You know what gets me. Most people seem to have this toxic positivity about the world and it's events. I talk to people about all the news i read, like people not being able to afford the most minuscule of apartments or that we have 11 years to fix climate change, and people just respond with "things will get better" or something to that affect, they never show evidence to back up their positivity of the future but just assume that things will get better. You also have people who reject anything negative because it screws with their feelings and want to stay positive. Both types of people seem to be a product of capitalist realism and the culture of happiness.
Do any anons feel the same or have had the same experience?
Toxic Positivity
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I personally maintain an unhealthy and unrealistic optimism myself. If nobody's going to be optimistic, i have to fill the void myself.
They're just coping. They're too dumb to realize that you can be optimistic while still wanting change, and still accepting the bullshit.
I mean you're right but being negative all the time is fucking exhausting. It's really hard to admit that you live in a hellworld and the rich are strangling you to death.
Hey Zig Forums, what if we're young and we care about the future because it directly effects us?
In my experience most of the people who do this are boomers and Xers who are all gonna die before they see the world collapse.
If you except that the world is gonna die that what’s even the point of politics? Truth is things do get better. On average living standards are a lot higher then they were a hundred years ago. Workdays are shorter, Life expectancy is much higher. Polio is nearly eliminated. Smallpox is gone. While in the short term things go up and down. However on the long term if you look at the average quality of life it’s one big up arrow.
I’m gen Z and optimist that when I retire it’ll be a sci-fi utopia.
When you aren't a normie it really isn't since it is just par for the course.
I prefer to not live life with fear. Yes their are problems, but no mater how big they are, they can be solved.
I'm Gen Z too but I can't say I share the optimism, but that doesn't mean I can't and won't fight for a chance at a better world.
That's as may be but normies are, well, the norm.
I mean even though I am an older millennial (32) we will (maybe) be both alive when you retire. Unless I get to get my youth back, I'd rather die in the revolution. Problem is it is not gonna happen while I can still run and fight.
The optimism is really dangerous when considering the coming climate catastrophe. The liberals are walking us all into disaster with their eyes wide open to the coming holocaust but ever hopeful and optimistic about the capitalists' or bourgie politicians' abilities to save us. They need to realize capitalism's role in the climate issue and fucking panic - not haplessly hope that a carbon tax proposal or whatever will save us when it finally passes through parliament six years from now, gutted by political compromise with the capitalist class.
Why are people this dualisitic? The OP criticizes unfounded optimism and then this person just jumps to the polar opposite and criticizes negativity. I don't get it. WTF, is wrong with people.
It really is kind of depressing. These people are the true utopians, idealists, and out of touch with reality. To think of all that shit and believe "it'll just get better". The boomers who believe this won't have to suffer the consequences. Millenials and Gen Z'ers definitely will though.
I had an irl discussion about that recently, the term we ended up using was "fetishization of misery".
And it started out from the film Leviathan (which I recommend to anyone btw) and of course soon you come to the entire spectacle and so on forcing you to be miserable and happy and overexcited and a nice little meatpuppet and all that, the usual stuff.
But you can't generalise, unfortunately.
You can say that someone showing happiness is just an obedient philistine or a stressed out pretender or a malicious shit or or , and for the sad people and the angry people and everyone there is this veil of unknowing but all it hides is fear and mistrust, and the screens don't help.
And there have been millions of books on the subject and they don't help that much either.
So alienation on its own becomes something of a nonissue, and so do most psychological concepts that deal with something individuallly.
This implosion of character most people experience through emotional imbalances or whatever else is actually something hopeful too, depersonalisation of the subject is what we need and of course there's an entire valley of horrors waiting up but still I think the concept of a human being as a unit kept as back a lot and even Foucault was right on some things.
So, I don't know how things are going on in America or somewhere, but I grew up in a big Balkan city so the concepts of happiness or despair are quite nebulous and useless, and I have the instict that for many people it's just the same.
