pengosolvent

I have been thinking a lot about capitalism and how people react to it
many react to it as aspects of it are inevitable and part of life. recently, in a server i am a moderator in, someone left because they expressed they felt capitalism was good, and when speaking more on this, they felt insecure and treated as if they were uneducated for their beliefs

it makes me sad to a degree because feeling "stupid" can really hurt me (again, OCD related) and so i felt sad for them to feel "uneducated", but at the same time, it felt like this person wanted to reach a place where their beliefs were treated as just as valid (read: harmless) as the beliefs others were sharing (myself included) about capitalism and did not show interest in actually becoming "educated" (i am uncertain what they believe "uneducated" means to them)

to be very clear: i don't want this writing to become making fun of this person. i feel no illwill towards them. i feel some pity in the sense that i feel like there must be more complex factors going into their life for them to feel the way they do, but i don't really accept their beliefs as harmless

one example is that they didn't really feel climate change was plausible because we're just tiny amounts of humans and god made the earth for us as a resource, and ultimately they expressed that they did not feel science as accurate

this is ... just... not harmless
it's not harmless. it cannot be treated as harmless because it inherently seems to lean towards downplaying human impact on our surroundings, which, in the midst of a global climate crisis (and many many other crises caused by capitalism and pollution), is truthfully irresponsible

even if we weren't in a slowly boiling pot of an earth, it just feels bad to treat the world as something that is ultimately just a "resource" for us... even if god were to give us a gift to live upon, it feels very painful to imagine someone giving a gift, and for one to treat it so poorly and take it for granted so immensely
(not to mention that capitalism views the world as a resource in a bid to make money, which separates us from nature as part of ourselves and contributes to isolation... so this idea is ripe for exploitation)

but i've been thinking over this, and especially over the feeling they expressed that science just doesn't feel right to them

i am thinking about low and damaged trust, and my own OCD and experiences with low and damaged trust

so let's get into that

for context, OCD is at times referred to as the disease of doubt. this is because OCD is most defined by persistent intrusive thoughts or ruminations that attack what the individual values, through inducing fear and doubt (these are obsessions)
this fear is intense and it feels extremely real, no matter how unrealistic it may logically seem, even if you're aware it's not real it can still FEEL real
people with OCD can confuse possibility with probability.. as in "this is possible" becomes "this is VERY likely to happen"
this can lead to logic like... "even if it seems impossible, there's a lot of stuff that seems impossible until it actually happens, and i can't PROVE it WON'T happen, so it's ABSOLUTELY GOING TO HAPPEN."

as a result, people with OCD can tend to try to find ways to lessen these negative feelings through mental or physical actions (compulsions) that bring relief ... but ultimately only strengthen the obsession as it reinforces that the danger is "real"

the common example most people know is that of the excessively tidy person, the person who washes their hands exactly so-and-so times every time, the person who locks their doors so-and-so times every time, so on.

But that's not the entirety of OCD.
I didn't really know I had it until recently due to how misunderstood it is... OCD relating to doubts means that a person with OCD will struggle with sitting in uncertainty and will often move towards whatever will help them feel "certain" of something

here's one that is common for me: i'm scared of planes crashing. even if it's very unlikely, i confuse the possibility of it happening with "it's ABSOLUTELY GOING TO HAPPEN."
i get extremely scared of the idea that i could be in a plane crash, or even just hearing a plane fly over me, i can get scared it will crash and land on me. i can get terrified that little pieces of plane debris will land on me while i'm just outside doing anything else. plane crashes feel like something wherein i am powerless to stop, so even if the possibility of this happening is extremely miniscule, if i end up involved in that happening, it feels like there's nothing i can do to survive it, which terrifies me. i used to focus on this kind of thought a lot, i used to be unable to pull myself away from these feelings, and compulsions i would have would be things like... simply not traveling, thinking extremely hard (while on a plane) on feeling like i was "protected" by these characters in a comic i liked as a kid (the characters in question worked to safely land a plane), doing a really specific order of things while on the plane (i'd always listen to a specific song while lifting off and landing, i'd try to have a sort of "consistency" that i could rely on), so on. these were compulsions to try to lessen my anxiety

it's not that lessening anxiety is necessarily a "bad" thing, but it can become extremely unruly in someone with OCD

