Post #3310060

2026-06-13 15:50 UTC

Okay I wasn’t going to be too serious but this is a serious reply so I’ll treat it with the same energy. I understand and appreciate that reading a text is important to getting the whole picture. I also understand and appreciate that one should read a variety of texts from different eras and authors. I just think we gotta meet people where they are, ya know? I could be misunderstanding but it feels like the path suggested in the meme and this comment is to give up and write people off. Maybe it’s a vent, and I’m not trying to say I don’t think it’s okay to vent via memes and that I’ve never thought “you need to read some fucking theory” about anyone. Nor do I think it’s wrong to not bother arguing with someone who has an absolute surface level/spoon-fed propaganda level of understanding. However, if the people honestly and truly believe that people who have not read theory should be written off as hopeless, I do think that’s flawed and short sighted. I don’t know you or the OP so the rest of this comment isn’t directed at you all specifically. I have a huge problem with the idea of the lumpenproletariat and specifically when it is applied with ablest implications. There are absolutely people who have no interest in class consciousness and are happy to uphold capitalism for whatever scraps they get. Those people suck. Theory (probably) isn’t going to fix them, as they are addicted to the boot. There are people who may appear to be in that camp but really they just haven’t had any reason to question the status quo and what they have have been told about how the world works. For some people, that questioning comes from a liberal arts education. I get this is a sloppy turn of phrase and this type of education is maybe more rare now but let’s just picture someone who reads theory and philosophy as part of their education or who has family who values and reads/discusses these things. For others it could be life experiences. A lot of this is personal bias from me for sure, but I can’t discount my experience entirely. Both my partner and I come from families with low education and poverty, in “unskilled” trades, although both my parents did go to university and it was the expectation for me as well (about 50% of aunts/uncles/cousins went). I’m not nearly as well read as I would want to be but I don’t think my partner has read any at all? But he’s got class consciousness and it was developed by talking to people, his own life experiences etc. I was radicalized more than a decade before I met him lol. We were in high school (in canada) during 9/11 and every thing that it triggered, including unpopular wars, increased surveillance, the patriot act etc. I lived in a big city and he was rural. I saw the G20 meeting in Montreal and the police sending in undercover agents to cause trouble as something that directly impacted me and my freedoms but people in his part of the province saw it as city people problems. I never liked the cops but this cemented that they were the enemy. I started learning about leftism and reading theory at that time but really lacked the real world experience to understand it as well as I do now. Besides documenting/participating in the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010 and doing FNB earlier that that, I don’t think I really re-engaged with theory until George Floyd/Idle no More when I wanted a better understand of race/colonial issues. I am also disabled. Between special education as child (although I was “gifted”) and in/outpatient mental health programs I have had the opportunity to know and become friends with people who learn and process information much differently than I do, as well as differently than what is considered “normal”. Reading some of the foundational texts is just not accessible to a lot of people who fall into that category, but they could be with appropriate accommodations. Most people aren’t going to come out and say “I’d like to know more but I struggle to understand and engage with these texts”, at least partially because they are used to being treated as “stupid” and incapable. It’s just not worth it and I understand this deeply. Additionally, I’ve worked some of the shittiest and most exploited jobs that people who are in this country with legal status find themselves doing and have experienced food and housing insecurity. Being too tired or hungry or scared about my future to be able to read theory is something I have experienced first hand, so I have a lot of understanding and patience with this situation. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to escape that and perhaps even luckier that my conclusion is that meritocracy is bullshit rather than thinking I earned it (and thus becoming a bootlicker). This is over sharing and pretty off topic but I’ve had to acknowledge and undo a lot of abelism that I didn’t even know I had until recently and it’s been a really wild ride. Because of my experience in growing up poor and having most of my friends having learning or intellectual disabilities it was always been really important to me to value all people inherently and not think of people that couldn’t engage on my level as being “less than”. But my recent personal experiences have made me realize I was writing them off even if I didn’t think they were worthless as I wasn’t even trying to engage with them where they were at/or according to what is most accessable to them. This topic is why I really appreciate groups like the Vegan Theory Club. My abilities have been in the shitter recently but reading groups, audio books, structured (and async) discussion really help me engage when I can. I’ve learned about and read books I would have never heard of otherwise. It’s not a one size fits all solution, and it requires a lot of labour to facilitate but it feels like a part of the solution. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since I did FNB (😭) but that was a good approach too. Showing people they are cared about, demonstrating how wasteful capitalism is, and being available to discuss with people if they wanted to chat but not proselytizing was super successful. People could get healthy and delicious meals with no strings attached and no hoops to jump though and we served everyone - including the yuppies out walking their dogs lol. I’ve experienced astonishing mutual aid frameworks in some of these poor/rural/disabled/uneducated communities too. Often, a community’s survival depends on them and they understand that, but they might not see the parallels between that and leftist thought. This is mostly old lady yelling at cloud but it felt good to get out lol

