GenZedong

4501 readers

12 users here now

This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.

This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.

We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.

Rules:

No bigotry, anti-communism, pro-imperialism or ultra-leftism (anti-AES)
We support indigenous liberation as the primary contradiction in settler colonies like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel
If you post an archived link (excluding archive.org), include the URL of the original article as well
Unless it's an obvious shitpost, include relevant sources
For articles behind paywalls, try to include the text in the post
Mark all posts containing NSFW images as NSFW (including things like Nazi imagery)

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

A good but underrated quote from United Statesian writer Mark Twain (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

" When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte--And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.

People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so. It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't altered; this is the first time it has been in focus."

-In a letter to William Dean Howells

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

but I think it's important to think about the next time you see a liberal simp over South korea despite probably knowing similar things about the state that you do.

It really comes down to people's perceptions of systems in some cases. SK is a good example, right? They are a "liberal democracy" and if you've not lost faith in liberal democracy yet, then, you'll likely look at the history of South Korea and think "This was necessary to stop Communism from taking over all of Korea, and eventually build liberal democracy". You'll look at current history, and the attempt at martial law, and the eventual impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol as evidence that those hard times in SK's past really did ensure democracy won in the end. It's a similar line of thinking, although not one rooted in materialism, as Parenti's ideas about "Capitalist Encirclement". If we were to "secularize" his thinking, it would be, "States of all stripes will engage in authoritative measures to preserve and maintain the ideological core of the state".

Liberals can accept historical examples of "authoritarianism" if A) they believe those measures were preserving or installing "Liberal Democracy" and B) If that history created a state they recognize as a "Liberal Democracy". In the same way that "communists" (to paint with a broad brush) will accept historical examples of "authoritarianism" as preserving or installing "socialism". Obviously, the big difference here is how one arrives at either conclusion.

Basically, what Mark Twain is describing is the process of "Deprogramming", or the process of a true shift in his underlying world view, which he views and interprets reality through. This process isn't the culmination of "knowing a bunch of facts about history" as you point out. It is the ability to look at history, from a different perspective, from which new questions and understandings are drawn into "focus".

I believe that, for most people, they do not have a concrete "world view", or they do not understand this concept of "world view" and are not cognitive of its impacts on how they interoperate the world. Getting at the heart of "why" they believe what they believe, instead of getting mired in the mud of debunking or fact checking what they believe, is probably a better path to walk in these situations. The goal should be to draw the topic into focus, or to help them see it through a new lens.

And I say all this knowing that I'm not good at it, and if anything this is just a good reminder to myself (and others) to not get stuck in the mud.