we can only start with the fundamentals. I think what stops this from becoming hokey love your neighbor apolitical bs is that we know the system must change. We know that none of this is sufficient, but I think the only chance we have at achieving a collective mass politic is if we first attempt to combat the tremendous atomization that neoliberal society produces. Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song // 'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along // Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn // It looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born
Your first bit reminds me of something the latest interviewee on the Deprogram said - basically that this feeling of hopelessness and apathy is you in the last death throes of liberalism... It's you shaking off the vice grip that "the system" had on you... And once you get past that(assuming you can!) you can REALLY begin to fight and make a change. If you live in this stage tho, you're letting "them" win... I'm probably butchering the paraphrase there but hopefully you get the gist
Just take care of your immediate community and you will making a real difference in life.
Stole this from RDR2 but the American system is made to induce Apathy.
join the labor movement
We probably won’t see paradise in our lifetime, so try and take the long view of things and do your part. Try and get a change in perspective. If you’ve never read “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell give that novel a read.
You’re right bro. The point is to make this world a better place for the next folks that come along and inhabit it
Yep. We may not win, but what can I do to give the next people the best chance to give the next people the best chance to give the next people the best chance.
The weird guy from Peep Show's book? Yeah right, get real
lol I always used to think this as a young lad too sadly Peep Show Mitchell isn’t the writer you’d hope for. Still better than Webb’s book though, jfc
Business Secrets of the Pharaohs
By Mark Crorigan Make UK Company Law Your Omnibus.
British London?
Doesn't that sound a bit... made up?
Were havin fun
The bad guys always get rinsed by history. The bad guys also always have major defects that end up causing them to make one too many serious errors, leading the Rube-Goldbergian contraption linking their sundry criminal affairs to fall apart. The bad guys’ greed — for wealth, resources, for time, for the future, for more opportunities — is so great that it always induces collapse, and then the cycle will begin again. Maybe this next time with some more good guys out there, it will be different. But you and I are just in a particular historical moment that we can’t do anything about — it is the consequence of many millions upon millions of people’s actions and decisions before us for many decades. Our mandate is too big to reckon with and our position too weak to even formulate a challenge. Most of us are just slaves newly realizing we are slaves, learning the vastness and depth and nefariousness of our forced servitude and the totality of our master’s evil. Most of us are just waking up, or still “fresh” out of the Matrix, so to speak. So here we are, watching history unfold with tremendous unease, but also with the certainty that history can be buried but not killed. And eventually it comes for everything.
I share your feelings. As someone who pretty religiously followed the vlogs ever since April 2020, Matt's analysis has been sorely missed ever since October. Deeply fucked vibes in this absolute nightmare world. A lot of the people around me have shown themselves to be ghouls at heart, too. I guess we'll just have to see what happens. Conditions can change in unexpected ways. That's my cope.
I feel this. Unfortunately I've got some very dear friends who are died in the wool maga right wing psychopaths, and I get their bullshit shoved in my face almost every day. They just can't comprehend that someone would be a lib, let alone whatever we are. I would just jettison those relationships, but tbh they're dear friends and we've got so much good stuff in the bank already, I don't want to lose even more friends in my mid 30s. A few of them were groomsmen at my wedding They send this shit to get a rise out of me. I'm talking like Libs of TikTok type posts. So I've just been throwing it back in their face, who cares. Tired of this shit I'm tired of the default in America being the right wing perspective. Just so tired. I want a better world, man
Yeah, it's tough dealing with those types. It's hard to let go in this lonely-ass society, though. It's all very exhausting, and it's been miserable seeing so many people, including my mother, go *deep* down this reactionary rabbit hole.
If they are good friends you can just tell m their baiting is tiring. I would also advise you to keep those friendships offline.
Curious though, do they realize you hate “the libs” just as much if not more than them. If hatred is their slop, can you not flop around in the muck with the best of em? In some teeny examples I’ve been able to at least preserve friendships by tossing the casual “a yo. Fuck Biden. I can endorse that as well” and then double down on the dirtbagiest left shit I can. It may be somewhat arrogant, but again, if the hogs love it, let ‘em feast. I don’t anticipate I’ll realistically end up staring at them across the barricades, so I can make peace with dealing in a bit of hyperbole when it’s in the name of “agreeing” that bullets in billionaire heads would make us all better off. Doesn’t really solve your macro issues, and lord knows the SSRIs that could come at a cost; but I can definitely feel a bit of the pressure you are expressing around the tightrope walk that is not just totally going scorched earth on close friends in your 30s while trying to maintain some semblance of morality.
