Not sure how to word this without sounding pretentious, but do you just think leftists are simply better people with more empathy?
Like the reason communism sounds so unrealistic to people is because THEY are pieces of shit, and can't imagine other people not being pieces of shit?
Selfishness is socially conditioned and imposed by the bourgeoisie, yes. But I would say it's more to do with a group mentality. The right sees collective action as harmful.
I think it's mostly ideology and rationalizations for capitalism fed to them by the ruling class. The "we've always had capitalism" meme is strong.
No, communists are just people who have seen how the economy actually works. Once a person sees it, it cannot be unseen.
Maybe it's just my former many years of lolbertarianism, but I think even the porkiest of porkeys can be redeemed. A lot of these people convince themselves they're doing the right thing, their empathy is more misdirected rather than nonexistent or buried underneath mountains of drugs and self justifications.
Like Zizek says their ideology is redirecting their empathetic and revolutionary tendencies elsewhere.
Reasons to be a leftist:
Being poor and not being a cuck
Being rich and hating your rich parents
Being rich and loving your poor/leftist parents
Reasons to be capitalist:
Being rich and not being a cuck
Being poor and being a fuck
Being poor and loving your right wing/rich parents
Reasons to be a nazi:
Having a very low Autism Level
Being sexualy frustrated
Which one are you?
autism = I . Q
fucking retarded board owner
IQ
No, but we do want to believe a better kind of society is possible, whereas almost all anti-communists are terrified of change and anything against the status quo. People believe what they want to believe, there is no deeper philosophical motivation that that.
wtf I don't understand this board
Shocking.
I think it's more likely socialists are better educated on socialism and capitalism, particularly how capitalism actually works. The average prole has been forcefed a steady stream of communism=big gubbermint and has no idea what communism or socialism actually is. This isn't helped by the left larping as certain failed revolutionary movements or the elitism of idpol, making getting educated on leftism difficult.
this can be answered two ways depending on what you cherry pick as comparisons
if you compare a literal shillary voter that wants to go fuck brownskins in the middleast for a paycheck, then take a communist willing to work for the cause and sacrifice - yes
if you take a libertarian that believes without the governmental parasite that even the poor can raise themselves from the imposed squalor - to a reformer that just wants the government to tax everything upwards of 90% then no
There is no unique path leading people to think what they think. Making generalization about why people believe something won't lead you very far.
Let's make this a dumb generalization thread.
Who you gonna call?
nah its a shitty thread
This. It's so much better being an ignorant normalfag following a sports team and getting drunk every weekend.
Somewhat
If they say its unrealistic because they haven't taken two seconds to consider it, probably not.
If they are someone who has actually read theory and still makes that argument, then probably.
I think you're control freaks tbh.
Not true at all. The new right (nationalists) very much see the benefits of collectivism. You lot just dismiss this as the wrong kind of collectivism when in reality the nation is a much larger group than commies tend to envision.
Can't wait to wipe out your "nation" tbqh
where does he say that?
Empathy is largely a function of conformity I'm sad to say I've concluded. People know culturally that they're supposed to feel a certain way, so they contrive to do so. That's why you'll see liberals pretty uniformly wetting themselves over third-world starving babies while conservatives rarely give a shadow of a fuck. Because empathy is socially based in this way, even empathy that would normally be there can be overridden because the recipient of said empathy is an "other" or "out group". You see this in the US especially with poor people and criminals - the ideology is that they did something wrong so deserve no empathy for their position. It's very convenient for the ruling class to have populations of people that nobody cares about. This applies to racism too, which has been artificially extended by a "black culture has lots of problems" narrative.
...
There's nothing new about nationalism. It's fundamentally reactionary and solves nothing that makes people turn to it.
That's a confirmation bias. People of faith are quite helpful and not held back by semantic precision.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Not that poster, and I've only read 'Violence', but he talks about it there.
This though.
They have a different conception of what matters, but they feel just as passionately and empathetically about that thing.
To them it is "my collection of a-historical ideas about my nation", to us it is "the actual future of the human species".
No, it has to do with cultural upbringing and conditioning by the economic system.
There are a lot of pre-capitalist cultures that thought it shameful to some degree, or maybe offensive, to expect that your friends or family had to pay you back or you had to pay them back in kind for sharing resources, for actions taken that were beneficial to one another, etc.
