https://zirk.us/@ShaulaEvans/115773818039339000
this is what really sets leftists apart from liberals imo.
liberals like to decorate themselves with the nimbus of morality but when it comes to stepping up to fascism and protesting even if it’s not like a fun parade but serious and uncomfortable. Or just if the weather is bad.
Or when it comes to being self critical about your own learned patterns of behavior and thinking… they are nowhere to be seen, not to be relied on and it does real damage, as we can see.
Hey uh show of hands:
How many people have actually worked at something like a homeless shelter, non profit assisting some kind of class or classes of disadvantaged individuals?
How many people here actually just give cash to homeless people when they ask for it, which is the most efficient and effective way to help them?
How many of you have actually given a homeless person a place to stay, or maybe just park their car, whatever, with conditions and time limits of course, but to try and actually give them some kind of stability, at least for a bit?
How many people have organized or joined a local union, tenants union, worked for a tenants rights organization, mutual aid group, etc?
How many of you even help out your neighbors with things from time to time, or even talk to them?
Help drive them to some doctor appointment or grocery trip, do a carpool?
Howabout supporting or organizing some kind of local co-op, that actually gives voting rights as to business decisions, to members, in some capacity?
Those, those are the kinds of things that you would be doing if you actually acted out the virtues of being a leftist.
I’ve unironically met slum lords who’ve done more praxis by at least offering people somewhere to live, little to no questions asked, for an affordable price, than most self-described leftists I encounter.
Please, please don’t ever mistake some kind of pristinely articulated, immaculate worldview, for actually doing anything useful in terms of being the change you want to see in the world.
This is wild to me, bc I’ve never met a leftist who doesn’t do several of the things you listed. Where are you encountering these self-described leftists? How do you know that they aren’t doing praxis?
Mostly Seattle.
How do I know?
They were my friends, and their friends of my friends, untill they started giving me shit for… actually doing something like half the things I listed out above.
They were more interested in their IG profiles and Twitter reputations, whole lot of rainbow flavored idpol.
I was being ‘unrealistic’ and ‘ridiculous’ by actually doing things. I’d ask what they were doing, and well that question was rude, actually.
See, anybody can call themselves a leftist, make all the mouth noises, use it as a way to be smug and superior, and just… not actually be one.
I’m not saying ‘all leftists are fake untill they personally prove otherwise to me.’
That indeed would be a rather silly standard.
Thats why I asked … questions, and didn’t make much of a statement beyond the actual point of this original post; your values are exemplified bynwhat you do, talk is cheap.
Maybe I’ve just had a bad run of fake friends comapred to most?
My personal experience isn’t exactly a statistically valid unbiased survey, but it is my experience.
Anecdotally but you’re not wrong. Everyone talks a talk not many do. That’s irrespective of political beliefs.
Yep, completely correct.
Another way you could phrase the same idea is:
There does not exist a philosophy or worldview that one can simply profess to adhere to, which makes one de facto immune to being a hypocrite.
Or maybe, more succinctly:
You are not immune to performative virtue signalling.
As someone who has reached various stages of self-congruence in their life (most recently this month) more people would benefit from understanding that deep down we are all hypocrits in some way or another. That does not make us bad people, but ignoring it prevents us from growing.
Thats a very good way of looking at it.
‘You’ are not a model kit, that is just, fully assembled at some point, with the right modules, no room left for improvement.
‘You’ are a process, a river that flows, a path that is walked.