King_Simp

I mean, on its own I hate my sleep, cause I have chronic nightmares, I thrash about and make a mess, and my thanatophobia is obviously triggered by it.

But also just the concept in general kinda bugs me. At least for the long amount of time it takes. It's at least 6 hours of sleep every day. And I could really use those 6 hours. Maybe I'd fill to fit it like a fish moced to a larger fish tank, but in any case if I could simply relax for that time and then use the other 18 hours of the day to be productive, id love that. But I unfortunately can't combine recreation and sleep at the same time. And it's just...ugh. I don't know.

Overall I just really wish I could go without something. I wish I could forgo the need for recreation, or the need to sleep, or the need to work, or the need to study marxism [by learning much much easier, not giving up], or my enjoyment for hobbies. I'm not necessarily stretched thin. More just...idk. Marat would work 21 hours a day on his work Chains of Slavery, but the coffee intake nearly killed him, so idk. Also i have anxiety over coffee [i dont like that it messes with my head. Also when people have too much it seems to null its effectiveness] but i know that would help with my problem.

There's this red sails article that pops up every once in a while. Don't get me wrong it's a fine article, but there's a bit that goes "something something don't think people are brainwashed and just need to be exposed to uncomfortable truths."

And like, I get it. But...that's exactly what happened to me. I mean, I'm not going to say it was exactly one thing that caused it. However, genuinely when i learned about the Iraq War in detail*, that was basically what flipped the switch in my head. Obviously I wasn't as theoretically developed as I am today, but thats what made me genuinely want to read Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. It was exactly that process of being exposed to information like that that made me want to be a communist, and want to fight for it.

This isn't some debunking thing. I think what I'm trying to explain is that my story seems to be very different from other people's, and applying my own experiences might not really work if it's not how things commonly work.

And, as much as it is important, I do want something more in depth than just "organize and educate." Don't get me wrong, that's good advice. What I'm trying to ask moreso is, what is the actually psychology going on behind these decisions here? Obviously there's no cookie cutter/one size fits all strategy here, but some direction would be helpful in actually attempting to convince people.

*To elaborate, I always heard of Iraq as just "the war." Kinda like how Vietnam was. But no one ever explained to me what it was and school didn't really neither. So when I learned it was basically the US invading Iraq almost explicitly for oil and no one got punished for it and basically everyone got rich off of it besides normal people while hundreds of thousands Iraqis died, it really shook me.

To preface, I'm going off of summarization I've read, and not off of Stirner's work itself. Also, I haven't read the German ideology yet.

Stirner's Egoism is not very good in general, but I feel like the concept of "Spooks" [That being, immaterial things that subconsciously make a person go against their self interest] is an interesting one.

Could the Gramscian concept of Hegemony be concieved of in this way? [Although the implicit comparison I'm making between them is, admittedly, insulting. So I apologize]. Or maybe a specific component of hegemony [i.e, religion, nationalism, etc.] Could be considered a "spook?"

To preface, I don't have marxist language to describe this with, so bear with a lot of kantian social contract talk.

Anyway, recently in my "ethics" class we were going over some dilemmas. Basically it was

Trolley problem, cannibalism while shipwrecked, and a doctor killing a patient for their organs.

Trolley problem you know by now. One Trolley, one lever, kill one or five, blah blah blah

The shipwrecked on was basically "was it morally justified to kill a weak crew member so the others could eat them and survive."

And the doctor one was "if a doctor has a patient who is terminally ill and will die in a week, is it justified for them to kill that person if their organs will save 5 people."

The basic idea being that these are "technically" all the same scenario, asking between killing one person and letting 5 die.

Firstly, a smaller note, I hate how there's not option to object to these questions in the first place, or say that no action is immoral. Objectively, maybe we could say "if you have the wherewithal and the ability, then it technically is better to save the 5 people in the Trolley problem." But simultaneously, this can't be used to justify anything beyond this, because these are extenuating circumstances.

