So I overheard one person I know telling another person I know that "socialism and communism are evil and the church is very clear on that" (referring to the catholic church). And I'm trying to channel my burning frustration about it into asking what people know about communism and how it has interacted with religion more generally, but also catholicism especially, now or historically. I super hard doubt what this person said was even remotely correct, but I could believe that the catholic church takes a wishy washy fence-sitting stance because it tends to on a number of things.

At any rate, it's something I should know better because I do have catholic people in my life and so sometimes there may be a need to talk to them about these things through the framing of religion to get past the "communism is purely atheistic" type thinking.

Answers from your own knowledge or resources that go into it are both welcomed. I don't really know how to approach looking for it on my own in this instance because a lot of western religious material is probably influenced by colonizer thinking, or in the US, influenced by red scare nonsense.

Basically, wanted to know where people are at with mask wearing (as it relates to containing covid and all), I know it's been a while since it started. And I've seen people who say covid can still be threatening, like through long covid and such, even if the initial impact doesn't tend to be as bad. Being in the US, it's especially hard to tell what makes sense because the gov sorta gave up on containment a while back and only ever half-assed pushing mask wearing. And wearing a mask alone was a controversial thing in some places, even in the very beginning. Then there's vaccines, which of course help, but seems to be a thing like the flu where you have to get boosters to be fully covered for variant strains.

So in general, I'm wondering stuff like:

1. Do you still wear a mask or not and why? And do you have distinctions like large crowds or anything like that?

2. How does mask wearing compare by country, from what you know? For example, I'm sure China has a more pro-mask-wearing culture and policy overall, but I'm not clear on where they're at this late into it.

Partly asking cause I want to re-assess my own position on it, see if it makes sense to change it at all by now. I've still been doing it, in part out of inertia, but the US management of it is such a mess, in gov and culture, it's hard to tell when it makes sense to stop vs. just caving to peer pressure of people who were never acting responsibly to begin with.

Disclaimer: This may read bleak, but I'm not in a bleak state of mind. I will post a comment with my thought process behind it.

The Anti-Science Infantilization of the Modern Tech World

You get up and read the news. Halfway across the world are things happening you have no control over and if you put yourself out there and protest it, you get told to stop speaking when a politician is speaking.

You go on a job website and submit an application, but you may not ever receive a rejection and if you do, you will likely receive no information on why your application was rejected and some other person's wasn't. Was it something you did? Was it nothing you did? You don't know.

You go on a dating app and try to match with people. If you're a man, you probably send out a lot of likes or messages that never get a response. Does your profile suck? Are you sending poor messages? You don't know. Maybe they're never getting seen in the first place. If you're a woman, you probably receive more likes and messages than you know what to do with and a lot of them are mean and objectifying. You did nothing to provoke this other than existing as a woman and no matter what you do on there, it keeps happening.

You go to the grocery store to get food to live on, but some product you used has been discontinued again. You have no idea why and have to figure out a replacement. Furthermore, some product whose prices you relied on as stable have gone drastically up. Meanwhile, you're being told the economy is doing well. No one ever consults you on any of these things or tells you why it's really happening. They just say it's inevitable and your lot in life. In fact, they may say it's for your own good.

You go to use your favorite product and it got a major update. A bunch of features you were relying on have changed. They say it's a better product this way and you should get used to it.

You hear on the news that it'll be time to vote again soon. This is the one time, around every four years, that they say your decisions and your opinions matter. And they're telling you that this time, like the last times, it's the most important decision, possibly ever. Where with everything else, you were told to deal with being helpless to the fate of opaque systems you're not allowed to understand or weigh in on, you're now being told it all comes down to you. You drum up some sense of duty in you and you go do it. It's done. You did your part. The results come out and things go back to being as they were before.

You get up and read the news. Halfway across the world are things happening you have no control over and if you put yourself out there and protest it, you get told to stop speaking when a politician is speaking.

You are discouraged from using scientific process and thought to navigate the world. Everywhere you turn, the mechanisms you're up against are hidden from you. Instead, you are told to use willpower, told to use attitude, told to think differently, and eventually the universe will come together for you. Meanwhile, the machine of exploitation turns on scientifically designed wheels. The overseers of colonization, the overseers of the global capitalist empire, use science to exploit and place layers of indirection upon the process so you can't see it.

You look in the mirror. You can only see yourself anymore. They'll give you a mirror so you can focus more on yourself. You see a failure looking back, a helpless abject figure. They tell you to blame yourself. You try to work on yourself to love yourself more and build yourself up, but you keep hitting invisible walls. No matter what you try to do differently, you're flying blind. And that too, they say, is your fault. It always comes back to you and can never be them.

They can take away every limb, deprive every sense you have, and still they will tell you it's your fault. A failure of willpower and attitude.

I feel like I could do a big write up on this - I could if I wanted to.

Which incidentally is the theme here. As a point of focus, there is a song by that name, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUuU99c_9mY

It appears to be parodying the kind of person who has apathy, or even aversion, toward participating in "normal social standards" and insists that they could do it if they wanted to, but don't want to.

What I find interesting about this, as it relates to a forum like here and the stuff we're able to recognize and talk about, is that I suspect there's some connection in that mindset to hyper individualism. Notably, the mindset in question is not "I can't do it," or "the system is stopping me," or "I am revolted by what it wants me to do" on their own.

