When you’re coming from a position of extreme privilege and you’re either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with “lesser people” (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you’re being discriminated against.
I think you’re missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I’m inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we’re getting at. It’s also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority – which while relatable to me, doesn’t help make leftism look appealing.
(By “majority” I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
I think you should read J. Sakai’s Settlers. It explains this (in a US context) quite well and I think that it refutes the concept of just making leftism “more appealing” for people
That doesn’t make sense. You need to start with a correct historical and material analysis before you can approach anything else. Socialism is based on dialectical materialism, not gaining ‘followers’. Leftism is not a religion that aims to have many converts but rather should understand why neocolonialism and other such institutions would deincentivize white people from being leftists in the United States in the first place.
It’s all well and good for leftist individuals to achieve that understanding, but how can we effect change without more of the population being swayed to this ideology?
You still haven’t achieved that understanding. Ideology does not come about from ‘convincing’ or ‘swaying’ anyone. I once again suggest you to read Settlers to see why this thought process is flawed. I understand where you are coming from but the material precedes the immaterial
Propaganda functions with a pre-supposition of the initial dominance of the material over the immaterial. People are functionally motivated to accept specific ideological and social viewpoints where the material state encouraging that comes first. I think this article makes an interesting case for why this general concept is non-Marxist: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Thanks for linking the Red Sails article, I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. Interestingly, while the work critiques even the title of Manufacturing Consent, it provides a similar sense of fulfillment to Manufacturing Consent by providing a material, non-conspiratorial explanation to a more-or-less ‘common sense’ phenomenon (media control, brainwashing).
In a way, the premise and conclusion echo some wisdom I’d heard before, albeit in a different context: It’s not enough to be right.
While that speaker had basically meant that theory is useless if it is never applied, and only used as an “I told you so” after-the-fact, this article makes a related case, that the correctness of an idea doesn’t automatically mean it will be accepted by a typical healthy person. And as someone who veers towards a more academic and scientific side of life, where correctness is so valued and there’s an expectation that everyone in the scene is on the same page about basic fundamental facts, the brainwashing framework is a convenient and intuitive (even if false) rationalization of why so many people can be so ignorant to these basics (like flat earth theory, anti-germ theory, that level of ignorance). It really is hard to empathize and not be condescending to people in relatively-advanced countries in the modern age still believing that kind of thing. The brainwashing theory is convenient - they’ve been dupped by a cult leader! the [religion/government] wants to keep them ignorant and encircled them with a false reality! they’ve been conditioned to be dumb since birth! This explains it! But that only goes so far, there is a point where a person has enough access to information that the brainwashing theory fails to justify their rejection of evidence. I know first hand, like many, that it takes time to dismantle the propaganda pervading our liberalist status quo, but it’s not magical or hypnotic.
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70’s/80’s) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you’d have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You’d also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be ‘happy’ (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I’m trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that’s what would need to be done. You’d have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you’d have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won’t be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can’t be exploited, to try and “raise all boats” in society. And you’d have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they’re now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you’d have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., “Free Will is a Pain in the Ass”.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists “coming for the” communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn’t effecting their status quo.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves.
That’s not true at all. I know Centrists who care about everybody, and want everybody to be safe/happy/successful. They see it as a “floating tide raises all boats” kind of thing.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”? See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them.
You’ll have to elaborate/defend that statement. I think you’re just imposing your own perspective/worldview without facts in evidence.
What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”?
That would be said by Leftists about a Leftist-bias system, or Rightists about a Rightist-bias system. What you described is not just in the domain of the Centrist. There are many “systems” that groups of humans gather around, and each system may look very different from other systems.
See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
I have not read this, so apologies if I get this wrong, but I will judge this sentence based on the overall message of your comment reply.
Being a moderate does not mean settling for whatever no matter what, no matter how harmful it is. Its about trying to have a consensus that most/all can live with, in how we run our society and how we act towards each other.
For example, if everybody agreed on Leftism, then should the middle of the Leftism population be condemmed (as they would now be the Centrists of Leftism)? Or Centrists of Rightism?
If human history teaches us anything, governing from the fridge/edges never works out well for everybody else.
You aren’t exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. “The Left” commonly answers the second with an idea called ‘eternal revolution’. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
In theory it should have a strong monetary incentive for all but the wealthiest of cis/striaght/white/males. They just don’t realize that for some reason.
I can think of a good reason but i’m not sure whether you’re willing to buy into it.
people naturally don’t think of themselves as individuals. people think of themselves as a group/society.
People recognize that under a republican US government, they’re significantly more likely to go to mars and have prosperous offspring. while if they’re stuck on earth, a recession and decline is waiting for them. they can’t verbalize it and probably aren’t even rationally aware of it, but i guess they can feel it with their heart.
of course lots of you folks are gonna immediately chime in and say “nooo i saw a youtube video that explained that it’s impossible to live on mars”, and honestly, you should reconsider why you’re so eager to deny a topic that you’ve clearly not put in as much effort to think about than the people who actually do care about this project. and also, assuming it does work out; what will you do then? be ashamed of your wrong prediction? because if you’re not, that means you don’t stand to your prediction, and therefore the prediction is worthless. i’m not sure whether i was too direct about this and somebody perceived it as rude, but i’m tired of this feeling of being stuck. we need to think long-term again.
I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don’t know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
When you’re coming from a position of extreme privilege and you’re either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with “lesser people” (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you’re being discriminated against.
I think you’re missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I’m inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we’re getting at. It’s also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority – which while relatable to me, doesn’t help make leftism look appealing.