1. The Trolley problem presupposes that you have all the information. In real world scenarios, this is never the case. Take the killing of the Romanov royal family. You could argue that this is a Trolley problem, killing one family to potentially save thousands, if not millions from a white Russian victory. But since we don't have the ability to time travel we don't know what the other outcome would have been.

2. This is a pure bystander situation. You just so happen to be at the switch at the exact right second, and have had no previous hand in this situation. It's incredibly unlikely for this to be the case either.

You could say objectively that maybe one case is better than the other, but it's impossible, in my opinion at least, to extrapolate it out to any grand moral position beyond "more people being alive is good." And the way the question is framed, a choice of pulling the lever being moral inherently implies you think the opposite choice is immoral, and visa versa.

This is similar to the shipwrecked one. These are extenuating circumstances, as people are not usually shipwrecked and starving. So the conditions under which you can extrapolate this decision to are "when you are starving and going to die..." This also has the same issue as the Trolley problem, where neither choice is inherently immoral unless going by strict moralistic interpretations of a philosophy. Choosing between one or the other necessarily means saying some trait is immoral. If you think eating the person is immoral, then youre saying that looking out for the majority is immoral. If you say that not eating the person is immoral, you're saying not committing murder and respecting that person's innocent autonomy is immoral. And, like i said, this can't be extrapolated.

The last question honestly pissed me off, which is why I'm writing this. Basically it goes "you [literally you reading this] have received a terminal diagnosis and will die in a week. A doctor comes in and asks you if you'll accept being euthanized so your organs can be donated to five people who will die [before you die naturally] without them. You say no and they kill you anyway. Was what they did immoral?"

The question is essentially a "gotcha." The idea is that they, if you answered to pulling the lever on the Trolley question and eating the person in the shipwrecked question, that you're a self centered hypocrite for answering that you should've been left alive in this question.

But...these situations aren't the same.

1. This is not extenuating circumstance. People on organ wait lists are dying every day. So whatever answer given here can be extrapolated to something common, which is "if someone needs organs for a transplant."

2. The doctor is naturally involved in this situation, and can exhibit whatever traits this act encourages into further situations. It's unlikely a shipwrecked crew member or poor guy standing by railroad tracks can apply their decision again. But a doctor is in that position of authority constantly.

Ergo, these situations are different. No going to not get a job as crewmember on a ship because "oh no. What if we get shipwrecked and the crew eats me." And people already have a natural aversion to getting tied up on railroad tracks. But we do need people to trust that, if they go to the hospital, the doctor won't kill them. Already there's been controversy around actual cases of people nearly being accidently killed for their organs. And guess what peoples first reaction is? "I need to get off the organ donor program." If people cannot trust their doctors, they are not going to donate their organs and, guess what, they might not go to the doctor either, which might kill them too. So this decision has a lot more societal "social contract" weight than the other two.

I think my main issue is that these types of questions often forget that the answers have their own morality to them. Take the infamous torture question version of the Trolley problem. It asks "a terrorist has hid a bomb in a building and it will detonate in 1 hour, killing thousands of people. It will take a full day to search the city, which means the bomb will most likely detonate before being found and defused. However you can torture the terrorist and he will give you the location in time. Will you torture him?"

This is basically my least favorite philosophical dilemma. It's basically designed to give no right answer and for the person asking it to feel better about themselves.

1.This is the epitome of philosophical omnipotents. How do we know he'll crack under torture? How do we know theres no other leverage we can use? How do we know that he won't just lie to us to either waste our time or get us to stop?

2. This is also the definition of extenuating circumstances. How many terrorist plots, if any, are solved by interrogating someone literally an hour before a bomb goes off? This is almost definitely the result of the questioner watching too much 24 and NCIS and other such United Statesian slop. I get the idea is to say that "well you said that torture isn't good under all circumstances. However, under this one circumstance youll say its good, therefore it can be justified." But this circumstance is so specific it really comes down to adding and asterisk when saying "torture is never justified*." It really exemplifies all of my problems with these types of questions and the fact that you, for the most part, aren't allowed to the questions framing, despite the fact that the question itself if unethical.