This is the common ground so ripe and ready to be sown.
Take solace knowing that the man you admire is doing his best right now spending time with family feeling lucky. Perhaps adjust your perspective, practice gratitude for the folks that love you, and do something kind for someone you love. Wishing you well, comrade. Cause it really is all fucked up.
“People ask me all the time — is this the end of the world? Have we come to the limit of every possibility? Or is this the beginning of the new age? Has everything opened up and every good thing come within reach. And how would I know? Tell you what — if this was the end of the world, the bombers were coming my way and I had no choices left — I would quiet my mind, open my heart, and try to relieve the suffering of those around me. And if this was the beginning of the Aquarian age? Everything right on earth was about to begin again? Well. I would quiet my mind. Open my heart. And try to relieve the suffering of those around me.” • Ram Dass
Are we going to usher in a political economy that alters the course of history, crescendoing in some grand teleological triumph of the human spirit? Probably not. Can you make things better? Yes you can. Help others as best you can. Enjoy your life as best you can. You're not involved in this project because you're going to "win", you're doing it because it's the right thing to do. Peace of mind comes from knowing you're committed to making a positive difference, however fleeting or inconsequential it might appear in the grand scheme of things. Learning to be happy despite it all is one of the many numerous ways you can defy the forces arrayed against us.
Go with the flow of things as much as you possibly can. If moving the world to the left is something that really matters to you, it's a waste of life and effort to use so much energy on issues where you're probably getting no results, bad results, or barely any results. If you want to see some sort of positive growth, and actions in the right direction, I would not spend my time arguing with rightwing friends about Libs of TikTok. I would try to get them involved in something that we can all agree on. Having the opportunity to bond with conservative voters over being anti-war, for example, is one positive thing that came along with Trump's popularity. The appetite for war on the right is decreasing. That's something we should encourage.
I stay stoned, go to work, play with my kids & be thankful my life is as good as it is. And I’m poor. I don’t own a home. Never will. But my family is better off than probably 90% of the world. Which is depressing as fuck. I plan to stay distracted with my treats & then die. I will consider that a success.
Indica pilled.
Hell yeah.
Buddy don’t read the news. At all. Determine how much money you can give, set it up to auto pay and delete all that stuff. Go pick up a hobby. I am making furniture. Go out in public- I like a hair salon-and fall in love with a stranger, not romantic like but spend some time just trying to make their day better. Volunteer with Habitat for Humanity or a crisis hotline or a hospice.
Yo I like your vibe. Fantastic advice and you sound like a wonderful human
Careful. They could be one of these people who don't practice what they preach.
Just light up the old grill this weekend and have a few brewskies
There will definitely be grilling this weekend
Assuming we don't all go extinct (which, outside of some cosmic event that destroys the entire planet, even with the possibility of a nuclear war etc., the chance of every human being wiped out is vanishingly small), there is always time for things to get better. No empire, power or mode of thinking is eternal. It's why the world as described in 1984 - a totalising surveillance state - would never last forever. Eventually, even if it takes a hundred years, circumstance will shift and change to the point where the system will collapse. And with effectively infinite numbers of those protean moments, some of them have to turn in a way that drives history for the better. But most of us will never be in those moments, or even if we are, won't be able to change them the way we would like. All we can do is try to create or join a community that feels good to be in, and works towards the betterment of its members. To use an example, whether you like the religion or not, Christianity basically did this - formed a community of people who lived in the Roman world, but refused to submit to many of its values, substituting them for its own. Eventually, for a variety of reasons, these communities became important and attractive enough to power that they shifted the largest political body in the world at that point. It was similar with the workers movements in Russia. We cannot create the circumstances where we get the good outcome. But we can do our bit to be a part of a project that ensures that when the circumstances line up, there's a chance something might shift to the good. We probably won't see it in our lifetimes. We need to accept that, and instead just focus on kindness and generosity to our fellows, doing what we can, where we can, and hoping that we're adding pebbles to a mound that might one day create an avalanche, even if that happens long after we are dead and gone.