(By “majority” I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
I think you should read J. Sakai’s Settlers. It explains this (in a US context) quite well and I think that it refutes the concept of just making leftism “more appealing” for people
I can read the book, but… I just don’t understand how leftism can be successful without followers.
That doesn’t make sense. You need to start with a correct historical and material analysis before you can approach anything else. Socialism is based on dialectical materialism, not gaining ‘followers’. Leftism is not a religion that aims to have many converts but rather should understand why neocolonialism and other such institutions would deincentivize white people from being leftists in the United States in the first place.
It’s all well and good for leftist individuals to achieve that understanding, but how can we effect change without more of the population being swayed to this ideology?
You still haven’t achieved that understanding. Ideology does not come about from ‘convincing’ or ‘swaying’ anyone. I once again suggest you to read Settlers to see why this thought process is flawed. I understand where you are coming from but the material precedes the immaterial
Tell that to the propaganda model. False consciousness is a real barrier which can, and has, dominated material class interests.
Propaganda functions with a pre-supposition of the initial dominance of the material over the immaterial. People are functionally motivated to accept specific ideological and social viewpoints where the material state encouraging that comes first. I think this article makes an interesting case for why this general concept is non-Marxist: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Thanks for linking the Red Sails article, I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. Interestingly, while the work critiques even the title of Manufacturing Consent, it provides a similar sense of fulfillment to Manufacturing Consent by providing a material, non-conspiratorial explanation to a more-or-less ‘common sense’ phenomenon (media control, brainwashing).
In a way, the premise and conclusion echo some wisdom I’d heard before, albeit in a different context: It’s not enough to be right.
While that speaker had basically meant that theory is useless if it is never applied, and only used as an “I told you so” after-the-fact, this article makes a related case, that the correctness of an idea doesn’t automatically mean it will be accepted by a typical healthy person. And as someone who veers towards a more academic and scientific side of life, where correctness is so valued and there’s an expectation that everyone in the scene is on the same page about basic fundamental facts, the brainwashing framework is a convenient and intuitive (even if false) rationalization of why so many people can be so ignorant to these basics (like flat earth theory, anti-germ theory, that level of ignorance). It really is hard to empathize and not be condescending to people in relatively-advanced countries in the modern age still believing that kind of thing. The brainwashing theory is convenient - they’ve been dupped by a cult leader! the [religion/government] wants to keep them ignorant and encircled them with a false reality! they’ve been conditioned to be dumb since birth! This explains it! But that only goes so far, there is a point where a person has enough access to information that the brainwashing theory fails to justify their rejection of evidence. I know first hand, like many, that it takes time to dismantle the propaganda pervading our liberalist status quo, but it’s not magical or hypnotic.
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70’s/80’s) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you’d have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You’d also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be ‘happy’ (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I’m trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that’s what would need to be done. You’d have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you’d have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won’t be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can’t be exploited, to try and “raise all boats” in society. And you’d have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they’re now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you’d have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., “Free Will is a Pain in the Ass”.
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists “coming for the” communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn’t effecting their status quo.
That’s not true at all. I know Centrists who care about everybody, and want everybody to be safe/happy/successful. They see it as a “floating tide raises all boats” kind of thing.
This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”? See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
You’ll have to elaborate/defend that statement. I think you’re just imposing your own perspective/worldview without facts in evidence.
That would be said by Leftists about a Leftist-bias system, or Rightists about a Rightist-bias system. What you described is not just in the domain of the Centrist. There are many “systems” that groups of humans gather around, and each system may look very different from other systems.
I have not read this, so apologies if I get this wrong, but I will judge this sentence based on the overall message of your comment reply.
Being a moderate does not mean settling for whatever no matter what, no matter how harmful it is. Its about trying to have a consensus that most/all can live with, in how we run our society and how we act towards each other.
For example, if everybody agreed on Leftism, then should the middle of the Leftism population be condemmed (as they would now be the Centrists of Leftism)? Or Centrists of Rightism?
If human history teaches us anything, governing from the fridge/edges never works out well for everybody else.
This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
You aren’t exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. “The Left” commonly answers the second with an idea called ‘eternal revolution’. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
https://letterfromjail.com/
I’ll take a look.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
In theory it should have a strong monetary incentive for all but the wealthiest of cis/striaght/white/males. They just don’t realize that for some reason.
I can think of a good reason but i’m not sure whether you’re willing to buy into it.
people naturally don’t think of themselves as individuals. people think of themselves as a group/society.
People recognize that under a republican US government, they’re significantly more likely to go to mars and have prosperous offspring. while if they’re stuck on earth, a recession and decline is waiting for them. they can’t verbalize it and probably aren’t even rationally aware of it, but i guess they can feel it with their heart.
of course lots of you folks are gonna immediately chime in and say “nooo i saw a youtube video that explained that it’s impossible to live on mars”, and honestly, you should reconsider why you’re so eager to deny a topic that you’ve clearly not put in as much effort to think about than the people who actually do care about this project. and also, assuming it does work out; what will you do then? be ashamed of your wrong prediction? because if you’re not, that means you don’t stand to your prediction, and therefore the prediction is worthless. i’m not sure whether i was too direct about this and somebody perceived it as rude, but i’m tired of this feeling of being stuck. we need to think long-term again.
I’m confused, are you saying that most straight white men are not left… Because they all want to go to mars?
Yeah that is so out of the blue, I’m not sure what to make of it. I think most people don’t even realize SpaceX/Elon want to colonize mars.