OCD can manifest in multiple different subtypes, like... perfectionism OCD, where you need to do everything JUST right or else you feel awful or maybe you feel stupid or maybe you feel like people will hurt you or maybe you feel like you've just ruined your whole life and everyone saw and so on and so forth.

relationship OCD wherein you may feel like even just LOOKING at another person and smiling at them could be interpreted as cheating and you catastrophize over having cheated, or you don't understand if you like your friend or Love your friend, or don't understand the "correct" way to act around others and it just feels like you're flailing the entire time and actually you don't deserve to exist around other people because everyone but you knows how to act and you just can't seem to learn and--

or even... moral OCD. wherein if you see a post like "if you do xyz you support [bad thing]", you have a breakdown because you don't want to support [bad thing] and be a bad person who deserves to die as a result, you want to be a GOOD person and you just can't like xyz anymore... and you know what? you need to REALLY go the full mile to prove you're good by getting OTHER people to NOT like xyz anymore too! how can you know you're good if you aren't actively trying to be good and reduce the "bad", how can you know you're not just secretly bad??? you HAVE to be good or else everyone will hate you and want to hurt you and don't even TRY to hide it cuz EVERYONE WILL KNOW, EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS, WHY AREN'T YOU BEING GOOD ALREADY? YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE OVER IF YOU DON'T FUCKING START RIGHT NOW.

...if it's not clear already, i have those previous subtypes of OCD. i have other subtypes, but i want to focus on these, especially moral OCD
(if you are curious about OCD and its subtypes, here is an overview, where at the bottom it has more on the subtypes and you can click about them and read about them)

remember how i expressed about compulsions earlier? mental or physical acts that bring relief?
i used to get extremely drained by social media due to posts that would shame others strongly and truncate nuance a lot. things like "if you take part in Thanksgiving, you support genocide, no exceptions."

(as a note, if you're getting upset right now assuming i am white please sit the fuck down and try to think about my words. i am part indigenous (i say "part" because i do not know the exacts because of how mixed my family is and how chaotic ancestral documentation can be as a result of colonialism in South America), my family has directly been affected by the effects of genocide. if you're feeling reactionary to argue with me, think about why that is first and don't just make assumptions about who i am)

i see posts like this a lot, wherein the goal isn't to actually provide information or support for whatever marginalized group is being invoked, but rather to shame or discourage and separate people who don't fit some very "objective" criteria

i saw someone with moral OCD talk about this, wherein they were really distressed because they didn't want to be "bad", but they were terrified now that they were supporting genocide when they were just visiting family and their parents do Thanksgiving dinners. Not to mention that... they also have anorexia and now are stressing about eating, too.

i thought a lot about this. i sincerely doubt the intent of the person who made the "thanksgiving = supporting genocide" post was to make this specific person (and any other person like them, with OCD or anorexia, or otherwise any sort of complex nuanced situation) feel this bad. they probably wanted people who "deserve" to feel bad, to feel bad, not anyone else, right? (i've seen this argument around before and it frustrates me)

but even if that's the case, they worded themself as objective! they outright stated no exceptions. so whether or not they intended for this, that is the result of their words

they stated something with a lot of certainty that then affects and influences others. this isn't necessarily solely their responsibility as there is a level of nuance involved in people being able to protect themselves from lies or harmful information...

but...
what does this have to do with low-trust and capitalism? i'm getting there

here's the thing i've been noticing: there are a lot of people who want to be "good", for whatever reasons they have, that end up generating a lot of friction and attempting to divide everyone into "good and bad", rather than work together.

i want to be clear: there ARE situations wherein i feel working together is detrimental, like, if someone is a white supremacist and it's clear that they will not change this or grow from this, i do not feel anyone needs to engage with this person at all

it IS important to be firm against intolerance, to not allow leeway for harmful ideas and actions at times. it IS important to express that it is not acceptable to you if someone believes harmful ideologies

however, intolerance and ignorance are not issues as easily solved by "if you celebrate thanksgiving you're bad". these issues are not easily solved by quick quips

THIS is what i take issue with, where something is flattened into a very simple framework, that erases any of the vast potential of experiences and feelings one could have (including the feelings and experiences someone from the marginalized group being referenced could have)

it sucks how indigenous people were treated, it sucks how they are STILL treated, i want this to change
however, that change doesn't occur by making people who grew up with thanksgiving as a thing in schools, that have positive memories or complicated painful issues (like the person with OCD and anorexia), feel like they support genocide?