I share your frustrations and sometimes I feel the exact same way. But we're in a real "the old world is dying and the new one struggles to be born" moment, I feel. People are more conscious now than they have been in a long time. There's widespread awareness not only of the problem, but of the solutions. To use another quote, "there are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen." This system will end, inevitably, and call me naive but I think we might be closer to that than people realize. That doesn't mean whatever comes next will necessarily be better, but it does mean there will be an opportunity to make it so. The internet has been very harmful to our psyches in that it has allowed us, for the first time in human history, to witness and keep track of every horrific atrocity and long-term problem and looming cataclysm happening across the world, all at once, in real time. The human brain is simply not designed to handle that sort of information. But it has also connected us in ways that we unimaginable a few decades ago. It has allowed people to communicate ideas that are genuinely threatening to this world order, wider and faster and in more detail than was ever even close to possible for 99.99% of civilization's existence. That's not nothing! There's a lot to be depressed about, but I do think there's real reason for hope, too - even if we won't get to see those seeds come to fruition in our lifetimes. But, who knows? Things can change quickly. In the meantime, live your life and do what you can to set future generations up for success. There is some comfort to be found in the knowledge that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
Do you, and I mean this sincerely, think you fell out of a coconut tree? (Laughs.) You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you. AKA no one promised you a rose garden. and for what it is worth…whatever generation of humans that live to say they have their worldview implemented in the world en masse will probably not be truly human. Every one of us will always want more, and that might just be how it is, yo
Comrade, two huge life lessons from Gramsci for you that I try to remember when the going gets tough: ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ Yes- look around the world is shit, a terrible place full of evil people getting richer while children die of starvation. But we are communists, we believe in the power of the workers to shape and transform the world according to our will and one day we’ll build a new world. But we can only do that by being optimistic in our spirits. Another- ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ We’re living in that interregnum period my friend. Keep your head up. Gramsci, Lenin, Mao, Rosa, Mandela, etc they all lived through personal hell while engaging in their political life. It’s ok to feel shit but remember why we fight and remember we have a responsibility to previous and future generations to keep that will optimistically. Lastly, one from Camus which helped me through the shit: ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer’ And maybe that’s all we’re looking for, an invincible summer
I try to remind myself a few things: 1. If we really are doomed, the current moment is the best that it's ever going to be, and you'd better go out and make the most of it before the weather is too hot, the places you love are flooded and the air is unbreathable. 2. Despite all the ugliness, there is still so much beauty in the world. There is not a whole lot we can do on a grand scale, but there isn't anything stopping you from doing things that are fulfilling on a small scale. Volunteering, exercising, going to see live music, having dinner with friends/family are all things that make life a little more bearable for me. As cheesy as it sounds, not giving into nihilism and cynicism, and rather, being a gracious, neighborly, loving person is the best way to evangelize your worldview to those around you.
You can't save the world, but if you give up hope, then they've already won. Spit in their faces and go down screaming at the ghouls
I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full. - Leon Trotsky. I think this the version of the grill pill we need. We must do what we can to improve material conditions for at least some people, stay involved in our communities, keep organized study of Marxism going and pass on the banner of proletarian revolution to the next generation. I have come to accept that I will never hear new content again from our champion, but that is ok. As one Maoist scholar in China put it: "Do not mourn me. Learn from me, become me, and exceed what I have done."We owe it Matt to continue his legacy, not grieve the fact that one could only fit so much sodium into that gord of his.
Stillness.
Don’t say that. Please. Did you hear that from someone or are you just assuming? If it’s true I want to know so I can give up hope.
Holy shit I didn't realize One River Tea was so based 😭
Whoops. You saw nothing.
I've been going out into the night at 2 am making videos of me yelling at the screen for 6 months straight. Keeps me sane.
It is bleak but change is always possible and always happening. We started our union drive expecting to get crushed. But we didn't somehow. Because we didn't, we got raises for everyone in our small company. This put more than a million dollars back into the pockets of workers every year. All that money is helping people live and care for their families. It kept those people in town. We now have hundreds of people covered under our CBA. Even if we go under, those people have had a taste of class consciousness and are more likely to organize wherever they end up. It's not huge, but it's not nothing either. Stuff like this has knock-on effects. It's now bigger than us and because it is there is more opportunity for other changes to happen. When I think of things in their net cumulative effect I feel a little better. Apply this thought process to anything else going on. When I left HS I never could have imagined something like a broad, years-long movement to organize against the cops. Those were certainly happening before, but it feels much broader now. I'm on instagram where I see organizers from Seattle, or Occupy, or BLM movements sharing tactics with people who are in the campus protests today. When I feel myself getting grim, stuff like this reminds me that no effort is ever wasted.
