Something white folks like me from "middle class" backgrounds really need to fucking deal with is that privilege isn't just the advantages that put us a little ahead or give us a little more comfort or space or whatever.
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Something white folks like me from "middle class" backgrounds really need to fucking deal with is that privilege isn't just the advantages that put us a little ahead or give us a little more comfort or space or whatever.
Privilege is also having the real ugliness of the "American way of life" hidden from us.
There is no justice here. Our prisons are full of the suffering underclasses that are impoverished, criminalized, & enslaved. Unhoused people are treated like vermin to exterminate.
@artemis It didn't start in America. It's just that late-stage capitalism there has come to its logical conclusion. As an example from my country, look up the folk song 'Poverty Knock', about working in the mills in the Industrial Revolution, or, further back, the history of the enclosures of common land under the 'Enclosure Acts'.
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If the cost of change now is too high, then I expect to see you crunching the numbers & keeping track of the data to see if the calculus ever changes.
Otherwise, I would have to think you aren't concerned about people's lives in general, just the lives of the people you choose to count.
Surely there is such a thing as too much, right? Too much cruelty, too much exploitation, too much death to justify the continuation of systems of oppression until they can be "gradually reformed"?
That probably seems really crude, to suggest keeping a body count. Maybe you think "it's not as simple as that."
Ok, then how DO you make this decision? What is your cost-benefit analysis that leads you to say "it would be far worse to stop the oppression-machine from functioning. We must gradually make adjustments"?
What concerns are you weighing there, & most importantly, is there anything at all that would ever change your mind? Or is this one of your first principles?
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If your kids sink into the fully-expendable underclass as its boundaries expand, will you be ready to make the world anew then? Are you waiting until you have lost everything first?
It's not accelerationist to tell you to stop dragging your feet because it's time to fucking pick your side already.
@artemis
️NOT picking a side is actually picking a side, too -
That probably seems really crude, to suggest keeping a body count. Maybe you think "it's not as simple as that."
Ok, then how DO you make this decision? What is your cost-benefit analysis that leads you to say "it would be far worse to stop the oppression-machine from functioning. We must gradually make adjustments"?
What concerns are you weighing there, & most importantly, is there anything at all that would ever change your mind? Or is this one of your first principles?
If there isn't anything that would make you change your belief that incremental change is the only moral choice, how did you arrive at that belief? How do you know it's true? How will you know it is still true in the future?
If there *is* something that would change your mind, then do me a favor: pick that thing & stick to it. If that line is ever crossed, your incrementalism must be at an end, because the cost has now exceeded acceptable limits.
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I'm sorry, y'all, I wish this could change with votes & legislation, but until there is a clean slate, all we're doing is trying to tailor the oppression a little more neatly.
It is baked in. You just ignore it because it doesn't align with your image of your comfortable, "civilized", "decent", middle class world. That world doesn't exist, so you can't preserve it. It's a lie. You can't build a better society on a lie.
@artemis I don't claim we have a solution for solving this without a "clean slate", but I also know that a "clean slate" without having built something to replace what's being wiped away will mean death for a huge number of people - disabled, those depending on ongoing medication or otherwise medically vulnerable, etc.
A lot of what looks like "incrementalism" isn't an unwillingness to shed the comfort of privilege but a knowlede that we don't know how to protect a lot of the less-privileged in "revolution".
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If there isn't anything that would make you change your belief that incremental change is the only moral choice, how did you arrive at that belief? How do you know it's true? How will you know it is still true in the future?
If there *is* something that would change your mind, then do me a favor: pick that thing & stick to it. If that line is ever crossed, your incrementalism must be at an end, because the cost has now exceeded acceptable limits.
Whenever someone tells me too many people would get hurt if we tried to make big, immediate change, instead of trying to use the current system to slowly steer things, they list what they think the cost of change will be & who will get hurt.
I never see them weigh that against the other side of this: the people who suffer & die from things as they are.
I just want to put the moral calculus out in the open. If you make this argument, you must have determined what costs are acceptable. Tell us.