Replies (3)

@TiredTiger@lemmy.ml 2026-06-13 17:07

I think you’ve hit the crux of the issue here - memes are never going to reach people the way IRL organizing can. It’s not that we’re writing off people who can’t engage with theory on their own, it’s that we have to go meet them where they are. In the context of this specific meme, I don’t think we’re discussing the disaffected members of the working class, but those who describe themselves as liberals - those who fetishize law, read The New York Times unironically, and worship Obama. Those liberals tend to be more educated and are definitely capable of engaging with theory; they choose not to because it threatens their entire conception of the world and their place in it. They present themselves as caring about social issues less out of a concern for their fellow human beings and more out of a self-concept that they are “good people” - they are idealistic through and through, though they may or may not be religious. Their ego is caught up in being an “upstanding citizen” or having some sort of moral fortitude that may belie what they actually believe about the people around them. This is why when they are pushed about the contradiction (the “scratched liberal”), they will lash out and reveal the true face underneath - one of self-interest and a desire to be better than other people, which will dovetail quite easily with fascism the moment fascism is seen to be socially acceptable. Some smaller number who self-describe as liberal may just need a push in the right direction and are merely suffering from the miseducation prevalent in the west, but these are generally not the ones cheering for the US Democratic Party or arguing about the “rule of law” online.

Open ##3310619
@calmblue75@lemmy.ml 2026-06-13 17:30

sees wall of text in mobile 😭

Open ##3310790
@restless@hexbear.net 2026-06-13 21:12

The problem in my experience has been that the potential for writing someone off is a two way street. I’ve had family and friends who I’ve spent legitimately dozens of hours with in what I thought were really good chats, deep conversations, where I wouldn’t be afraid to get into the weeds and lay things out from a class consciousness or even just an “everyone deserves to live/have access to healthcare/etc” framing, and realize far too late into my interactions that very little to none of what I’ve been saying has stuck. That people enjoy talking at me but not with me. My general approach to everything in life is that I’m open to being wrong on any given subject, but that a given refutation has to be proportional to my understanding; it has to actually poke a hole in the underlying reasoning. There’s a certain pain that comes from discussing a matter such as the death penalty issue with someone, going point by point and getting them on board over the course of an hour long discussion, and then to get the first point thrown in your face again like it’s a gotcha that wasn’t touched on earlier. I came to realize in this specific example that the person I was talking to, and thought I was engaging with, just held different axiomatic beliefs than I do, and regardless of how well I was able to get my point across and have it resonate that it would inevitably bounce off of a core belief they considered integral to their identity. And so where do I go from there? Try to discuss first principles, and bring up the most maligned academic subject in the United States: philosophy? I honestly think it’s a good place to start but it has to cut through so much bullshit and cultural baggage that has been assigned to it. To me, at its core, philosophy as a topic is fundamentally about the “critical thinking” so many seem to mourn the loss of in our education, without understanding why or what that actually means. The process of knowing what “an argument” is and what makes it valid—what makes it sound—is I think a really important part of engaging in a back and forth between others. To know the animatic beliefs one holds, and to know whether or not two beliefs contradict those axioms to push one towards modifying or outright abandoning one that doesn’t fit to come away with more consistent views in the process. At this stage my comments here are also probably on the level of “old lady yells at clouds” just the same, but yeah I think one shouldn’t write people off out of hand, but one should also know where their time is best spent. Past a point of being patient and understanding with someone close who refuses to understand, I have to realize if my goal is to further class consciousness that I need to have those conversations with people who will be more receptive. My interactions with a person are at best a fraction of their day; they have their own lives they live, their own groups of people they interact with, and their own media they consume. Unless you can essentially shatter someone’s worldview then they will (largely) patch over holes in it with whatever is convenient. Given how hard the various systems push for reactionary sentiment in the general populace, that’s largely going to be an uphill battle. It’s still worth doing, mind you, but part of the tactics here include the fact that it’s unfortunately impossible to get everyone on board. I’m not that big of a fan of the term lumpenprole myself but the fact stands that our time is ultimately a finite resource. If someone finds me fun to talk to because of my wacky and queer (but ultimately, to their mind and because of who I am, fundamentally unserious) ideas, then I’m wasting my time.

Open ##3312356