Idk, I just started reading his biography and it's got me thinking...

He was 50 when he died. The French revolution was 4 years young when he was assassinated. But he wasn't a revolutionary for the 26 years before that.

He was "just" a scientist. I mean I'm sure he held this or that revolutionary idea, but his life is essentially defined by his shadow, the shadow of those last 4 years.

I think he would like that. I mean, I don't think he liked getting stabbed, but he devoted his last years entirely to the revolutionary cause.

It just...makes me think. How such a short period of time can define a person. I mean, how would we see Lenin if he died before the Russian revolution? How would we see Gramsci if he led an Italian revolution?

How many more Marats are out there? How many Marats lie dormant and in wait? And how are we defined? Will I be defined by how I die? By what I do? By how others love or hate me?

I don't have any answers to these questions, I'm just thinking is all.

This is something that's always confused me, but I've put it off since it's always "later." But Marx and such talks about how a communist society wouldn't have alienation or a division of labor ["In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"- Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme] . But like...how? He's using the division of labor the same way I am right? [That being, multiple people make individual parts of a thing and therefore have better throughput but no one has a concrete connection to the thing they're making?] But I don't understand how you necessarily get rid of that. Maybe this is basic but this confuses me

I've had the displeasure of happening upon some ultra-leftists talking about Gramsci and they blamed him for eurocommunism [without a source, of course]. But I'm a little confused on how he even got associated with it. I can only think of his writings one war of position vs war of maneuver, but even that feels like a very big stretch. And otherwise I feel like Gramsci, with his revolution against Capital and all, would be the exact opposite of Eurocommunism.

I'm getting through of Varoufakis's "Technofeudalism" and I'll hold off judgement until I've relearned my political economy [this project has expanded much more than I thought it would] but I really despise his truisms about AES states.

I'm not saying a work can't be good without being explicitly made by a Leninist [Princes of the Yen and Confessions of an Economic Hitman are both pretty good despite their authors], but...let me elaborate more

Varoufakis occasionally throws in a couple lines about AES states being bad. He says they "had a dogmatic idea about equality" [note: he calls these "socialists of the east" despite cuba being...a thing?] and later says the states turned out something closer to "George Orwells animal farm or 1984." [Conviently ignoring that both of these works were propaganda pieces against the soviet union]. Or that he and his father had concerns that "the same people they fought with [the greek communists] would throw him into a gulag," But...he never proves this. [The last thing he doesn't have to prove, but I still have problems with it]

I'm not saying he has to, but "no investigation, no right to speak." Maybe he has a later section, but currently he throws these out with the basic premise that the reader uncritically agrees with him. But the book is tailored towards the left or those curious about it or who dislike capitalism [in its current form], and makes active references to marxism. So what does this serve? The book is not explicitly a criticism or analysis of AES states.

I think, if I can get into his headspace, he either is getting too conversational [as the book is a letter to his late father, which he and his father agree on AES states and such], so he doesn't feel the need to justify it but, poetically, cannot stop himself from bringing it up.

There's also the possibility that it is his own anxieties that he aims to keep down by repeating a mantra.

More materially there is hegemony, and of course cue the Parenti article.

But I criticize these truisms both because they lack creative and critical thoughts, but also because they are unnecessary. Why denounce leninism in this way, when your book is going to be seen by leftists? Yes there are many of the western left who agree, but plenty also disagree, and others can be undecided. In any case it's either pure selfishness, pure ideology, or uncritical thinking which is concerning for his future study, and only serves to deradicalize people, which is antithetical to what he is [ostensibly] trying to do.

I know Varoufakis published another book recently focusing on Revolution and resistance. I have a lot on my plate right now, but if this would shed more light onto his thinking, then I might read it at some point.