So, have hope, because just like the Germinal types, the vector carrying revolutionary consciousness forward is still rickety half corpses and mangled arms deep in some mine somewhere, but they mostly don't access the internet so this drivel is lost to them, also they're not white or western so most people here won't really empathize, and it's ok to accept it instead of giving out all those emotional theaters that sometimes hang even around sound communist minds (3rd worldism and its opposite, and so on)
But anyway, systemic/machinic/social manipulation and tinkering of emotions is to be welcomed, because it introduces imbalances which serve to act as a reservoir of turbulence, so every happy person can become scarily depressed and broken, and the realer the happiness the realer the depression and so on.
So the more they fuck up our minds with all sorts of fear and madness the more we achieve universal consciousness of our Gattungswesen, because maybe the Soviet Man really is a different kind of person, and this swirling dance of crystallized despairs and desires a human person is slowly becoming, all those organs without bodies and so on, are to be welcomed too.
So, no worries at all. Love your cell, eat your food and read a lot (partisan slogan, thought you liked it), and soon people will start seeing the hope of the future, and it will be socialism.
They just have to drag their decomposing carcass through infinite neural corridors of pain, and maybe yours too, but soon we'll all be happy broken ghosts together after the lamp of our prison cell called Reason finally burns out.
t. happy Landian
OP, I think more broadly politically minded people tend to be more negative in outlook. Like all a racist is is someone who has a huge stockpile of negative sterotypes outweighing the positive ones, and not surprisingly racists tend to hate most or all races including often their own. Libertarians think the US is turning into a dystopian nightmare. Even vanilla political content is very negative in outlook and tone. The most positive attitude in politics is the politician who says bland optimistic things on stage in order to get power.
i love you guys and want you to do your best!
this is probably the thing I hate the most.
Dialectical Materialism and the inevitability of socialism give me hope.
I think Marxism is the only ideology capable of an optimistic outlook.
Idk where you live but over here it is suffocating apathy and negativity that is pretty toxic here.
Seconding this. The understanding of the worlds as a process that works to steadily eradicate suffering is a genuinely optimistic outlook.
And if we wipe out all life I guess that also ensures the end of suffering too so either way the future is at peace.
The belief in socialism is the belief that their is something that exists beyond what our current society is. Something that is better than it, and it is possible for us to attain it. Socialism is the yearning for the beyond.
People have to cope with the idea that the world is dying and its all our fault. We literally have no one else to blame but ourselves and coping with that fact comes off as a toxic nihilism.
This shit is annoying, my roommate last year was such an utter fucking retard and moron that must’ve watched Steve Pinker every day before bed or some shit
He told me to my face that he believes people that he knows are lying to him because they say what he wants to hear
dialectical materialism can predict the future in regards to collapse of systems and internal structures through their own contradictions, they cant however fully predict on what system will be there to replace it with. If were not careful we will end up with fascism when the system fails. This means its up to us to prevent as many people as possible from choosing fascism over spoopy gommunsim
Thank you, I love you.
Idk about you guys but this shit has really opened up the prospect of true global socialism or possibly even communism within our lifetimes if we can shift the Overton window enough to make people see that this is the capitalist economies fundamental flaw and we need to do away with it before it literally kills us all. It both gives me hope and despair, it gives me hope that a truly socialist world is on the horizon but at what cost? How much is humanity willing to take before they finally realize their mistake for letting capitalism run as long as it has? It should of been done away with long ago.
A better world is possible. We just need to build it.
Alienation and materialism do crazy things to people's brains op
Because the world is rotting away so they try to delude themselves that everything is fine in order to keep their fragile minds sane.
One of the smartest people I've ever known in my life told me once that capitalism is the prehistory of humanity, and really I don't know about you guys but I was raised in a church environment but for gommies, first song I learned to sing was the Internationale and I became a weeb to spite the dengist shills crawling around so it's really a strange world out there.
So I laugh at your hypernormalised capitalist realisms, I feel I am rather the crazy fanatic but it was always absolutely clear to me that communism will win in the end, and I was born in the last months of AES so I'm already countless times a corpse, and all my life feels like a demagnetising spool in some forgotten tape somewhere, and what the machine dreams are all the worst capitalist hells in the world and words really are a hindrance to the terror but when communism finally comes we can all laugh together, and I read Badiou before Haruhi because I had the strangest childhood but I'm sure that in the end our homework is a fucked up maospontex insurrection that will throw away every name thrown at her, and we'll do that, somehow.
