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Thanks for your response and closing remark.
-What do you mean by "the human condition"? Because in this context, it's sounding to me like a belief about humanity that is steeped in western nihilism and a static, cynical view about human behavior.
What I mean by the human condition is, the innate psychological weaknesses that humans suffer under systems and beneath myriad layers of structures (political, familial, social, existential), such that it is a rarity when one becomes free or strong-willed enough to sacrifice what meager conveniences they've been awarded (by unintended circumstance in most cases) by the dominant system in order to risk them for something that is so uncertain (e.g., political shift or trusting in strangers to uphold their end of the bargain), of which has largely been demonstrated as untrue by the world around them. In other words, for people to uphold what is most difficult while living in contradiction. This may rest in western nihilism, though western nihilism has made a tangible influence upon broad society, whether anyone wishes it or not. I don't know. All I know is what I feel and observe.
-This is individualism taken to its conclusion.
Yes, it is. I don't disagree. The point of me summarizing it as such is that because it is the floor, I find, unfortunately, that most people in modern society reside here. It's simply a disheartening reality that I have trouble with.
-The USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, the DPRK, just to name some of the more successful and better known efforts.
In a way, I suppose. They're still subjected to the influence and impact of capitalism, and it is inescapable for each one. They've reduced it, perhaps changed the internal application of it, but it is impossible for them to operate without it. The deficiencies and difficulties Cuba experiences is explicitly because of it, despite their ideological split from it.
-That may play a part, but I don't think it's just that. I think it's that coupled with lingering beliefs from the western imperialist system, which will follow you if you don't challenge and dismantle them, even if your allegiance changes on paper.
Perhaps, though I don't really feel or think I have lingering beliefs from western imperialism. It seems to me that my positions are so anti- that it's almost become an obstacle; that by my virtual extrication from such beliefs that I've gone full circle in some bizarre sense. As if I have lost all of my convictions because I've held the wheel to the left for too long, and I'm constantly curbed by a sense of dialectical realism. Maybe I'm just full of shit, I don't know.
In any case, thanks for your analysis.
I appreciate your response. In my depression and miserable pessimism I know that you're right on a theoretical level, in that the means of capitalist destruction are sown within itself, yet it's not easy to experience that comfort when you watch swaths of people get swept away in it's slow dissolution as a byproduct. Yet that is the way it is.
I take breaks from time to time, though I admit that I always end up feeling guilty about it. As if all other comrades are carrying my weight, my solidarity, on their shoulders. It makes me feel like a liberal in a sense, as if I'm pretending these things aren't happening, and if when my very eyes aren't viewing the atrocities that happen in my own world and aren't actively recognizing them, it's as if I'm suppressing the awareness of their plight.
That probably is a far too intricate and self-important of a position, but it's how I've always felt about it, because I've thought that if we don't all feel this way, then solidarity only weakens. Maybe some become numb to it, but then that just makes one try to use empathy and solidarity strategically--as if to balance one's level of pain in order to appropriately use it and not become numb to it all. But that feels morally abusive on some level, yet it seems like something that emerges after a point.
I do feel better just writing it out, though.