If you're unfamiliar, basically in the US there's a revolving argument door going on between trades workers and academic degree holders [usually boiling down to college="useless" gender studies degree with $900000 in student loans or trade=Die at 35 from asbestos snorting]. As someone getting an engineering degree, I feel like I should be exempt from having to listen to these, bit unfortunately all the Spyware is loaded to show me ads before sending me to a camp for being a commie, instead of actually making my life better.

But I realized that a lot of arguments about it surround student loans, which a lot of other countries don't have [as much of at least.] I know obviously there's still going to be some white collar/ blue collar friction, but do they get anywhere near as heated, frequent, or constant as in the US?

Luckily I haven't actually seen one in a while. Mostly Maoists and Leftcoms nowadays, and they're at least...somewhat coherent sometimes

It feels like theres a bunch of things that are simultaneously heating up, but not boiling over.

1.AI bubble

Honestly I'm wondering if this'll be a "pop" like 2008 or Dotcom, or if it'll be more like 1929 where you had the intial crash and then the cascading effects across the economy. But in any case, at this point AI is not going to give many returns, and either start ups will run out of investment money or the larger corporations will cut both ai usage and development, leading to a domino effect from the top down.

2. Venezualan war

Honestly what the US is doing is both the most and least transparent thing. It's very obvious the US wants to topple Maduro and the Bolivarian government, but how they intend to is kinda beyond me, since [to my knowledge] they haven't deployed large enough ground forces for a genuine invasion. Honestly if i had to guess, they might be wanting to go for a Libya/Syria strategy of propping up local rebels, then intervening with non-occupational forces. But when or how this'll happen, I'm not sure.

3.Taiwan Crisis

We haven't reached the point of another straight crisis yet, but the US has recently passed and introduced more measures in relation to the rogue government [https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1512 and https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3452]. Of course there's also been the Japanese saber rattling too. Of course these issues have been a thing for a while, but I'm unsure what Japan specifically is getting out of it, and Trump has, as always, been very opaque about the issue.

4.Russia-Europe

The current situation with the SMO seems to be a chicken with its head cut off. It's walking like it's alive but there really is no way the situation is going to improve for Europe. But the recent "Russian" drones and technical airspace violations seem to be something that's trying to reignite tensions. For what? I'm also not sure. A full military intervention seems unlikely, as Europe's equipment is currently already in Ukrainian hands. A full scale war with Russia [and probably Belarus] would be catastrophic at best and suicidal at worst. If I had to guess, Europe wants to keep pushing austerity and needs nationalist war drums to drown out the noise of german economic collapse and starving British kids.

There's also the current situation in west Africa [with a military coup in Guinea-Bissau just being reported today] and other things. But really it feels as though the world is stuck, and when something gives, everything else is going to snap to. But idk, I also didn't get enough sleep last night so maybe I'm just being paranoid

Every once in a while ill go down a rabbit hole and recently I went down one on the May 4th movement. The topic pertinent to the discussion is Jiang Bingzhi/Ding Ling. She wrote feminist literature and was a part of the may 4th movement and the cpc. But she was purged during the cultural revolution and didn't write much afterwards. But she rejected being a victim, and says the labor improved her.

Similarly there was Claire Lacombe, who helped form the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women during the French revolution. The group was extremely radical, and played a part at Marat's funeral. But they would end up purged by the committee of public safety and herself denounced by the Jacobins. But she never denounced the Jacobins or Robsepierre, despite it being advantageous to do so at the time. [Although she would quit her political career and go into acting]

And like...idk. I read stories like this occasionally and I feel...things. It's probably related to my own struggles with gender and sexuality, my tendency to idolize and split because of BPD, and other things. But...I can't describe what I'm feeling. It's not disappointment, or at least not just that. Idk, resignation maybe? Maybe I just wish for more and the world won't give me it.

I think maybe the best way to describe it is what Han Suyin said in an interview in her later years. Something along the lines of "the CPC is worst when it is too Confucian." I understand why, both materially and ideologically, these things happened, and I'm not going to obfuscate the genuine advancements women made during both revolutions. But...sometimes it just feels too Confucian...if that makes sense?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Ling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Lacombe