Yet in the modern capitalist west it has not been uncommon at all for me to witness people's family members ask them to pay them back for things like contribution to their education, or for people to feel indebted to their family and friends for favors or for sharing resources (be it money or whatever). The market has literally invaded people's social interactions. People feel guilty about accepting help from their friends and family because they must "pay them back". In a way this makes sense because we live in a much more brutal world with no consistent safety net. You have no community to help you. If you help someone else by giving them something of yours, that could actually really hurt you. You can't just help a friend with their rent, groceries, healthcare or whatever because it might hurt your rent due to the both of you living paycheck to paycheck.
These conditions cause the breakdown of community, and the belief that you have to look out for yourself. If you were in ye olde village/tribe with the ability to turn to your neighbors for some grain or meat or whatever, you might feel differently about what sharing things means and what friendship and family means.
Sometimes. Another way to think about it is that they think leftists assume everyone won't be a piece of shit. I've heard a lot of arguments about how capitalism takes advantages of selfishness and redirects it for the greater good. They see socialism and communism as assuming people will be unselfish.
that pic needs to be an meme-album cover.
No. Probably the opposite.
No, and if I did, I sure as shit wouldn't tell anyone about it, not even my pretentious lefty friends.
You're just jerking yourself off with that kind of talk.
I feel like I have less empathy honestly. It's why I so easily toss aside Idpol whining and porky screaming about "Workin for dem Bootstraps" and "Muh Gorrillions killed by Communism"
Good, I hope we wipe a Gorrillion more porky fucks off the face of the earth. I want the ground to run red with the blood of the rich for at LEAST a year. As for Lumpen proles, petite Borgies and Fascists/Ancraps/Libertarians/Liberals and the like, the wall is too god damn good for them but we'll line em up anyway
Sorry but that's dumb. There is always a sense of reciprocity when it comes to sharing. People living paycheck to paycheck obviously amplifies it, but to suggest a guy in ye olden proto agricultural society would have shamelessly accepted grain or what have you without having a sense of having to eventually "even it out" runs contrary to human sense.
No. For a lot of people, leftism is anger and a desire for justice (the bloody kind), not empathy.
Hysterical empathy the likes of these married woman who go to work in Calais while their children are at home, is way more prevalent on the left. The picture of the dead toddler leading to irrational calls for policy that makes no sense, for either refugee or host nation. The cries for intervention in Syria based on concocted bullshit, totally manipulated by pleas to emotion.
Now if you want to own having more empathy, you have to own the liberal retardation that is characteristic of this, and people who boast about their empathy for others, and these people are not on the left.
Any serious communist cannot be a slave to this bullshit as they should know that blood will flow and empathy will be in short supply.
Pretty sure psychological studies have backed this up. But on the other hand, the causality might be the reverse: being a leftist might encourage you to take more empathetic stances.
Reciprocity doesn't mean in kind, nor with specific individuals. There are plenty of examples of tribes behaving communally, whether they be agriculturalists or hunter gatherers. For hunter gatherers, it wouldn't be uncommon for the hunter with the best hunt to share it with those who got nothing. And in that case, there would be no expectation of their specific repayment, just the assumption they would repay by being useful to the tribe. That kind of dispersed reciprocity is the fundamental moral form for a more community based culture. In "Book of the Eskimo" by Peter Freuchen, the author quoted a hunter who, after Freuchen thanked him for recieving hundreds of pounds of meat after a bad hunt, replied with anger that Freuchen would even suggest through thanks that the hunter wouldn't have done that as a matter of course. He said that to thank him was to imply it was a gift, and that gifts made slaves, clearly repudiating the concept of reciprocity in this instance altogether. This was probably just a manifestation of tribal morality of sharing the hunt.
And of course, this kind of attitude does still exist in modern society, but it is usually manifest in many small ways. Like when smokers share cigarettes with strangers, but only expect "reciprocity" in the same way, that other strangers may give them cigarettes when they ask. That behavior can conceivably cross to many different things. Of course, it doesn't mean people were saints when they lived in small tribes and villages. Take this article:
hraf.yale.edu
Towards the end the author mentions some cultures that would avoid being caught in situations where they'd be expected to share things to avoid the shame of not sharing because they didn't have enough. I also read about some Afghani tribes that would consider it a courtesy to offer any item in their possession that somebody compliments in some way, but if they didn't want to offer it they would say something like "it was a gift". Another thing I've found kind of interesting about anthropological studies of different cultural attitudes towards reciprocity was the idea that among many people to seek equality of exchange in some way was to tell the other person you wanted nothing to do with them in the future.
why stop at the human species
what makes you better than canines, or elephants
you are a bigot
Good posts.
Ever wonder what bourgeois individualism means? This is it. Omnium contra omnes.
I used to work with a Nepali girl that recently immigrated to my city to study nursing. She just happened to be writing something down with an especially nice pen, and in a friendly way I complimented on it and she immediately offered to give it to me. I was really caught off guard, but I tried to decline as politely as possible. Luckily she wasn't offended.