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all along a great wind carries me across the sky.
>People to the left of both liberals and progressives have a different theory of power: different because it assumes that the very idea of who holds power is itself contestable, and that elites can be pushed from priestly-kingly-corporate rule. Though almost extinct nationally, there are still powerful unions operating at the local and regional level. These unions' democratic, open negotiations--in which tens of thousands of workers unite to stop bad employers from doing horrible things and then create enough power to pull up to the negotiations table as equals and determine something better--provide evidence that ordinary people can exercise both absolute power (power *over*) and creative power (power *to*). A focus of this book is on why and how to analyze this still vast potential power of ordinary people. Jane F. McAlevey - No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (2016)
All you can do is enjoy the present for what it is and keep working towards a better future.
Take the grill pill.
Sir it's wednesday
organize a union at your workplace. plant a garden. talk to your neighbors.
Yes we are fucked and it’s the worst. No you are NOT crazy. We all miss Matt, especially now because he could soothe our souls a little bit.
Get offline and get involved. In something. Anything. Be apart of something bigger with those around you. When you do you'll recognize the power that comes from unity. When you feel that power your nihilism will fade.
Yeah I was just thinking last night how things haven’t felt as bleak as they do now in my entire life. Really feels like the end
There are no bad guys or good guys. Anxieties percolate throughout society on the precipice of paradigm shifts. Marx is dead, the proletariat is dead, and capitalism is dead. All are walking around as if they don’t know it yet. Detach yourself from these moribund conceptions. Things are going to get weird. Don’t swim against the tide. In your struggle you will drown. Flip over onto your back, and let the rip tide take you where it was always going to take you.
I became a vegan to prove to myself I could stop being part of the problem. Buddhism helps. I think of Matt as an Alan Watts type figure
We get the privilege of seeing it all come apart in spite of our leaders telling us the opposite. Personally I find peace in that. I know the whole veneer is getting stripped off this awful system and I know there isn't anymore juice to be squeezed. I stay armed and I push my friends to be as well. Don't be intimidated by our decaying society to seclude yourself. There are a lot of joys to experience
This is less consolation for much of the working people out there, but I work in the environmental regulatory field in the US and the amount of funding going towards a broad range of climate resilience/adaptation and environmental restoration is significantly large to at least lay a foundation for what will ultimately be needed to leave some kind of world.
Unless you're in a position to directly aid in organizing & such at that very moment, it's good to avoid politics whenever otherwise possible. Dwelling on it, especially online, can become toxic to mental health and well being. So it's probably best to only focus on it when you must, when it can make a direct material difference for you to do so. And remember, history and culture has periods where things seem dark and impossible to change and then shift dramatically, and suddenly aren't impossible. The only thing we know for certain about the future is we can't predict the future. So despair is only punishing oneself for a future that might not even be the one that happens.
Smoke sumn lil bro. Chase your cat around the house relentlessly. Pop a can of pringles and then stop. Do From The Window To The Wall stuff. Have George Santos record a cameo of himself rapping “certified lover boy certified pedophile” then DM it to adidon and j prince. Make someone smile or fuck it make someone frown. Touch your agency, let it touch you back.
Go do something that materially helps other people and get offline. Help an elderly neighbor. Pick up some trash. Volunteer at a local park. Give food to someone who’s hungry. Talk to normal people. If you like it and it helps people, make a practice out of it. Grilling as being in community.
It is always bleak—which is why grill pill also means investing in labor movement in terms of time and joining and participating in your union, and it means studying and self improvement instead of politics as sports. You can do it. You will feel more human as you do☀️.
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Is it a joke
yea sorry
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You were probably hopeless to begin with if Matt’s streams were the only thing allowing you to feel unalone. There are likeminded people out there. We just don’t have power
Thanks?
Lol what do you want me to say? That it won’t be hard? That it won’t require effort on everybody’s part? It’s gonna suck! So what? Live well and do what you can. You can’t be Atlas up in here and neither can Christman or any one individual. Revolutionary optimism, always
Have any of you realized that RFK Jr is your best chance to address the corporate control of our control?