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@artemis@dice.camp I don't know how it's used generally, but to me "accelerationism" isn't making changes for the better fast. It's making changes for the worse faster in hopes it makes things better somehow.
@flesh
That would seem to be the clearer definition of it.However, if I say "we should stop trying to liberate ourselves by voting," I will get accused of accelerationism.
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@flesh
That would seem to be the clearer definition of it.However, if I say "we should stop trying to liberate ourselves by voting," I will get accused of accelerationism.
@artemis@dice.camp I understand why some may take that statement without clarification that way, yeah.
Unfortunately, quite a few anarchists end up with a position of "don't vote, shitpost instead", which isn't helpful either. -
Whenever someone tells me too many people would get hurt if we tried to make big, immediate change, instead of trying to use the current system to slowly steer things, they list what they think the cost of change will be & who will get hurt.
I never see them weigh that against the other side of this: the people who suffer & die from things as they are.
I just want to put the moral calculus out in the open. If you make this argument, you must have determined what costs are acceptable. Tell us.
@artemis me telling Lenin "Too many people would get hurt if we tried to make big, immediate change" on his train to Russia during WWI
- Erin
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@artemis I don't claim we have a solution for solving this without a "clean slate", but I also know that a "clean slate" without having built something to replace what's being wiped away will mean death for a huge number of people - disabled, those depending on ongoing medication or otherwise medically vulnerable, etc.
A lot of what looks like "incrementalism" isn't an unwillingness to shed the comfort of privilege but a knowlede that we don't know how to protect a lot of the less-privileged in "revolution".
@dalias
I guess to me, the clean slate isn't separate from building the structures of care because it wouldn't even be possible to get there without them. The revolution can't happen if our people don't have food & shelter & healthcare.These are things that could be solved for a lot more easily if the state didn't come in & stomp people down whenever they do build their own structures of care. They'll fucking arrest people just for handing out free food.
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@dalias
I guess to me, the clean slate isn't separate from building the structures of care because it wouldn't even be possible to get there without them. The revolution can't happen if our people don't have food & shelter & healthcare.These are things that could be solved for a lot more easily if the state didn't come in & stomp people down whenever they do build their own structures of care. They'll fucking arrest people just for handing out free food.
A core component of the "old" system is that it attacks & attempts to destroy all attempts at something new.
And in the meantime, while we avoid distuption, countless people go without food, shelter, medical care, etc.
It's not that people will die for lack of those things. People are dying now for lack of those things. And the number only ticks upwards.
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Every time I start to write like this, I start to worry about somehow "overstating" things or being "alarmist", but fuck no.
I have never been as clear or unequivocal about this as I should be, because the fictionalized "America" in my head still sometimes overwrites the actual United States I see with my eyes, hear reports & witness accounts from, & can look at the data about.
Some voice in my head still tells me it's hyperbolic to speak this way, but that's because I'm fucking propagandized.
@artemis there is a huge amount of liberal, reactionary gaslighting that forces people back to thinking that doing anything to improve society somewhat is a worthless task.
"incremental change" is the cover for that gaslighting.
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At what point is the injustice too much to bear?
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?" Oh if only a single tortured child were enough for us to reject this defunct capitalist nightmare "utopia"!
How many children have to be torn from their parents because of petty crimes, unpaid fines, or simply FALSE ACCUSATIONS before it really disrupts our peace of mind?
How many years of human misery behind bars in torturous conditions are too many?
@artemis one of the mechanisms of colonialism helps settlers to believe that those who are colonised somehow deserve it because "we fought a war and they lost". i don't know how many times i've heard that disgusting talking point.
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Whenever someone tells me too many people would get hurt if we tried to make big, immediate change, instead of trying to use the current system to slowly steer things, they list what they think the cost of change will be & who will get hurt.
I never see them weigh that against the other side of this: the people who suffer & die from things as they are.
I just want to put the moral calculus out in the open. If you make this argument, you must have determined what costs are acceptable. Tell us.
It's possible some of this will become a moot point sooner than we might expect.
Supply chains are breaking down, the federal government is surely fucking bankrupt, & it looks like the "old order" is going to fucking fall apart without that much help from us.