placing thorns into people so they avoid the thorn doesn't actually lead to change! it just inflicts pain in ways that are hard to follow and fractures everyone further

there is no "easy" solution to making things better. nuance must be part of understanding!

hurting those you feel deserve to be hurt is not the same as caring about those who have been harmed.

ultimately it ends up feeling like these posts are more for the original poster to reinforce a feeling they have and reassure themselves of something while discouraging others, rather than actually engage with a complicated topic with respect towards the intersecting issues involved

i genuinely don't feel like punishment actually works in the long run (-thinking about how the prison system uses punishment over rehabilitating and how that has only made things worse-). if you try to make someone feel bad about something for a specific reason and they don't actually understand that reason AND that punishment doesn't take the person's feelings and context as mattering, then they won't actually act in alignment with caring about indigenous people and their struggles, they'll just act in alignment of trying not to be hurt again... which basically turns online engagement into a cycle of abuse, wherein people are constantly afraid of how they will be abused for a thing they didn't realize was bad and thus they deserve the abuse.. or they become someone who decides to hurt others first to avoid being hurt themselves

i'm not saying everyone must educate everyone else. if you don't have the energy for that, then you don't, and that's fine
but then ... i think i AM saying that i DON'T agree with spending energy in a method to discourage others in ways that will not actually help anything. that's a choice being made, to post "objective" quips with little to no value outside of hurting people who are susceptible to them due to mental illness

if you don't want people who engage in thanksgiving around you, then say" i'm not comfortable with people who engage in thanksgiving being around me, so i'm going to be unfollowing others, please unfollow me if you do, thanks"

you don't have to turn it into some kind of moral standing

so why do people do this?

well... i know the reason i did it was because i felt my feelings didn't matter and my perfectionism OCD and my moral OCD would team up in ways where my relief-seeking compulsions became... steeped in hatred

hatred, to me, is an emotion that generates a LOT of tension... and thus will want you to seek relief. hate-watching things to me often meant watching something, getting huge feelings from it, and then laughing at it to release tension. being hateful towards others online was a huge way for me to compulsively seek relief because i could find people who did things i didn't do, or who were otherwise labeled "bad" to me, and i could laugh at them or aggressively reply to them or whatever else, so as to feel "better" than them.

it was easy to find something to be outraged about, express angrily and hatefully, and then feel a level of relief from difficult thoughts i had about perfectionism or morality. i could find people's art and pick it apart, feeling better about my understanding of art, feeling like i was "better" than them, and my OCD would quiet down

but... OCD always wants more, because as mentioned earlier, giving into compulsions actually makes the obsessions worse. giving into the hatred and anger and fear just reinforced in me that being hurt by others could be deserved and that i could deserve it and have no recourse for defense, so i would need to reinforce myself more and more that i wasn't one of those people, that i was good and blablabla

but the more i acted hatefully, the bigger a hole i dug for myself? because... i was still hurting other people, man
regardless of whatever those people did, i still CHOSE to put my energy into actively hurting others to make myself feel better. regardless of if that person was the "worst" person in the world or not, for myself personally if i'm using who they are as an excuse to hurt them... that's not who i want to be.

(studies/research done on social media's effect on those with OCD are sporadic, but there are some out there attempting to look more into this)

i've done a lot where i truncated a lot of nuance and tried to be as objective as possible, such as spreading callouts, posting one myself, constantly trying to only say things as "correctly" as possible, and even now i feel that as i am writing this. i'm feeling all the points where something i said can be misconstrued and attacked and treated like i mean something horrible instead of considering the possibility that i said something with kindness

and this is where i am thinking about our social climate of extremely low and damaged trust.

this is where i am thinking about the person who said science doesn't feel right to them

we live in a social climate where not only are our media sources extremely biased and at times outright deceptive, with those who have more money dictating what gets more coverage... but we are also constantly constantly CONSTANTLY bombarded with psychological manipulation trying to convince us to buy things and spend our money

advertisements are snuck into as much of our life as possible, even if these advertisements actively do not care about our wellbeing.

