Don't neglect your personal wellbeing for politics. It's OK to switch off now and again to focus on other things.
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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Yup. You gotta help yourself before helping others
Like drugs!
Which can also be politics, but whatever.
Using drugs as a coping mechanism is a guaranteed path to addiction. Don't do it, man.
Think of the people you know who drink at parties. How many became alcoholics?
Now think of the people you know who started drinking to cope with grief or depression. How many of those became alcoholics?
Youre not wrong! But also, when there's no solution in reach, sometimes its mushroom time.
I don't fuck with that alcohol shit tho.
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“Being a leftist…” who talks like that?
probably someone on reddit seeking to engage with likeminded peers just a guess though
idk, makes me think of this guy.
what lol are you trying to call into question someone reaching out about mental health…
…based on their phrasing?
very chill and normal of you :|
Again it’s the “as a leftist” part for me. Feels like that “walkaway” bs we had 4 years ago with all the bad actors pushing the “disenfranchised voter that just isn’t gonna vote this year” angle. Otherwise why even bring political affiliation into it if not to say “isn’t it depressing being in this party?” Call me cynical but i’ve just never encountered anyone who talks like that.
Because the Overton window moving ever rightward gets super depressing sometimes.
When I voted for the first time 22-23 years ago, my core ideological beliefs were slightly to the left of the main center-left party of my multi-party country. Nowadays they're all considered far left bordering on (peacefully) radical.
Especially sucks to be a pacifist in a world that collectively agreed that militarism is great again and an egalitarian in an increasingly racist and otherwise bigoted world.
And that corporations still mostly get away with doing whatever the fuck they want everywhere as long as they keep legally bribing the politicians of the country that more or less dictates what other countries get to do and not do.
Tl;Dr: leftist ≠ democrat and is frequently a depressing and frustrating thing to be in this fucked up world
Man, it’s frustrating and sad how accurate this is. I don’t consider myself a categorical pacifist, and I am slightly younger, but everything else is spot on.
as a leftist, vote. as a leftist, let’s please exercise decency and good will a little more than we are eh?
unless you see direct calls or dogwhistles to abstain the vote, which let’s be honest there is no shortage of on both 196 and this platform in general, don’t make accusations like this. you are reading so much subtext into this post without evidence. talking about mental health is not a dogwhistle.
other commenters here are sharing resources, encouragement, and personal experiences relating to the topic. i’d encourage you to follow suit.
I understand it as less "being in this party" and more "sharing an anticapitalist worldview, how do you not let feelings overwhelm you", which seems like a very valid question
How do you do, fellow leftists
... Literally everyone? Is English not your first language? Are you from space? Talking about your emotional state and what influences it is normal human behavior.
Fakes as far as I've seen. Very "as a black man" energy.
A lot of leftists spend a lot of time on pure critique of the system, especially early in their radicalisation, which can lead to a pessimistic outlook. It's true that the system is unrelenting and the effects of capitalism and domination seep into every aspect of our lives, and that can feel overwhelming. I really hope I haven't sabotaged myself by assuming that everything around me is cynical and only trying to exploit me at every turn, because that just isn't true. The system works that way, but there are lots of people living under it who don't collaborate with its goals.
Also, a message that doesn't get emphasised enough is hope. That's because algorithm-driven social media - even the fediverse is subject to this - tends to push ragebait and hit pieces over constructive narratives.
I'm really enjoying a lot of Anark's stuff lately on youtube. I'd really recommend his work on Hope and Constructing the Revolution.
Also I would recommend thinking about how you can join the anarchist practice of prefiguration, or building the new in the shell of the old. A lot of revolution talk focusses on toppling the enemy system, but equally important is building our own alternatives that make people's lives better now. That alleviates problems now, it wins people over and helps radicalise them, and it necessarily involves building community, which can hugely help with the feelings of isolation and depression.
I've often wondered if the horrific anxiety people experience in our society is our ancient monkey brains trying to figure out what we did wrong that isolated us from our tribe, when the thing that did it is communities being atomised by capitalist property markets. That observation on its own has helped me reach out more, and also to better accept when I don't have people around me.
Edit: I read this as the OP's question and I answered it as such. That's okay though, if this question relates to you, then you already know who you are.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I liked your paragraph on focusing on building something better that will draw people in.
When Occupy was huge, I had wished they had not focused so heavily on camping in parks and instead bought cheap land in the middle of nowhere and built "Occupy town". Somewhere people can come and join the movement with their family and not worry about living in a tent.
Make our own jobs in federated worker co-ops like Mondragon, our own community defense organizations, our own public housing, our own city government. If we had picked a state like Wyoming, it would only take about 15k people from each state to move there to take over the entire state government.
I get people were trying to do that in every park and also stay visible in the media, but I felt like it was just to limiting to stay in such locations.
I think the point was to occupy places where powerful people were, to show them that they're not untouchable. One thing I've heard Anark talk about is that communes that separate themselves from society don't tend to have much revolutionary potential. They're just kind of checking out.
