live in more rural area but desperate to minimize parasitism, i can barely donate to palestinians as much as i'd like cause my dream job has low pay sadly and i'm stealing more than providing by not giving up everything to them

i want to do things to enemies to vent my anger

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[+] [S] -6 points 4 days ago (6 children)

the problem is i loathe the idea of self-love for myself, it's fundamentally dangerous for me given the circumstances but i appreciate your concern

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  • [–] 10 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    Why would self-love be dangerous?

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  • [–] [S] -4 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    it makes me forget my role in harming the global south, and fuels my need to destroy enemies of the movement if that makes sense

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  • [–] 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense to me. I practice loving language with myself on a daily basis and it has not made me any less interested in liberation. And I live in the US. If anything, doing such has helped me feel more emotionally stable on the whole, so that I am able to see things more clearly and be more supportive of others. I have low moments still, but I feel more capable of treating the struggle as a marathon rather than a sprint.

    As for harming the global south, that's more about belief than it is about whether you hate or love yourself. Belief in the extent to which you are directly responsible and can do something about it. The reality is, most of it is abstracted to the extent that blame gets shifted around and hidden. But the primary offenders are the administrators of empire, not working class people who barely know what's going on.

    The primary contradiction is imperialism, not you. Do you see what I'm saying? If you are Donald Trump or something, hating and destroying yourself may do the world a lot of good. But it's clear you aren't. And most people who are part of that class have no interest in turning their resources toward supporting liberation because it means upending their entire life; a life that is very comfortable and powerful relative to the masses, far more than any idea of comfort based on having air conditioning or something. These are people who can buy politicians, orchestrate military action against other countries, destabilize an entire region because they want to make more money and own more of the world. The gap between you and them is so big that it's hard to fathom. The gap between you and the working class of the global south is much, much smaller.

    If you are working on weapons that get used against the global south or something, that's a reason to reconsider what you're doing and find other work. But if you're looking at supply chains or something and going "I'm bad because I use products that are made in part in the global south and the global south is exploited", you basically can't function if you get twisted up in that kind of thinking. Global capitalism is pervasive and near impossible to avoid. And the aim of liberation is not to cleanse yourself of any perceived wrongdoing, but to end exploitation and help the masses thrive. But who are you doing it for? For the love of who? Isn't it hard to have great love for, say, the global south if you refuse to include yourself in that love?

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  • [–] [S] -2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    i mean like it's a form of discipline for myself only, i know love works for others but if i get too accepting of myself then i lose sight of what i must fix on myself if that makes sense

    it's a form of discipline only i use, it's not good for others

    as for great love i identify more with the whole "communism is the hammer which crushes the enemy" thing mao said than castro's idea of great love, i feel the latter can be used once global revolution has occurred but focusing on the danger of the omnipresent enemy is priority imo

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  • [–] 6 points 4 days ago

    I sort of get where you are coming from better now and I am wondering if it's something of a misunderstanding of what love is and can be.

    i mean like it’s a form of discipline for myself only, i know love works for others but if i get too accepting of myself then i lose sight of what i must fix on myself if that makes sense

    I don't see love as validating everything in oneself. If I had desires to be a bourgeoisie exploiter, I wouldn't be like "that's okay, you can have that as a goal, I still love you." I'd be like, where the heck is this coming from, what is causing these desires in me. But I also wouldn't put myself down over it either.

    But even then, it is a thing in literature/advice about intrusive thoughts that fearing them and aggressively pushing them away can do more harm than good. The mind is kinda complicated.

    Anyway, coming back to love, consider that Castro headed up a vanguard that had to use violence to win a revolution and then hold on to that power. I'm sure he wasn't going, "I just love the bourgeoisie and their exploitative behavior so much." Or Mao has that quotation, but he also did very meticulous work investigating the conditions of the peasantry and building ties with them. These individuals, and the revolutions behind them, are multifaceted, is what I'm trying to get at. They contained within them the capacity for great love and great hate, sometimes the one fueling the other; the hatred drawn forth from their love of the people and their hatred of the ones oppressing them.

    So the way I see it, the aim of self love is not the repression of hatred or fault, not the smoothing over of it in a liberal fashion where all desires are equal and all ways of being can be accommodated no matter what they are. The aim is to nurture appreciation, cherishing, and a sense of emotional stability. To be able to feel like a whole being who can work in interdependence with others toward a better world, and yes, that sometimes includes self-crit and self improvement. Ideally, one does not need encouragement on this and has an upbringing where they felt safe and loved, and formed secure attachments with others into adulthood. But not all of us do. Ideally, we have help on this via loving, secure attachments with others if we didn't get it in childhood. But sometimes that's not easy to build.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago

    You deserve to love yourself and to be loved. The economy has nothing to do with that. Please be kind to yourself. I can promise you that if you start there then you will find a good path to walk.

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