for an example there, i'm thinking about how youtube has been going ham about adblockers lately, trying to prevent people from using it when... a lot of youtube's ads are "legally viable" i suppose (not doing something that would be immediately considered illegal), but are emotionally manipulative and dangerous for those who don't know better.
all kinds of ads about "wanna get rich quick? well click here now! don't MISS OUT on this offer!" pyramid scheme shit, manipulative "we gotta stop Wokeness and also trans people are bad and people are trying to rewrite the history of the USA to make us feel bad for being white and also lets go back to the good ol days, give me all your money my good patriot" ads, advertisements that try to convince you that youll be more well-liked if you buy their product, so on

it's upsetting! it's upsetting that advertisers are AWARE OF PEOPLE'S INSECURITIES AND ACTIVELY TRY TO USE THEM TO MAKE A SALE and this is just treated as acceptable because it's too hard to prove, in the court of law, that this is manipulative and done without care for the people who fall for it in question

we are constantly drained by what is demanded of us (complex uncaring school systems that, as a whole, care more for molding children into good workers rather than caring about the children's emotions and dreams, uncaring job systems that care more about making profits than our mental health or wellbeing, uncaring systems in general that harm the earth that then affects us like higher temperature, more extreme weather, so on), and then we don't always have the energy to protect ourselves from these advertisements or even at times straight up propaganda

so... reading news is extremely low-trust
our trust is damaged over years and years of being able to FEEL the effect of money on media and ads and how our wellbeing isn't really prioritized

however, hearing peer-spread information can also be extremely low-trust... i cannot express how many times i used to hear something from others online only to find they misinterpreted everything
i cannot overstate my own hand in situations like this, having written a callout

social media sites are often engineered specifically to drive up engagement because it keeps people addicted to using the site, and makes advertisers happy when there are a ton of people in one place who can see their ads with relative consistency

as someone with OCD, this is really hard actually. it's really hard to feel doubt in everything. it's really hard for me to engage with things in ways where i can keep myself healthy because when i encounter doubt, my OCD can flare up and start to infest everything i feel and think with doubt too.

my OCD desperately wants to cling to something with certainty. i want to feel like if i donate to somewhere, that i can be 100% certain that i'm not being scammed. if i listen to someone talk about a serious issue, i want to be 100% certain that they're not lying to me. if i put effort towards something, i want to be 100% certain that i didn't just fuck up and actually harm the cause i was trying to help...

but this is difficult. because weirdly enough, objectivity/ performative certainty is an extremely easy way to manipulate people who are insecure (me)

it is so EXTREMELY EASY to make something sound objective and dire... especially in a social climate wherein if you are "wrong" about something, you can expect harsh reprimanding

it's painting "peer pressure" over in colors that make it look like objectivity! this isn't a thing just in SJ circles either, it's extremely present anywhere in social media (and offline) where people are seeking certainty.
think about things like those people who are attached to the gamestop stock, people genuinely neck deep into Q anon, people into crypto and NFTs... the unified factor here is that they want certainty, they feel that their focus of choice (stocks/crypto/q anon) validate and reassure whatever feeling they are insecure in (financial security, the want for a more "stable" world (in their eyes)), and so they attach to these things like these things are certain, even in the face of multiple contradictions, because it helps them to feel secure in SOMETHING

(and if interested in these, i would enthusiastically recommend dan olsen's videos. he does really nice deep dives on different things like flat earthers, the gamestop stock fiasco, and yes line goes up, a video breaking down NFTs. he also has fascinating videos on the metaverse, the anatomy of a get rich quick scheme, and some psychology behind how some game companies are trying to get your money. also, his videos on media are thoughtful and interesting, though they are older, but i do like them too)

when one relies on objectivity as the arbiter of truth, then the landscape of arguments becomes about defining what is objective. if you make objectivity the only criteria met for doing something good or right, you essentially reinforce that one needs to be perfect in everything they do, because why would you ever want to do something subjective, when that doesn't matter because what matters is the objective?

something i've realized through working with my OCD is that doubt completely strangles and truncates nuance out of the picture.
if i'm seeking something external to be my objective "rock", what grounds me that i am actually "good", then i'm simplifying and flattening all of my possible choices and decisions into "what does my Objective Rock think is good?"

i'm NOT showing curiosity as to why something is "good" (OR EVEN WHAT "GOOD" MEANS), i'm not showing curiosity towards how these "good" things make me feel or why, i'm not showing curiosity towards how these things make OTHERS feel or why... hell, i'm not even showing curiosity towards understanding! do i want to understand? or do i just want to be "good" because i think being "good" means i won't get hurt/i'll get rewarded?

this is something i have been wrangling with in relation to my OCD. i HAVE, for most of my life, operated under the idea that if i am "good", then i will be rewarded and i won't be hurt. if i am "good", then i will be able to live in peace.

