i know things are super tough for you right now comrade, but i just want you to know that your situation and what you’ve done is incredibly inspiring. everyone here is proud of you and rooting for you. continue to keep us updated.

the authoritarian stuff is meaningless, and the DPRK documentary you watched is great and totally worth sharing. the issues i’ve heard about as it relates to PSL is about an ossified leadership and leadership structure. this is i think a large part of the reason why there have been so many sex abuse scandals: sex pests get into the org, commit sexual assault, and then are not removed but protected by various levels of leadership. this obviously implies some deep theoretical problems as well, which all current western ML orgs have anyhow.

i found this link that compiled every major criticism or complaint about PSL. i haven’t looked through them all (there are a lot), but those that i looked at (i mostly focused on the sexual assault coverup allegations) looked legitimate. there’s also some nonlegitimate critiques in there from what i recall, so take everything with a grain of salt. but, it does seem like western ML groups have an issue with not only patriarchal tendencies but underlying marxist patriarchal theory.

LLMs do not think, they are not human, and they do not have brains. it is using an algorithm to analyze what you input and (stupidly) guess what the desired output is. imo just about any other method is better than AI for deep, theoretical learning

i think the extreme low level of political education/development in the west means two things:

1. most existing large-scale parties are necessarily shit, because no one is developed enough to know how to correctly run a party in the first place, let alone know the correct line on any or most issues. leadership is ossified and crap usually

2. if the primary contradiction is low development/education, educating ourselves (individually or in groups when possible) is the most important thing we can do right now. if being an autodidact isn’t possible for any reason, then making that possible is the most important thing instead

scientific socialism will take serious, rigorous study in order to become fully developed cadre. and, ultimately i don’t think any existing party in the west can provide that serious rigorous study, we simply have to do it ourselves. one thing you could consider is reaching out to people you think are as developed as you in the org and starting a private study group yourself.

i’m sorry you feel that way, comrade. i think given your particular needs and also general social needs that everyone has, it makes absolute sense for you to feel that way about it. consequently i don’t think you should beat yourself up about it: you didn’t make a mistake by prioritizing your own needs, because i’m sure you had no choice in the matter anyways. whenever shit hits the fan like that, consequences like this can be tough but also let you know who really deserves to be in your support/social system, because you deserve it. i hope you can grieve your loss, move on, and then find something that fills that void.

ultimately no digital tools can replace good old OPSEC

as someone with years of experience both having and finally overcoming social anxiety and depression, i have a few things to say

i wouldn’t get caught up on labels and diagnoses too much. psychiatry can sometimes pathologize normal, rational human behavior. in my experience it also made it seem like i would be stuck with my diagnoses for life, which i don’t think is necessarily the case, either.

it feels like conscious brain knows what I should be doing as a communist, but my subconscious instinct over protects me and prevents me from actually being able to be social and organize and such.

this is exactly, exactly what i felt, and i felt a lot of shame as a result of my values not being in alignment with my actions. but, a central aspect of marxism is that humans (and really all living beings) are inherently rational, that we react rationally to our material conditions in accordance with our material interests. i was forced to investigate my own history and why i had learned to be so scared of other people, and why i had learned to think so little of myself, so that i could then change myself in the present. this was a process that took several years and was very challenging, but was absolutely worth it because i feel like it tackled the underlying contradiction instead of the surface level symptoms.

and then on top of that, i’ve found that even still (like anything else) thinking positively and socially interacting with other people is a skill that can be learned. i have a much easier time learning it after resolving those issues from my past, but resolving those issues didn’t magically give me those skills either. taking things one step at a time, setting very small and achievable goals for myself has been what i’m working on: like saying hello or making eye contact with at least one stranger in a day, being around strangers a little more often, trying my best to reframe negative thoughts, etc

finally, i just want to say that with all the horrible things going on in the world and all the emphasis put on organization (rightly so), it can be so easy to think that because of your internal problems that you’re not a good enough communist, or that you’re not a communist in practice. but i think there are so many of us that are bogged down by mental health struggles such that sometimes being the best communist you can be literally entails tackling your mental health struggles head on. self care is valuable reproductive labor. this is how i’ve reframed the guilt i used to feel for being forced to work on myself for a time

hope you feel better soon, comrade.

can you explain what you mean by “nobody actually knows how to to do socialism”? what about china, cuba, vietnam, DPRK, etc

and, what exactly does that have to do with our collective consciousness/subconsciousness under capitalism?

i’ve grown to think that while there is such a thing as normal, everyone has some aspect of abnormality to them. additionally, i think every difference from normality has some value in its distinction from normality, even if it’s only to better understand what is truly universal to the human experience.

obviously that’s not to say the difference cannot also be challenging or disabling in our present society. but that has helped me a lot coming to term with my differences, big and small, is finding whatever value i can in them.