The mindset appears to be more like: "I kind of want to be normal, but something is in the way; however, because I can't accuse the system of being at fault, it has to be something wrong with me. Therefore, what it comes down to is that I could do it if I wanted to, but I don't want to. I maintain my self-esteem by making it a purposeful choice of mine to 'fail' rather than anything systemic."

Thoughts?

Edit: little tweaks to wording

I'm not sure how else to put it. As an example, someone who cares about issues of LGBTQIA+, but when it comes to issues of capitalism pushing exploitative practices in video games, they are siding against the player and doing the "it's on you how you spend" shtick.

I suppose another way to frame this would be "how do you deal with selective empathy?" Because that seems to be how it in some cases, that the person cares about the thing that personally impacts them, but otherwise, they'll side with the exploiter in a heartbeat.

It disgusts me when I see it in action, so much so I almost wrote this as a rant post in the comradelyrants section instead. But I feel it's a topic that deserves more discussion attention than that.

In general, the mindset that goes something like:

"So this company dropped some spikes on the sidewalk."

"Well I think if somebody stepped on them, that's on them. It's really obvious that they are there and I went out and walked just fine and had a good time, I just walked on the grass to get around the spikes."

The implication: individuals should be expected to change their lives to accommodate the careless, dangerous, or otherwise predatory behavior of others and if they don't, it's their fault.

Like what kind of poor excuse for humanity is this stuff.

If there's already been discussion on this at length that someone knows of, feel free to link me.

I've been thinking this over because it's one of those recurring talking points that comes up. I may have even talked about it here before in passing, but I don't remember for sure.

But I wanted to talk about the core of how BS it is and the main way I see it get used. Which is that of someone saying "my [relative] lived in [socialist state] and fled it", or they will leave out the first part and just say "people lived in [socialist state] and fled it." And then the implication or outright stated, "Why aren't you taking this as proof that communism bad? Clearly communism bad!"

The primary way I've seen people counter this is pointing out that those who were fleeing were sometimes, well... members of the former exploiting class. Which is true.

But I'm not sure the talking point is even worth entertaining to that degree. Because like:

1. As far as I've seen, nobody provides actual hard numbers on people "fleeing communism" relative to other situations where people flee a conflict or just leave a country to go to another one in general. In fact, it's often an anecdotal claim about a single person: "My relative."

2. Is there even such a thing as a major conflict/upheaval in a country at scale where it was possible for people to flee and nobody fled? Like big change can be scary and it's always going to be somewhat disruptive of status quo, even if it's an overall benefit going forward. Not to mention major changing of hands of power usually involves some violence.

So this leads me to: what is supposed to be different about communism that makes people "fleeing it" special? I've yet to see any explanation on that and so it makes me think that may be a point to push back on with people. That rather than even talking about the nature of why, first ask how it is supposed to be a special kind of "fleeing".

And also, when it's purely anecdotal, asking why they are supposed to be taken seriously over the opinions of the millions (or more) of people who make up X socialist state. In that regard, it sounds a lot like the "one of my closest friends is [racial minority] trope" in that they are sort of implying the people are monolithic and one or a few can speak for all of them.

Thoughts?

More specifically, this is about people bothsidesing the ongoing genocide that zionists are committing, but I titled it more generally because this is something that can be difficult to deal with in general.

In the past, I've tried to be diplomatic and meet people where they're at, slowly imparting information where I can and presenting my views where I feel able to. I rarely actually get worked up about these things in person and am generally able to go through it with people patiently, but this is something that is really pushing me to my limits.

I think what is most galling to me about it, that I find as a theme in liberal thinking and struggle to be patient with at times, is the arrogance of it. I put a lot of time into these things, time that they clearly haven't put in, only to have them speak to me about it as if their position is equal and worthy of listening to simply because it is theirs. As if we are exchanging views on our favorite TV show.

I will be plain too, in saying that, quite frankly, it hurts. On top of everything else, it hurts to see someone you love and trust be clinging to talking points that confuse, downplay, or otherwise misunderstand a horrifying ongoing genocide.

These are people who I know mean well because I've known them my whole life and I know what kind of compassion they have, which makes it all the more disturbing to see them speaking in such a way. It illustrates how critical and influential propaganda is. But knowing that doesn't inherently make me more effective at getting people to cross that threshold from "nice" liberal to person who understands the world as more than imperialist talking points.

My instinct is that the first (hero complex) would tend to lead someone to adventurism, but I'm not super clear on what the second (collectivist mindset) looks like in practice. Having grown up in the US, where individualist seems to be pushed to an extreme degree and collectivism equated to being a hivemind, it's a bit difficult sometimes for me to understand what collectivism looks like in practice.

Where it gets especially difficult for me, and why I thought to come ask here where people may be able to help with the distinction, is that I have people-pleasing tendencies to a degree that seems unhealthy; in the sense of not valuing my own needs and boundaries to the extent that it's difficult for me to be properly equipped to help others in the first place. In the vague land of hypotheticals, I get that difference; ok, I make sure I am taken care of to the extent that I can function effectively and then I can help others, right?

But in practice, where does this line make sense for a more collectivist effort, is I think the question I'm trying to get at so that I can point in an effective direction in practice, without either: 1) Slipping toward individualist thinking in order to satisfy criteria of being "less of a people-pleaser" or 2) In the other direction, using collectivist goals as a means to feed existing people-pleasing tendencies (and forgetting to value myself in the process).

As it is, conditions are not always as clean as in the hypothetical. Getting needs met can be multifaceted and take significant time. Could the problem here be that I'm just lacking strong examples to learn from in my life? I don't know.

But I put the question to you. Hope this makes sense.