but sometimes we get hurt even when we are "good". there are a lot of complicated reasons for this. the idea of "if i am 'good' then i will be rewarded and won't be hurt" actually externalizes a persons locus of control.
if you do your best to be good and you still get hurt, you can start to feel like "maybe i did something bad actually..."

if you don't stabilize why you want to care about others and yourself on a reason that is secure and grounded and personalized to YOU specifically, then you're likely to flop around in confusion, not understanding why you can't seem to please everyone. or, you might take it for granted that sometimes you just deserve to be hurt. or you might live a life where you try to seek relief constantly because you want stability but can't seem to find it.

at least, that's how it was for me

and boy howdy does capitalism exploit this

science can be uncomfortable
hearing about the changes in the world that feel out of our control because the people generating the pollution have consolidated power in such a way that it feels like we can't do anything about it soon enough... that's hard
it's rough

it makes sense to me that someone might go "but i was told god gave us earth as a resource and god cares about us, so why would god let us slowly kill ourselves? this science... i don't trust it."

it makes sense to me that it's easier to cling to a nice and unnuanced idea, that it can give you a level of security that seems way more beneficial

but that's just it
it seems beneficial
but it's just having wool pulled over one's eyes

let's rewind a little.
this person expressed that they liked capitalism because capitalism allows for people to make businesses and be successful

capitalism is not the only system that would allow for businesses, nor is it the only system that allows for "success"

what is "success" really? what did this person mean by "successful"?
is "success" judged via money? if so, i have a sneaking suspicion that capitalism has influenced their definition of success.

if this is the case, this person has put their trust into capitalism, and science, not catering to capitalism, has become distrusted

let's look at "god gave us earth as a resource"

as mentioned earlier, even if god gave earth to us as a resource, it feels cruel to treat said resource so poorly. it feels sad to me to imagine being given a gift, presumably with care, and running that gift into the ground

they expressed something like how humans have been around for many many years and nothing like climate change happened, but seemed to not realize that the industrial revolution (which allowed for us to cultivate the earth in much larger-scale ways and faster) was really quite recent in human history.

they seemed unaware that capitalism benefits under the concept that nature is just a resource we can plunder, as opposed to, say, part of us

we are part of this world! we are not separate from it! the world's wellbeing is tied to our wellbeing because we LIVE ON IT.
i think about cancer, and how unregulated cell growth can be extremely detrimental. capitalism really wants to be unregulated greed and have profits grow forever, and acts like they can just keep going and going as if our resources won't one day end or our money is infinite

capitalism is NOT a system that is compatible with SUSTAINABILITY.

capitalism actively uses concepts of scarcity (supply and demand) to manipulate us into buying things! if something seems scarce, we often times will be willing to pay more for it due to fear of missing out. and this is ESPECIALLY TRUE for people with OCD who struggle with doubt and feel the need to relieve it

all of these issues are connected! there's a reason that big companies prefer to rely on consistent algorithms and trying to push people into following those algorithms: it's easier to make money this way.
it's easier for capitalism to truncate nuance, to erase and divide aspects of life it doesn't care about, to get money

for example, companies hiding information about climate change and actively working to obfuscate it because if they acknowledged it, they'd have to change the way they work and make less money, or even become obsolete.

there's also how tobacco companies banded together to try to fight against tobacco losing ground amongst consumers due to all the health risks

if objectivity is the sole goal of everything, then companies hide objective research and induce doubt into objectivity to stall, trying to reframe what objectivity is.

so what's the solution here?
well, to me, actually caring about feelings is a big part. actually regarding the intent of others as meaningful. the whole "Facts don't care about your feelings" shit is fucking senseless

i've seen it used by right wingers and left wingers alike, and it's just fucking... detrimental. it doesn't go anywhere cuz people can wear the veneer of authority and show up with facts that aren't facts at all, or bend facts or whatever else and then go "facts don't care about your feelings"

here's the thing: i think feelings should actually be considered when dealing with facts. feelings are part of why people do what they do. feelings are why capitalists do shit (if having money didn't make them feel good, i genuinely have no idea why they'd care to make money. money, in US society at least, gives a lot of benefits that allow one to feel secure and comfortable in aspects like housing and food. there is an emotional benefit to having a lot of money even if it's not the only thing needed to be happy), feelings are why anyone does fucking anything.