hope you feel better soon, comrade.

congrats! sounds horrible, hope you find something better soon

really sorry you’re feeling that way, comrade. depression is tough. hope you feel better soon.

it’s true that because he hasn’t put things into practice his viewpoint is limited, but i think it’s fundamentally more than that, too. he’s clearly gifted with a prodigious memory, and he reads things, but i don’t think that’s the same thing as rigorously studying something such that you have a thorough understanding of what it is and therefore how to change it. if he did, i don’t think he would be employing the strategy and tactics that he is now, quite frankly. and, whenever i’ve seen him explain things like capitalism he seems to flounder, despite how well-read he is. of course i very much doubt his philosophical development is anywhere close to sufficient either. another red flag for me is that he refuses to politically label himself, as if labels have no meaning or value.

the very first step for i think everyone of our political leanings is to seriously, meaningfully educate and develop themselves, and others, in groups and individually. i get the sense that his development is hollow, and this and his material interest are the main reasons why he would choose such a fundamentally flawed educational strategy i.e. streaming. worse yet, it gives the impression to both himself and his viewers that his work is more education than it is entertainment. i think that’s the primary reason why it leaves his audience unprepared, is because not only is it interpreted as educational when it’s primarily not, but it gives the false impression of knowledge and understanding to the viewer.

yeah that’s true he does, i guess she must have dual citizenship that i forgot about too, making her even less russian haha.

the only other russian representation in the show is a woman who is his longstanding “deep friends with benefits,” but she’s played off as being more worldly and therefore less russian: she speaks english fluently, she travels to see him in various US/canadian cities, etc etc. otherwise yes, all of the other russians in the show are definitely cartoonishly evil lol

i think there’s some truth to what you said, but i think his primary issue is that he’s simply not educated enough. being scientific socialists takes a scientific rigor that he simply does not possess, and since he’s constantly reacting to liberal content like you mentioned, i don’t think it’s possible for him to ever become developed enough on his current trajectory. it’s a shame, since his audience is so large and he could be an important educational force, but watching liberal reactions from a very left liberal for hours a day is anything but educational

i watched it and had pretty mixed feelings about it all around. as far as the russophobia is concerned though, i actually thought everything to do with ilya’s (the russian main character) family had much worse implications than anything else. the issues for queer people in russia are at least believable, but the ancillary stuff was not: ilya’s father was both an important figure in the government, and also suffering from dementia at the same time, for multiple years (i mean, really???). and ilya’s brother was a coked up exploitative asshole trying to milk ilya for everything that he was worth. that stuff really stuck out to me as russophobic, because what kind of government except a totally inept and fake one would keep on a prominent figure with dementia? this despite all the issues in the past with western gov leaders having dementia (biden, reagan, possibly even bush, etc).

empathy is my middle name. just remember that the human mind is always rational one way or another, or at/according to one time or another. if you didn’t work on your large workload today, i’m sure there was a rational reason for it, if i had to guess stress relief. you don’t need to blame yourself for acting rationally.

really do hope you feel better.

sorry to hear that, comrade. hope you’re doing ok

highly recommend babel!

self and class consciousness is tough man, especially if you’ve lived that way your whole life, you learned to live like that from a very young age, and furthermore if you have childhood or other trauma that incentivizes you to keep yourself from becoming conscious in order to avoid processing painful memories without a sufficient framework (or social support) to do so. unless you have a material interest, a material need to become conscious, most people don’t, and that’s okay. that doesn’t make them any less rational

on the other hand, jealousy and lack of contentedness seem like internal contradictions for you to work on personally, regardless of how you relate to or interpret others. in my opinion jealousy is a cognitive error taught to us by liberalism, and the correct response is actually something more like inspiration or wonder. in my own personal experience, my feelings of jealousy were derived from insecurity (material, leading to psychological) that i experienced as a young child, and resolving those feelings has made it much easier to not feel jealous of others.

if you feel that the way you interact with things (from what you said, primarily how you consume media) is the only possible way for you, but you don’t feel content about it, i would explore why it is that you feel that way. if you feel that the way you interact with things is truly inferior than the approach of others for any reason, and yet you still feel compelled to interact with things in the way that you do, i would investigate why. and if you’re uncertain which of those two statements is more correct, i would investigate that as well.

i think it’s not enough to just point out errors of liberalism in the fashion of mao and expect them to be magically corrected. if we fully accept the rationality of every human (on an individual and class level), then there are always specific material reasons why we learned to think incorrectly, as it were. in the same way that diamat gives us the tools to investigate the history of society in terms of its internal contradictions, dialectical materialism also gives us the tools to investigate - and resolve - our own internal contradictions, resulting in more correct and less liberal cognition.

sorry for the text dump hahaha. it’s just something i happen to have been thinking a lot about lately.