Also I've never joined a Party because I've talked to too many Party members and there are some pits of despair you don't want to come out of.
And I still feel like a religious idiot even though I've read all that math, and I hate Marx too but still communism will win any maybe it will be shit.
Yes my man, fascism is the end of history when there are no more societal structural conflicts to be resolved and is a stable social energy minimum
Read a fucking book.
It's not the end of history, but it can be the end of your(my) history.
Really, all the famous problem of the Bone amounts to is the one thing Trotsky got right, that overtheorising can lead to neglecting the duty of killing cops.
Read Palme Dutt
These folks need to be bullied into submission with the harsh reality of the world today. Only then will they possibly be open to alternatives.
Holy shit user that was beautiful, where is that vid from?
I don't care if it's stupid 'wholesome' radlibs or asshat reactionary doomers, i fucking hate unfounded idealism that fetishizes the feelings people have for things and treats them as if they're the primary force of change in the world. It makes me want to retreat into my cave and turn into a dumb british empiricist. There's just too much irony, implicit hopelessness and misery in their enjoyment.
Well that's your fault for being such a fucking idealist.
its from here lol
I thought 'the putrid bowels of eurocommunism' due to the Owen Jones voiceover, but this sums it up I guess.
I know communism is inevitable because it solves all existing contradictions but it doesn't mean that a system can precede it after capitalism, we of all people should know how adaptable capitalism and the bourgfag class are.
We need a plan to implement communism you retard. It cant happen unless people actually make it happen.
no u
The person who told me that still calls the city Leningrad and also told me Gorbachev should have opened the civil defence depots and armed the people in 1991, so of course every single shit to the right of Zhdanov is degenerate fascist Stamokap and n! times worse, whatever the bourgies fucking say.
no u
Gorbachev was an autist, I wish the USSR never was illegally disbanded despite the mass majority of people wishing it stayed.
You don't need to preach to the choir, and in the end maybe a bit of Kronstadt was what was really needed, and maybe Fanny Kaplan really was best girl.
Because you think that ☭TANKIE☭s are these big hard bookdaddies who solve everything with magic spells like diamat and GOELRO and such but for me they are the worst worst boomers in the world, and of course the only people I really care about in my life have been lefties of sorts.
But still, the tanks fucking came in Moscow and nothing happened because everything was ruined from the very very top and the society was rotten to the core so no, MLs really are fucking cops and careerists and maybe the Soviet Union deserved to die, because the people didn't rise up and maybe instead of Swan Lake they should have played October.
I know that most of the people posting here are former nazis and either American or Americanised enough to have the strongest bootlicking insticts in the world, but people should start being more intelligently critical of the Soviet Union, now that the zombie whalr America is finally going to explode.
And don't talk to me about fucking nostalgia or fucking Lenin or w/e because pic related and also poor Lenin had mushrooms growing out of him due to capitalist restoration at some point so maybe we should just throw that useless corpse away.
That really has nothing to do with it.
Until the Hussars break in.
I agree with you btw, antifascism is a shit too.
So, how do you plan on having a successful revolution then? Are you just going to wait for capitalism to collapse so the insurgence of fascists can line you against the wall? The only reason i'm an ML is because I don't want to have my ass crushed 15 minutes after creating an anarchist commune. Do I want a new USSR in exactly the same fashion? no. I want to improve upon socialist states that have lasted the longest and make them last even longer while being more democratic. If you fucking even remotely say anything along the lines of "muh state capitalism" you should go ahead and shoot yourself.
The USSR did a lot of good for its people compared to the feudal society that came before it, anyone who says otherwise is a top tier brainlet. By the way ☭TANKIE☭s actually have the highest amount of success for bringing fourth successful revolutions and shit that actually are built to last. You must be idealistic if you think a place like the United States would allow any socialist nation to survive let alone a fucking anarchist commune.
Other opinions: Anarchism is a good experiment and shouldn't of been crushed, in my opinion it should of received aid from fellow comrades but it didn't which was short sighted in my eyes. Decentralized planning is good actually. Cockshott has some great ideas which I would love for a future socialist economy.
says the retard who creates communes that last for around 5 minutes tops before being annihilated by an outside force
you can have critical support you fucking brainlet.
