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I'm a "leftist" on paper and in my heart. I helped organize a union, I believe in a better future where we abolish wage-labor and tear down unjust hierarchies, I don't believe in the legitimacy of things like copyright or borders, I think all people are created equal that we should judge people by their deeds and behavior rather than the color of their skin or their religion, etc. I want to see space colonies of happy socialists using robots to garden in domes. I want solar panels powering the great cities of the world with electric cars and wind-turbines. I want to see progress. I want us to clean up the planet, and move heavy industry off the planet so we can live in some solar-punk fantasy while my kids can explore the stars. I like sailboats and gliders and building cabins in the woods and learning languages and programming computers and ... the list is to long to fully express here, but I love life. I want to be happy and fulfilled and I want others to be too! I'll even help! But most people do not seem to want to be happy now. Everyone seems miserable while I'm doing more or less ok and looking at me like I'm an asshole because I have hope. It seems though that the people I once I identified with, saw as my friends and allies, are literally anti-tech right now. I get it, it's popular to hate AI, it's popular to hate the billionaires, I get it, I am not a fan of capital either. Lord knows I'm not. Still, I don't have this all consuming rage I see everywhere. I still am amazingly optimistic at the possibilities for the future! I think it'll be a rocky road, but I think we'll get there. I don't know if it is because I have lived through a great tragedy and the only thing that has let me live has been medical science, but it feels right now that there's a strong regressive core to the "left" in America right now. I'm not talking about idpol or whatever. It's more this pervasive nostalgia that concerns me. This idea that "if only things can go back to how they used to be" as though that is even possible. That's all I see from either side of the spectrum here in the states. From the Republicans, it's "I wish it was 1950 and black people couldn't vote." From the Democrats it's "I wish it was 2009 again and I had hope for the future." But hope is a verb too, and you have to actually do it in order to accomplish anything. You have to have some reason to get out of bed in the morning. But the whole zeitgeist the entire internet and most of the leftist paces I have been in is this weird aft-facing drone of discontent. 2009 wasn't that great. Neither was 1996. I certainly wouldn't translate my life backwards, for one, I'd be dead or suffering immensely, but on the other side, we can't. So wishing for this weird nostalgic fever dream isn't going to make it true. We have to go forward, we have to make the world better! We have to show people that the world can be better. But today, everyone is convinced of doom and decay and rot and nobody's willing to hope anymore because hoping is no longer in vogue. I'm still going to hope, and I'm still going to "build" because action precedes motivation. We need to do things to make the world better, not just know about them. Ideology is overrated. I just want to do things to help people live a better life and accomplish the things that make life worth living. I often feel very alone in this desire. Like I'm a weirdo for not just wanting to talk about how fucked up things are. But the wild thing is that things have been much much worse... |
I believe in a better future where we abolish wage-labor and tear down unjust hierarchies, I don't believe in the legitimacy of things like copyright or borders
Open Borders to me is the most hyper capitalist thing in the world. It's all clearly designed to drive down the price of labour, continuously and without end. All the window dressing about everyone holding hands and enjoying different foods is a lipstick on the pig of the profit motive.