Another time I was working with a group of Nepali women in a restaurant and I asked one to pass something to me. She brought it and put it deliberately on the prep area before me instead of my outstretched hand, and we both looked at each other, kind of confused for a moment. I guess she realized why I was confused and she explained that where she was from it was rude to give someone something directly like that. Ultimately it wasn't a big deal and we had a little laugh about it.
Read a book
This is probably the case. Ref. Zizek's statements on buying "commodified ethics." Liberals' beliefs are decided not by coherent ideology or utility but ultimately by how they will be perceived by others, and we're all eating from the trashcan.
b8. Communism doesn't rely on "people not being pieces of shit." If your ideas do, it's a sign of theoretical weakness
this
Leftists are actually supremely bad at empathy: self described liberals are the worst (centrists being the best, conservatives not far behind) at being able to describe the mindset and worldview of people with different views than them.
You actually cannot empathize with people. You care about other people, sure. But you do not understand how they think, feel and act.
Because an assault on the poor by liberals, centrists and conservatives is so compassionate am I right?
Fuck off.
On average yes. Of course there is a fair share of left-wing sociopaths like "sjw" identitarian opportunists, liberal-humanitarian western chauvinists, anarchic egoists, economic reductionist communists.
How outrageous of him to think of himself as superior to people who want to exploit the poor, kill persons from other ethnicities and rape women.
You're right, see pics.
If someone doesn't feel a deep anger and strong desire for justice (yes the bloody kind) towards injustices then they don't really have empathy.
People who don't think about serious solutions to the world's problems and stop caring about it as soon as the media stops reporting it are not empathic enough.
Any deeply empathic person would want the blood of all aggressors to flow.
>Liberals' beliefs are decided not by coherent ideology or utility but ultimately by how they will be perceived by others.
Agreed, which means they are not empathic/compassionate at all.
After having recently spoken with an alt-right douchenozzle irl, I thought about this same question afterwards. I decided it was a little bit of this:
Coupled with a ton of emotional neglect when they were children. He just seemed so paranoid and angry.
I could spend hours analyzing this guys' behavior in hopes that I'd eventually see the other side of things, and I have, but in the end it I realized that his political opinions come from his personal life experiences, so I'll probably never truly understand why he thinks the way he does.
Also, the aforementioned person never had to be poor in all of their life, which is another theme I see in the most politically active conservatives.
I believe in capitalism because it is the best for the poor, you're generalizing to support your ideology and make yourself feel better.
Maybe if you actually talked to people outside of leftypol you would figure out that a lot of us capitalists like to be nice to people, and that includes donating to the poor.
This isn't even about policy. This is about you fooling yourself.>>1149926
Not even ancaps are that stupid. False flag.
typical capitalist being a moralist altruist
Capitalist nations have the richest poor. That's what happens when you don't throw people you don't in gulags.
they sure love that lac of poverty in capitalist sierra leone, afghanistan and so on
Calling Afghanistan a model capitalist nation is retarded is like calling Venezuela a model socialist nation.
wow its almost as if both socialism and capitalism are fucking trash
To be honest Afghanistan is probably even more of a far cry from capitalism than Venezuela is to socialism.
Also, turd positionism is even worse.
what are you talking about
turd position, misspelled it because I was talking to someone irl
I know what it is, what I am wondering is where in my post did I implied i was a turdist
there are many many more economic systems than capitalism and socialism
and it is filtered, thats why you get turd
what the fuck I wrote third
third
third
third
third
there are also many more systems than Afghanistan, look at Hong Kong as an example of capitalism working fantastically compared to the other areas by it.
hmmm
It's better to be a poor man in Hong Kong than a middle class man in Afghanistan. The whole idea of income inequality, the Lorenz curve, and the GINI index is almost offensive to mathematics and economics. The idea of income inequality is continually used in the way that implies that there is a finite amount of wealth that exists, and when the wealthy get wealthier at a faster rate than the poor, that it is somehow stealing wealth from them. In reality the poor are also better off in a market economy.
hmmmmmmmm
youtube.com
the idea of living in a cage doesn't really sound like a good idea, and im into BDSM
funny because that is what bourgy markets want, they always want a GDP growth, and if there is a 0% grow rate or a depression, there is something wrong
the propietor steals value from the workers indeed
yeah, but not in a capitalist one, markets = capitalism
Hong Kong is indeed a marvel of economic growth that we all should thank communist party of China for creating, since under the British yoke they never managed to grow so fast as under the leadership of communist party.