a fact that is untouched by a feeling might as well be a god damn fact in a contextless vacuum.

this isn't to say that we should bend facts to feelings! but i am saying that trying to work with facts as pure objectivity and feelings not mattering is doomed to fail because out feelings are in everything we say, do, read, whatever

to take it back to the post stating thanksgiving = supporting genocide, and the person with anorexia and OCD... the original person could have expressed themselves from their own feelings? what thanksgiving made them feel and why? as opposed to making a judgment call outwards

i GET that being objective and forceful about one's feelings and opinions gets more results, but it's... it's the same fucking principle as "doing a compulsion for relief strengthens the obsession."

if you act like being objective is the only way you'll be heard, that IS GOING TO BE TRUE. you're reinforcing this thing that hurts you! instead of sharing thoughts and caring about your own feelings and the feelings of others, you're reinforcing that it doesn't matter, you're playing into the system that reinforces feelings not mattering!!!

it's... preferring to destroy something as opposed to actually improving understanding and care so that it doesn't happen again

and this comes out in other ways!

i recently heard that there are people who are trying to discourage giving money to cohost to try to pressure cohost into focusing more on the features they actually want?

i'm going to assume there is more nuance here as i haven't seen these posts, but i AM thinking about this because i did something similar wherein i asked others not to support glip when i made my callout about them back in 2014

i did not actually grasp what this meant or why, when i asked for this
i registered this was something that would hurt, i registered support as abstractly related to causing influence, but i hadn't actually considered what it means in a capitalist system to try to make it so that someone does not receive money

my feeling was that i felt unsupported and ridiculed and hurt by how glip had previously acted towards me, and i felt "i don't want them to have support if i don't. i don't understand why they deserve support but i don't, when i was really hurt."

that's the core truth of it really. it feels selfish to state, it feels fragile, but i do think that is the truth of it. all of the words relating to keeping others safe or whatever... they don't actually make sense
if i wanted to keep others safe, i could have focused on marl, glip's abusive ex-husband, and how marl tried to groom me into zoophilia and isolate me and told me not to talk to glip because glip would have gotten upset and divorced marl

but i had been scared to talk about that. and i didn't see marl around very often. but i saw glip a lot, and people specifically would harass me about glip. so i wrote about glip.

as objective as i tried to write, my feelings were still present and running the show.

i am thinking about cohost being developed by... what, 5 people tops? 3 or 4 people?

it makes me feel bothered that money influence is attempted to be used here

if you strangle something dead and it's the wrong target, that just... helps... larger systems in power?

Like, to make up an example, if there's a store that is ethical and run by a small group of people instead of a hugely convenient megacorp, but this small store gets essentially boycotted over some kind of bad take one of the people running it has (and i want to state this is not meant to be remarking on any real situation with real stores, so if there is a resemblance to this example, it is completely by accident), then... the message being sent is "unless you're perfect about this, you will fail", while the megacorp doesn't have any meaningful competition and continues business as usual.

instead of... any sort of... attempt to educate or work with the store? it feels like the extreme low-trust in megacorps and capitalism in general is just immediately overlaid onto smaller groups in ways that don't serve anyone except capitalism.

that's a major POINT of capitalism!!! convincing all of us that we are each competitors with one another only helps capitalism stay because it's way, WAY easier to divide us if we end up going "well, we can leverage power against this smaller target, so we'll just destroy all our attempts to do better than capitalism because we have to do it right the first time immediately."

viewing each other as competitors in the work place or in social groups makes it easier for capitalism to use us. it's like an abusive parent pitting their children against each other. the children work harder for the approval of the parent, when they're both being hurt and neither has to accept it!

low-trust benefits capitalism! if you're seeking relief and you know you can affect a smaller group rather than a larger megacorp, releasing your low-trust anxieties on them does nothing to actually fight capitalism. if you value feeling like you're fighting capitalism over actually making meaningful changes that allow for movement and growth away from capitalist systems... then... personally, i would recommend looking inward and really introspecting. you don't have to judge yourself, but i do think it's beneficial to consider why you care about looking like you oppose capitalism and support "good" things, over actually working with nuance towards those things.