In this situation we will be forced to come up with alternatives. How do you get members of your community life-saving care when you can't easily get their medications? How do you feed your people? How do we meet each other's needs?
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It's possible some of this will become a moot point sooner than we might expect.
Supply chains are breaking down, the federal government is surely fucking bankrupt, & it looks like the "old order" is going to fucking fall apart without that much help from us.
In this situation we will be forced to come up with alternatives. How do you get members of your community life-saving care when you can't easily get their medications? How do you feed your people? How do we meet each other's needs?
There are logistical problems as well as moral ones.
The question is not "do we care?" but "what are we willing to do? What solutions can we imagine? What obstacles will we have to overcome?"
The fucking problem that comes in is that as long as the old State has some power, it is going to intervene to prevent us from caring for each other. The government might end programs that feed people, but it will still try to stop us from feeding each other.
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At what point is the injustice too much to bear?
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?" Oh if only a single tortured child were enough for us to reject this defunct capitalist nightmare "utopia"!
How many children have to be torn from their parents because of petty crimes, unpaid fines, or simply FALSE ACCUSATIONS before it really disrupts our peace of mind?
How many years of human misery behind bars in torturous conditions are too many?
@artemis the part of that story that bothers me is that I want to “stay and give them hell” (as Bob Vylan puts it) for as long as I can. Why would I walk away? That wouldn’t free the child. It’s a short story but it explicitly says those who walk away do so immediately, not after trying and failing to free the child. Why?
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There are logistical problems as well as moral ones.
The question is not "do we care?" but "what are we willing to do? What solutions can we imagine? What obstacles will we have to overcome?"
The fucking problem that comes in is that as long as the old State has some power, it is going to intervene to prevent us from caring for each other. The government might end programs that feed people, but it will still try to stop us from feeding each other.
I'm going pretty hard today, but the reason I am is that this is one of those instances where *I* am definitely one of the people I am speaking to.
I feel like *I* keep getting mixed up & confused on this particular point. I feel like I keep going back to the same ways of looking that erase certain people's lives & suffering so that others will escape. I feel like there is a fantasy about "the way things are" that keeps manifesting in my mind, no matter how many times I try to dispel it.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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This is HARD for those of us who have lived decades, perhaps our whole lives, under the illusion of our good, decent, wholesome, middle class way of life.
Like I said, I know the truth of these things & yet I STILL try to censor myself sometimes. I still worry I exaggerate or overstate.
Why? Because the fiction is so comforting & convincing. Because it feels like the truth couldn't possibly be so horrible. I live here, don't I?
The United States is a monstrous State with a monstrous past.
@artemis I have been lower class, and I have been upper class...and I have been middle class. And I have never in my fucking life been more miserable in the middle class. Because if you're lower and upper, you have a "fuck it! I'll do what I want. It doesn't make a fucking difference" attitude. The middle class is slavery. Have kids, buy a house, get a big truck. Live the American Dream (tm). I'm a single, childless, grumpy gay man. I don't want that shit.
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Whenever we talk about "incremental change" we are calculating how many of which people's lives are an acceptable sacrifice to avoid the risk of society-wide upheaval.
The strange thing is, no matter how many years we continue down that path, we never seem to get any closer to "too many". The count always goes up, but so too does the threshold.
@artemis The costs keep getting more sunk and the baselines keep shifting to meet them!
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How many indigenous communities torn apart, harassed, abused, starved, & stolen from?
How many Black men (& Black folks of all genders & children) shot by cops?
How much is too much? What does it take to count as an oppressive police state? How many lives?
Does it matter the color of their skin or the background of their families? Does it matter how educated they are? Does it matter whether or not they are houseless?
No justice. No peace.
@artemis the purpose of "incremental change" is to keep oppressed people waiting. "we can't do it now", the state and its supporters will say, "we have to fund the military and police first", while vastly increasing the police state and increasing nothing for those waiting for their due resources. this has been part of colonial manipulation from day one. "sure, we'll sign on to your treaties", the colonisers say, but then they immediately dishonour the treaties and establish a pattern of always doing that.
