You cannot cure loneliness by simply obtaining “friendship” or “community” because they aren’t goals. At the end of the day all the questions begin with: Who are you and what are you going to use your one life for? I don’t need to repeat what Marx said and that’s been parroted a thousand times already.
People are completely alienated from themselves. We’re completely alienated from one another, who I am doesn’t matter, everyone who reads this text conjures up their own zombie writer to represent who they’re interpreting it to be written as.
The older I get, the more I think that community, friendship and love (whether platonic or otherwise) are the ultimate goals. They’re the point of life. Things like revolution and communism are the means to an end, they’re to achieve something that will make the world better for everyone, but then what? Then we can enjoy friendships and community with each other. Having a cause but being lonely is no good for the mental health.
For me the ultimate goal is ending suffering for all life. I may be terrible at practicing Buddhism but it gave me that purpose, that clarity of what do to with myself, to liberate me and everyone I can from pain. I know religions get a bad wrap in Marxist circles but, yeah, I’m grateful I got into the Buddha’s teachings.
Me too. I love the film Project Hail Mary, but if I was Grace, I would have just let life on earth die, precisely to end all suffering.
do you not think anyone deserves to live?
The way I see it, the world is filled with sex trafficking, factory farming, war, starvation, torture, wage slavery, homelessness, etc. So either all of those things continue to happen to millions/billions, so that those who are enjoying their lives can continue, or those things stop. Which means no-one gets to enjoy their lives any more but they won’t exist to know they’re missing anything anyway. So IMO the world ending is the more moral choice.
why be a communist then if you prefer everyone to die
I don’t have the power to end the world. If the world must exist then I prefer it to be communist. Also if it was communist maybe it wouldn’t be bad enough to warrant extermination.
Still genocide tho
When you’re actually opposed to people suffering, then it means you care about the people, so you wouldn’t want them to die. This is just projected suicidality masquerading as care for others.
Ask the people who suffer through trafficking, war, starvation, torture–the majority of them are fighting to live, to have a better life. They do not want to die, and it is not a kindness for you to imagine their death as an “end to their suffering.” You’re actually siding more with the ones doing the torturing, trafficking, warmongering–you are devaluing the lives of others because you don’t see their lives as worthwhile.
That’s your personal viewpoint. But this viewpoint reminds me of the short story Those Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guin. It’s about people superficially feeling bad for those who suffer horribly, but being willing to let it continue indefinitely so that everyone else can continue to enjoy themselves.
https://files.libcom.org/files/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
Also it’s not accurate that the people suffering through these things mostly want to live. For instance, statistically over two thirds of trafficking victims have suicidal ideation and nearly half have attempted suicide one or more times. It’s just virtue signalling to claim everyone wants to live without finding out whether that’s actually true or not. It’s easy for one of us, sitting somewhere at least relatively safe and mostly unharmed, to philosophise about this like it’s just a topic of debate but there are millions of people and billions of animals right now suffering the most unbearable torture with no way out and desperate for it to end, but the majority of people will gladly see it continue while imagining they re virtuous for it. It’s just like the people who campaign against assisted suicide, imagining they are so righteous and trying to protect the disabled, when actually they are just taking away the free will of those who would choose that option.
This is also a daft thing to argue about since I am extremely unlikely to be called upon to single-handedly save the world, so whether or not I would choose to save the world in that scenario is meaningless. You have your opinion, I have mine, I don’t come to hexbear to argue so I won’t comment on this any more.
You have your opinion, I have mine
My opinion: people shouldn’t die because some Brit says it’s morally correct
Your opinion: planet-wide genocide.
Okay.
I have been through some dark and deprived places in life. Still, for over ten thousand days, I have chosen to reach out for what life has to offer, out of the prevailing desire for what’s out there and what I can make of myself.
A better world is possible.
Yeah nah this ain’t it.
This sounds almost identical to the hustle and grind weirdos who make all relationships into transactional means to an end.
Building community and fostering better communal relationships is the very foundation of building the world we want to see and sure we should strive to change the material conditions for all, but part of that is also in order to build a world where all can enjoy those relations, not just those building a revolutionary movement.
For the masses those are absolutely reasonable objectives in their own right and it is our job then to make possible the conditions to meet those goals without the struggles we each fave under the current hyper individualized and alienated conditions that impede them.
I cannot go through life subsuming myself socially for the sake of “reaching something”. I do NOT value the “quests” of this world at all. I ONLY value other humans and constructive harmonies between said.
The idea I would lose myself in some identity for the sake of a cause or idea, or to achieve some personal or group outcome is insane to me. No. Fuck no.
I only do what i do for the sake of myself as a human and for the welfare of other people. To belong in community as a fully realized person in my own right.
absolutely horrifying to think of human relations as something goal-oriented
i’m pretty sure i would not be alone in the world if i stopped being alone in the world. that’s what those words mean. enforce masking at gunpoint and maybe i’d feel like going to a local event.
No, they are also goals. I’ll be the first to admit that people (including formerly[?] myself) very commonly subordinate the answer of what they are living for to another person’s life and I think they are better off having a more independent idea of who they are and why they do things such that their conception of their own existence couldn’t be totally annihilated by a traffic accident that they weren’t in (rightfully upsetting as it would be, to be clear). However, people also need to have company and wanting to have a community or friends or a relationship or whatever certainly can each be a goal.
Do you mean that Ostrovsky quote?
Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world──the fight for the Liberation of Mankind
What if the real friendship was the goals we achieved on the way?
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this is just projecting your own brainworms onto others fam
“Hey fellow leftists, important reminder that you should never try making friends or forming communities, since they’re all alienated which means it is a waste of time to actually form human connection. It should only ever be a means to an end, just use other people, don’t treat them like humans, treat them like objects for your personal benefit and to achieve all your personal goals, gotta get on that sigma grindset.”