me trying to starve glip of support only made it easier for their manipulative ex marl to control them even more, and reach more people to manipulate

i did not feel like sharing my pain as feelings would work. i felt i needed to place things objectively, talk about my callout as dire and necessary and whatever else, so that people didn't necessarily have to care about my feelings, but would still care about the scary objective whatever i wrote

it took me a long time to even realize i was doing that, because to me it was just "normal"
it was normal to ignore my feelings and have to convince people objectively

but it doesn't really... work for receiving care and understanding, which is what i wanted
it doesn't really help for healthy engagement or positive growth

i've written before about my thoughts in relation to treating art as something to be consumed and in it, i talked about how "the customer is always right" as a mentality is basically something capitalism does to get money, but that consumers end up using this as a way to try to leverage power over others because within capitalism, this can be a way that capitalists (mildly) acknowledge their workers and audiences

but... i don't feel like bringing this language and behavior into social engagement is particularly healthy. it feels like treating capitalism as inevitable, like the language of capitalism is the only one that will be heard

i grasp that it's not really easy to avoid this, and i grasp that i'm not particularly giving Solutions here
i don't really intend to, since i don't know the posts in question nor do i know what lies within the hearts and minds of whoever wrote those posts and also the devs of cohost themselves. i cannot give a solution with certainty

but that's the thing... i don't... feel that i have to give a solution with certainty
i feel that people work best when they care about the subjective nuances of their situations, that when they work together and understand each other on individual bases, they can connect and achieve a lot

and currently, it just feels like "starve cohost of resources" feels like being staunch in ways that cut connection rather than grow it

it feels like trying to use an objective language (the amount of money given) to strongarm 3 -5 people... not about feelings or the actual nuances

if you're writing and acting from a perspective of harming others but not really caring about yourself, it doesn't actually align to positive growth

i can't feel this as ever being true

and i keep thinking over it, thinking over how easy it is to manipulate others if you convince them of something objective they can hold onto

even now, i am thinking of how easy it would be to discredit what i've written just from having a firm objective feeling of "this person does xyz, so anything they say, i shouldn't listen to"
"this person is close to glip, clearly they're brainwashed" as if i didn't spend like... 6 years ardently hating glip and anything around them, as if i didn't spend years of my life actively distrustful there

they don't stop to think "well... whatever happened that caused him to change his mind... maybe there's something there?"

it's easier to feel like i'm just crazy, rather than to look at themselves and go "maybe i've also spent years of my life hating people in ways that are detrimental to myself. maybe i've actually been taking actions that are not... aligned to being "good"..."

and this is part of what frustrates me about OCD and doubt and nuance being truncated by doubt...
"good" and "bad" are very nebulously defined. as are "right" and "wrong". there are contexts wherein these things can be turned on their head.

smiling is "good" and crying is "bad", but what of someone crying from joy, or smiling maliciously?

what of someone crying from joy or smiling maliciously as actors in a play? what of all kinds of specific nuanced iterations that require one to be in the context to understand the context?

i try to avoid using "good" and "bad" when defining myself or my actions because it intrinsically makes me use shortcuts i don't want to use.

when i've done something harmful, i try to mark it like that: harmful. not "bad", but something that has caused harm or made someone feel pain.

this can include accidental pain! this can include me saying something and not realizing it was harmful to say... without making me and my action intrinsically bad for saying it. because i might not have had malicious intent.

i'm trying to actively make more room to consider things with nuance because if i don't, i let OCD run my life and live in extreme fear

and it's hellish
i don't wish it upon anyone.

so, it's frustrating at times to run up against people who feel they know xyz or abc truth, that they feel something is intrinsically good or bad without actually putting thought into why, that they reinforce and bend things for their own gain

like believing that science isn't accurate because it makes them feel bad
but they won't explore why they feel bad
where it's coming from and why

not that i need to convince anyone, i am just trying to write my thoughts out because i have big feelings about these sort of things... but it is still frustrating

i think of myself being stuck in that mindset in the past, and i wish i had gotten out earlier
though i don't feel like anyone could "pull me out", so to speak
i had to recognize that i wanted to get out of it, that it was making me miserable

i suppose i'm writing this in part from thinking about other people who maybe could benefit from reading this even if it takes a while, but also writing it for myself and remembering that it's worthwhile for me to share my feelings even if my OCD tries to convince me that i'm just imperfect, that everything i write is bad and awful and i deserve to get hurt over it and that i WILL be hurt over it and blablabla

i genuinely want things to be better in the world, but also for me

i get the feeling i could have laced some points together more clearly, but i also feel like i just wanted to write something without it having to be perfect, holding a feeling and letting that feeling exist