Also, David Graeber said something very interesting about Occupy, that although the narrative was that they failed, the main thing they were trying to draw attention to was the IMF and the World Bank, and how their structural adjustment policies were laying waste to whole societies. He said that despite the fact that Occupy ended and was driven out by cops with bulldozers, the IMF and the World Bank don't have anything like the power they used to, and that has a lot to do with the visibility that Occupy brought to them.
Who knows how much death and suffering was averted globally thanks to their actions? If they had focussed only on making a place to live within the US they wouldn't have been able to achieve that. I think that's a pretty good legacy.
Also with the coops, Anark has covered a different federation of coops in Venezuela called Cecosesola: https://youtu.be/xfE6Nsuaf50?si=MbXZ3kpTNI2-mTUm
It might be a better template than Mondragon, who seem to have reduced membership considerably, with non-member workers making up a huge percentage of their ranks.
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I second Anark's content. Haven't seen those two videos yet, but do feel like the focus on building a community that does good and does better seems like the way out of leftist depression (or at least to less of it)
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The thing is, they want us depressed. Depressed peons doesn't want to fight injustices, they just hide under the covers and doomscroll the internet. We aren't built to handle the massive amount of info we are constantly force fed through all available channels. Our lizard brains are not good at prioritizing between threats and media and astroturfing are constantly overstating the importance of the current threat. There are SO many threats and issues to choose from that it seems insurmountable. Where to even start? If you are the kind of person that cares and have a bit of empathy it can be too much to handle.
I don't have a fits-all solution to combat care-fatigue, I really don't. That said, it might help to list the shit that needs dealing with that are important to you. Prioritize engagement from that list. How much effort and/or money can you spend? Where can it have the most effect? Put it there and do something. Anything. Just try to be a force for good in this fucked-up world. Helping others will lessen the despair, it really will. Again - you can't help everyone, but you can help someone. Let that be enough.
Also - eat the rich, it's all their fault. Don't let them tell you otherwise.
Becoming a communist has greatly improved my mental health because I’m no longer constantly disappointed by liberal politics. Now I put my motivation into helping my org grow which feels very fulfilling.
This is the way.
It is because communism (in the sense being tankie) is far less radical than what we actually need. It is just imperialism with some red aesthetics. This is not the way, this is surrender.
Communism is inherently anti imperialistic. Maybe read a book before you spread red scare propaganda.
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If everything is shared under communism, that would include political power. So that would make communism a direct democracy.
Does that sound like the nation's you have in mind?
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I mean, realizing how good the United States is relative to many other countries and especially adversaries does help put things into perspective. Things could be better but at least we have the hope to make things better. Many people don't have that.
Until the crushing realization that much of our relative advantage and comfort is due to the outright exploitation of much of the disadvantaged.
"Peaceful, orderly, democratic transition of power": One of our top exports.
If it also makes you feel better, most countries in the world continue to exploit their, and other countries populations. In that aspect, the US exploits fewer than many other countries.
I’m sorry to disappoint you but the US is the driving force of the destabilisation of many countries in order to more easily exploit their resources.
Have you heard of England?
Well we didn't claim to invent exploitation. Just to have perfected it.
I’m talking about the present time.
A huge quiet player in neo colonialism is France. You can watch the new real life lore about it. It's honestly on par with both the UK and US.
I agree, but to say that there are countries that are worse than the US in that aspect is just false. There is no other country in the world that causes as much damage to the lives of normal people than the US.
Citing real life lore or being taken seriously... you can only have one
Extremely doubtful, I've seen what we're used to paying for wages. Every company you've ever interacted with has a foreign team that they're paying $2 a day for, whether that be for tech support, customer support, materials gathering/construction, or shipping.
We outsource our exploitation.
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Not feeling depressed (euthymia) and feeling depressed (dysthymia) are emotional states that can be influenced by but exist independently of someone's circumstances. I encounter people who are homeless a lot in my work, and a good chunk of them are euthymic af, while there are a ton of people who have all their needs met and who are dysthymic af.
Emotional states have a lot more to do with genetic predisposition and learned behavior than most people would care to acknowledge, rather than situational factors
Just because I'm a leftist doesn't make me depressed, I'm depressed because I have crippling gender dysphoria and I'm not allowed to express myself
I find that when I'm feeling depressed and lefty, singing out loud helps me. Maybe you too can sing along!
"Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men? It is the music of the people Who will not be slaves again! When the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start When tomorrow comes!"
Don't feel shame, be heard, be loud, and beat the drum!
(Yes this is les mis)
Ah yes... the classic feel-good musical Les Misérables.
feeling down
fuck it
pop a les mis
le mis make the pain go away
Nope, sorry, you can't not be depressed. It's the price you had to pay for your university degree in truth.
In this world, in this system, love is rebellion
I've been depressed since grade school because of a complex set of circumstances, of which biology is a significant part. That hasn't changed although I take meds now. However my upbringing was pathologically religious cultish (JW) and so when I broke freen off that shit I was, by default rather conservative (although I didn't vote.) However they older I got/get, the more socialist I am, and since that started I have/do vote. Democrat almost exclusively because the alternative is just so much worse. I have voted for a local Republican or Independent on rare occasions when my research suggests them to be a better choice for the job at hand, but never without that ample research. You just can't trust politicians at their words, at any level.
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