The joy I receive from the certain knowledge of the end of suffering universally really has nothing to do with whether or not I'm there for it.
Look I like memes too and no we're not cartoon strawmen, and of course we support the USSR against any sort of slander, but Brecht once wrote that A people in need of heroes is cursed indeed, and he also wrote "we are the pioneers and what follows us? nothing" and even though I hate Brecht too he was right on that.
Also revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals and maybe if Lenin wasn't such a bourgie moralist we wouldn't have had many problems.
And I know most communists are good people and you're just teenagers on the internet but I've had it with MLs because of course they're out on the protests in numbers and that's cute and of course there are good people even among them so I vote for them, and maybe at some point in the far future a vanguard party will manage to correctly lead a revolution even without German money, but I'm suspecting the only reason you shill for Lenin is because the Old Man would have outlawed commissars forever and you think that just because you've half read Chernysevsky you'll get some plush job too after some magical revolution, and after '68 it all smells cargo cult and the bobos made it worse.
So I'll still vote for you idiots when I remember to go vote, but really one single fucking squat has done more for world communism than all the ML parties in the world together, if we should go back to gradeschool taunts, and maybe the clue is making the future OGAS from our laptops,who the fuck knows, that's at least hopeful and useful and most of all more free of magical thinking than fucking MLs.
But really, I have the purest Stirnerian love for every single being and for the unbeings too, and before you talk about China I'm a happy Landian so every grimy factory and the blaring lights keeeping the soul graveyard open all night, rocketing up the GDP numbers, and all the landfills and the empty malls too fill me with oozing ecstasy so I'm really neutral on what China does, and congrats for industrialising too.
Dude you have to be legitimately retarded to think that rapid progression of huge areas of the world, preventing capitalism being able to leech profits off of the development of those areas, which would have extended the lifespan of capitalism by a hundred years, did nothing to advance history.
I know, but killing cops is joy too, and sometimes experience is just a question of distance, and it's measured in Mind.
That's what Hegel meant, the censors got to him.
I'm pretty damn optimistic all things considered.
Not that I'm happy, I'm pissed off and terrified. My optimism lies in my belief that humanity is capable of evolving past what idiots will call 'human nature' once we destroy the tribalism and liberal idealism that holds us back.
But I'm realistic, I know these things aren't going to happen easily and that we're on an ever shrinking time limit. We're being strangled by the rich and every day we get closer to extinction, this is all the more reason to push for change and fight for that optimistic future I believe in.
Don't give in the pessimism, comrades. Hold on to our shared dream of a better future and a new humanity.
I'm not in favor of modern china if that's what you're implying, i'm deeply troubled by the fact that this world has almost completely lost its revolutionary spirit. As a burger, it saddens me to see how cucked America is compared to literally everywhere else when it comes to meaningful activism.
I truly want to attain a stateless, classless, money-less society but I don't really know how besides using a socialist state to try and crush capitalism. The USSR and China used to do a lot of good for its population when it comes to almost every statistic, from health, to education, you name it but its all gone now. All of it. Gone.
America is so fucking braindead that nothing meaningful may happen here for another million years. I want the working class to stop sitting on their asses and actually do something, this is I have been working on some side projects irl to get people active. God this fucking sucks, this shit is suicide tier but I feel like my life would of been for nothing if I don't make any meaningful improvements to society during my lifetime.
I realize that were probably all fucked in the end, but I want to really try to get coalitions going so we can finally end this shit. I dont care if its muh immortal science revolution or muh anarchist random revolt. As long as it happens thats all that really matters in the end.
(me)
Before you all call me a faggot or retard, I just want you guys to realize that this shit wont happen on its own, we need to commit real praxis to make this happen. I'm sorry to say it but fascism is becoming the hip new fad that people are delving into because halfchan is going more mainstream, im seeing so many autists running around irl spouting /b/ and Zig Forums bullshit that its getting on my nerves. Im also aware that a good chunk of people here are also past fascists and reactionaries. I was a reactionary once myself but I de-converted after spending time to think critically about what was said. I still hated liberals at the time and thought that the only way forward was to become a y reactionary (yes, im aware that sounds brainlet tier). This was all untill I started listining to Richard Wolff after a friend recommended I listen to him.
