Every time there's some big leak on how the government fucks us up, everyone is outraged for a day or two then forgets about it in a week.
Unironically fuck this gay earth. Is this how the apathy and misanthropy starts? Is this how people just slowly but surely passively support NWO-type shit? Especially after Vault 7, I mean how many people even fucking remember that happened? Even the techies I know are like "Welp whatever." Is there really something in the water?
The empty debate on the spectacle – that is, on the activities of the world’s owners – is thus organized by the spectacle itself: everything is said about the extensive means at its disposal, to ensure that nothing is said about their extensive deployment.
People convince themselves that it isn't really happening even in the face of extraordinary evidence or that it's not happening to "them" so they don't need to worry.
because they expect that to be the norm. there's only so much outrage you can spout until you become jaded.
At best stuff like this gets what, five minutes of coverage on any major news network?
And from that most people will either forget about it or filter it out ("too much technobabble", "yeah but it's for a good cause!" etc), so the only people that get concerned about it are the people that already dislike the CIA (IIRC the Vault 7 bugs/hacks/malware etc were developed by the CIA to do things that NSA usually covers)
also in the last decades some sort of belief emerged according to which "politics" is just what happens to those guys with suits and ties in the television, that it's not real or relevant and that any reasonable person should stay away from it because everyone who talks about politics immediately becomes an insufferable cringelord. this is how radical centrists are born.
The leaks are on purpose. They are training people to be complacent to anything.
I really expected the gears to stop turning on #J20, I'm living in an afterbirth of monotony..
It accumulates though and forms the world view of young people, I know no young people who are not desillusioned with the current government we just need the material crisis and a viable socialist movement and alternative and things will fall into place neatly.
guess which country I'm from
I became a leftist right before the Panama papers leak. I remember I actually thought it'll result in real change. Lmao
Despite pervasive surveillance, the government is too incompetent to actually go after anyone. The British can't even keep track of all their jihadis, for instance. Same for the US - all their surveillance and alleged counterterrorism amounts to convincing mentally ill people to commit crimes, arresting them, and then using that as proof of why they deserve more government bucks to stop the terrorism threat.
People are getting numb to the horrible shit going on. I can't blame them I am too. I honestly feel hollow.
This
I feel so doomed and useless, I don't even know where to begin. It's easier just not to think about it. Most westerner's lives are just good enough.
Another thing that's frustrating is how insanely easy it is for people to become obsessed with conspiracy theories. It's difficult for people to get worked up over the fact that we live in a world where the police are further militarized everyday, where mass surveillance becomes more and more normalized, where climate change becomes less and less avoidable, where plutocracy becomes increasingly hegemonic, and yet all that apathy seems to be almost proportional to just how insanely passionate and obsessive, as well as easily, people can get so worked up over crazy shit like the Illuminati, or reptile people, or Soros bucks, or climate change denial, or any number of insane rightwing conspiracy nonsense. And I get the appeal, it's a fantasy that helps you escape reality, but why is it so pervasive?
Honestly everyone should read Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, it's relevant to almost every topic the modern left faces and its only ~80 pages long. One of the concepts he develops in it is "reflexive impotence", which is essentially an unwillingness to do anything because you know there's nothing you can do to change anything. The impotence is caused by a feeling of powerlessness which leads to actual powerlessness, and when almost everyone is like this the potential for change is eliminated.
You seem to have been really inspired by it, so post it up, nigger.
Not that user, but I agree. Fisher is 100% /ourguy/
Here you go friend
Besides maybe only Zizek he's the only recent Leftist who I think deserves to be universally revered on this board. If even only for his essay Exiting the Vampire Castle, he was one of the first prominent Leftists to call bullshit on Liberal idpol and how it was ruining the Left in a time when it was hardly conventional wisdom, and he still gets shit for it, even after death.
I'm sorry I posted first user, didn't know if you had the PDF, but now anons have twice the options when downloading!
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Yeah, he died in January of this year. He took his own life. I was really fucking upset by it :///
Don't worry user, he left behind so many things to be remembered by! But yeah, it does suck, but even in death so much of his writing on depression has helped me so much, I feel like he really got it, I know he lost his own battle with depression, and I do wonder how'd he'd be feeling right now after Jezza's victory, but still, I think he might end up being one of the single most important figures to the 21st Century Left in these coming decades, in a lot of ways he's just like Debord, none of his peers matched him, but he'll be even more relevent after death then he was in life, he had true vision, he could practically see into the future.
Wait, he's not the crybaby that killed himself because of Trump is he?
He killed himself because he was depressed.
Shit, I feel a bit of a dick now but I remember being inundated with messages over how people couldn't bear to live in such a cruel world when Trump was elected.
Apologies.
lel, no, he had a lifelong struggle with depression, he wrote quite a bit on the subject.
theoccupiedtimes.org
Also, he was from the UK, I doubt he cared that much about Trump.
Another good essay on the subject by him, eerie to think he wrote it only a year before his own death.
theguardian.com
Yeah I feel like a dick for implying it was trivial, but I remember several depressed people killing themselves over the matter. It was just something that personally irked me.
No worries, not to diminish the seriousness of suicide, but killing yourself over Trump is fucking retarded.
Yeah, my initially hostile response was due to the time it happened and some liberals and 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧leftists🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 in prominence killing themselves over Trump. I've dragged some people from suicide forcefully and violently before and killing yourself over an election triggers me tbqh.
It happens so often it's desensitizing, not to mention how complex society and government is, none of it feels real because it's so massive, it's like trying to think about the universe, it's beyond your comprehension if you aren't educated in politics and economics, which most people aren't.
IMO, because everyone knows that type of shit goes down all the time, and probably worse too. You can only feign shock so many times.
The comforts and fun of capitalism cause decay and apathy of the masses.
Most people really have no understanding of what any of that means or why it would be significant, just pig ignorant.
They don't believe they have any choice. There is no action they think they can take to change anything.
youtube.com
Looking at you, Netherlands
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holy shit this. made me rethink my pussyfooting about joing an ansynd organization in my country.
The people being jaded or apathetic meme has to stop. They're actually ruthlessly motivated, but it's towards pursuing their careers, making free money off of rent or Airbnb, and most importantly maintaining a smug sense of superiority by being a liberal pacifist centrist, who isn't like those people who do stuff on TV.
Yeah, I've discovered him only last month or so, and knowing that he committed suicide made me really sad, even when my only exposure to his thoughts was reading his Wikipedia page.
We would really need him right now, especially as the unapologetic capitalist theories of Nick Land are getting viral. I mean, this is great because Land is the most solid intellectual opponent we have right now and that forces us to think harder, but Mark was his antithesis, and his friend.
His death is maybe one of the most potent argument against my bouts of suicide ideation. I guess we have to pick up where he left off by ourselves now.