Tag: leftism

One Thing That Confuses Me About “Marxism” As An Ideology

Is how Marx’s own ideas varied over the course of his lifetime.  He changed.  He developed.  

So like which Marx?

(I like Marx a lot and sometimes even call myself a Marxist/Marxian so this isn’t like some anti-Marxist thing, just like curiosity over how people deal with that?  I guess like I tend to find he developed in understanding as he got older and like his later stuff best)

What Is A Boss?

When the body was first created, there was contention 
among the component parts as to who was going to be the boss. 

The brain said, "Since I am the nerve center that controls 
everything and does all the thinking, I should be the boss." 

The feet said, "Since I carry all the friggin' weight, I 
should be the boss." 

The hands said, "Since I must do all the manual labor and 
earn all the money to keep the rest of you going, I should be the 
boss. " 

The eyes said, "Since I must look out for all of you and let 
you know when danger lurks, I should be the boss." 

And so it went with the ear, the lungs, and various other 
component parts of the body, till there was no one left but the 
anus. All the others laughed when it made its bid for bosshood, 
for who ever heard of an anus being boss of anything? This 
rebuff upset the anus so much that in a pique of anger it closed 
itself off completely and refused to function any further. 

Soon the brain was feverish, the eyes crossed and ached, 
the feet were too weak to carry the load, the hands hung limply 
at the sides, and the heart, lungs, and the rest of the component 
parts struggled to keep going. They all capitulated to the anus, 
and it finally became the boss. 

While the others did all the work, the anus just basked and 
let out a lot of hot air along with the other material it is the 
anus's function to let out. 

The moral of this little episode is that it takes no special 
talent to be a boss - so why have one if everyone knows how to 
work together in harmony? Think about it.

Sometimes There Is A Kind Darkness

As much as we do say “it’s okay to like problematic shit” I do think there’s this weird pressure on the left never to express an interest in what’s dark, what’s ugly, because to express an interest is somehow an endorsement, or a lack of empathy.

Like you know, sometimes looking at photographs of awful skin sores isn’t callous prurience, and sometimes fascination is an attempt to understand what happened, what went wrong, how to stop it happening again, how to fix it. 

And you know what sometimes jokes about dark shit are about coping with it, about processing it, about dealing with it (this btw does not mean shitty standup comics should get away with their shit).

This isn’t a post-hoc excuse for bad behavior, for insensitivity, for cruelty or callousness, or failure to listen to people who are too often silenced.

I think though that sometimes there is a sort of callous insensitivity in the demand for cheer, in the demand for light, in the demand that people who have been compared with monsters for their whole lives never identify with monsters unless they’re the defanged cartoon kind.

It’s fucked because I see people getting away with horrible shit because of positionality in terms of their behavior on the one side, but people with similar positionality getting shat on for ever making art that is dark or ugly or scary, for having dark, ugly, scary things in them, and for having the audacity to say so, to show people what’s wrong  instead of performing purity and hurting others, passing their pain along.

Whenever I say something that sounds scary if implemented from above, I’m talking about implementation from below.

Like there’s stuff I need to do that’s really hard for me to get done (E.G. scanning my tax documents, calling my doctor, cleaning my house) so if there was an app or something that rewarded me for doing these things it would be easier.  So if there’s stuff we as a society needed to get done, we could make an app or game that makes it easier to motivate ourselves to do it.  

That’s all I’m saying.  Like if we need to get litter picked up, we create a thing that helps us get the “reward feeling” for picking up litter.  I know I could use that for cleaning my living room literally right now.  If a thing made a little fanfare noise when I put things away, it would be easier to do.

I’m talking about my own personal experience having a hard time doing certain tasks, and how we could in a post-capitalist society make it easier for people to do shit they need or want to do.

We could have another app for say… people that wanted to write a novel that rewarded you when you hit a word count you specified.

I’m talking about giving people tools to self motivate if they want them in a society where nothing is motivated by potential deprivation. 

Like we’re workers

our goal is to do as little work as possible for as much money as possible and to steal as much shit from work as we possibly can and basically to wring every red cent and concession we can out of the boss without losing our jobs because bosses are our enemies because that is the nature of capitalism.

Your boss isn’t your friend, quit being goddamn scissorbills

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