Were all retards in our own special ways, this is why i'm happy to actually talk to you guys about this shit even if were being assholes to each other.
Good post.
We should talk about this more often, really. There's a lot of people on this board that are deeply depressed and really need to have their revolutionary spark brought back into them. Anger and fear, even desperation are good, but they must be combined with hope and optimism, and there must not be depression holding us back.
Also, guys, remember to do something. Just anything to get yourself into it. This has to be more than just words on paper or on an imageboard, it is a science, and science is performed by living experiment and empirical evidence.
Well of course they broke the ice and everything, doesn't mean I'll autistically try to support whatever shit they did because that's undialectical, and I get your PoV standing against the American spook machine, so sometimes screeching is necessary, but it gets constraining after a while.
And I've watched Chelovek Kinoapparatom like 5 times because fugg gommies and I know industry and labour and such are the way to freedom, but it looks like what most MLs expect from a revolution is a job and I find that alarming because I'm just a bum in the end.
And no, upwardly mobile Chinese small businessmen and the Russian security services are worse enemies to communism than the West in the long term, because they're not illiterate, and maybe Lenin just missed all those Bugattis back in Paris and have you been to Arbat lately.
our anger should become our fuel for committing praxis
Well I've been teargassed in front of the American embassy and I'be brought homemade cakes to striking steelworkers but without grass in because the fucking moralists of the party can you believe and other things too, and I deeply believe that only things done without expectation for money or CV or any of that shit have meaning, and there is such a thing as a revolution of everyday life and maybe Debord should have washed the dishes, too.
Really, the final point of anarchism is the Spirit of History cutting its cock off and being your gf, Kropotkin was right about love, and of course you get betrayed a million times but I can even understand MLs, and in an advanced socialist society everyone will read a lot so after some time there won't be MLs anymore.
Try the short story Yellow Coal, by Krzhizhanovsky. It was censored of course but it's a very interesting take on exactly that, and relevant too.
To be honest, I'm not much of a theorist, I don't read very many books. But I don't think that's as important as just being aware of the necessity of revolution. There's plenty of people who are more well-read than me to argue about what happens after, all I need is the destruction of capitalism.
ML states may not be perfect, and anarchist communes may not have lasted long, but their mere existence and attempts are preferable to waiting for the "perfect" system to be argued in to existence.
Also I've defended squats and the party was nowhere to be seen and I know that in a gommie revolution you'd just be doing the eviction yourselves so I don't say not support or not join a ML party or something.
I'm allergic myself but you understand, just rid yourself of authority worship, I know it's mostly memes but it can creep up on you, because being a cop and being an illiterate fascist shithead who maybe pushes smack too is just the base and superstructure applied to the streets, and no red stars doesn't mean you're not a cop anymore.
And most people on this board have nazi pasts too so maybe we need Situationist Gulags in every seedy neighborhood.
I'm no burger but the first time I saw a homeless person in my life was in Florida and now Europe is filled to the brim as well.
And I've eaten at the McDonalds at Pushkinskaya too for the bitter irony of it all and I saw all those S400s in Moscow but they were the Mercedes the FSB drove around and it all kinda feels like a Mosfilm slice of life with a porn snuff film of the main characters scrambled in at the end.
And about China 黒猫白猫 but hopefully desertification will fix all that.
Also Uncle Ted was wrong on most things, but it seems now that the capitalist restoration happened at a crucial point of information technology and ecological degradation which makes any sort of liveable future pretty much impossible short of at least a catastrophic worldwide economic collapse in the next few years and maybe a pandemic too, and even then it's just hoping for the hope in the midst of horror.
And if you get into the succession stories in the USSR it's pretty clear that Stalin got the head of the Gosplan shot in 1950 and instead of a person who really liked books we got Cornman.
And I know he did it not as an ML, or as a Georgian theology student or whatever, but most of all as a resident of the Kremlin.
Because of course he had a mad, mad, mad inferiority complex against Leningrad and they say it's because of its name but we all know it's because he was mad jelly of all those Symbolists, so really letting a failed theologian get the man who built Siberia murdered shows you how unscientific authoritarian spooks can get.
so wrong I grimaced reading
it shouldn't be like this
Majority of people will only start caring once a major city goes underwater or nukes drop, that's my most optimistic guess. More likely they still will bargain with themselves about reality.
This is a really good op. The masses are holding us back from the DOTR. We need large amounts joining the DOTR, but none of the toxic positivity type.
Prolekult on youtube
They won't. They will be toxic positive it wasn't dropped on them. The country hicks in Texas and the Outback will be cheering.
...
At one point in London I realised that the only way to bring socialism there is strapped on rockets and Corbyn will backtrack even if elected because I don't know if they call it Deep State or something else but the Canary Wharf has its long and slimy tentacles too deep into pretty much everything, really.
So it's not only America.
Lmao they’ll be dealing with nuclear winter and the collapse of global trade
They won’t be cheering for very long
Bourgies are not one of us
This is a clear sign that you live in a first world pedestal, as at least in my third world corner of the world almost nobody but porky is optimistic
bump
the only way to get bourgfags to stop doing bad shit is to either: strike, revolt, threaten, sue (doesn't stop them), or use laws to write their option to pollute out of existence (wont happen)
It requires an outside stress and pressure to get capitalism to collapse, this is why Marx called for revolution.
bump
Fundamentally you have to either ignore the realities of this world, or at the very least deeply sublimate them and dismiss them day-to-day, or you can look at the reality right in front of your face and be miserable, I don't really see what the third option is. You can't be somewhat happy while still understanding the scale of the problems realistically.
The bourgeois will avert this problem, they aren't so stupid that they would let their order collapse. Then there will be a nick landian sci fi hell, that collapse would have been preferable to. idk though i'm mostly just pissing in the wind or shooting the breeze or whatever the phrase is.
get away from you stupid fricking animay
The bourg aren't a united entity that acts rationally, they're a divided group of rats fighting over scraps, if it hurts the porky individual to not destroy the earth for profit because his competitors will still do it, he will have to do it and not even feel bad about it.
That's why capitalism is so terrifying, there isn't a malicious evil guy running the show, there is nobody running the show.
I never really even thought about it that way, what about class interests though?
I mean, the bourg can agree well enough to have secret meetings at Davos and shit and can get together to say, fund PragerU or similar shill organisations, but in terms of making a huge sacrifice to profits in order to secure things 30-50 years in the future, I just don't think that's possible.
I know I know, but the governments could encourage/force ecological sustainability, and plenty of modern bourg consider themselves good people, and would want to "help people" and "the environment", i'm not suggesting conspiracy at all.
They won't, or at least they don't have a reason to. If shit really goes down (nuclear crisis, climate holocaust, etc.) Porky will just retreat to his fortified fully-automated luxury underground bunker and live out the rest of his days in piece while the rest of humanity dies a fiery death, the end.
If you don't believe me take a look at this (I know Vice is shit but bare with me):
vice.com
Literally the ending of strangelove.
Fucking literally every single western woman lives like this. Pisses me off to no end, can never bring up anything critical about ANYTHING because you're emitting "bad vibes". I fucking swear women are capitalism's greatest weapon, ultimate pacifists who ALWAYS go down the road of revisionism and reform to avoid "violence".
This would technically mean all humanity would now be living in a post scarcity communist society.
lmao retard
Once you've marx-pilled yourself into realising you're facing the most powerful and mobile ruling class in history on speedrun mode you kind of have to take up revolutionary optimism.
I have a panic disorder so I have to ease my body that is already pumping with cortisol or else I'm dropping out just before things get bad for the kids.
You need to be that annoying fuck that finds a way to bring in class struggle into everything, but fiund a way to not be an annoying fuck about it. Because there's no choice, every person that is tangential to a socialist will have to admit we exist and adjust their baseline beliefs accordingly entirely on the shit fact that they have no beliefs that are concrete and will slip into whatever crevice is comfortable to continue leading a social life.
TL;DR make socialism social, people don't know how much our movement has impacted the small spaces of their lives with great things won by the worker's movements.
I prefer to think of it as capital is an extremely efficient AI but it's only purpose is to grow a number, and it controls the bourg actions.
I imagine the resources in bunkers are going to get extremely sparse several generations in, if they plan to procreate at all.