LaBellaLotta

I went to the Zoo recently and I couldn’t believe how many people immediately whip out their phones to film the animals in the exhibit.

Like, if looking at images of animals on your phone was anywhere near as enjoyable as seeing them in person, why even pay to come to the fucking zoo!?

The animal you are looking at is already existing within a dead facsimile of its actual environment! It’s already like looking at an image!

Do people really go back and look at these images and videos and feel the same feeling as when they’re looking a marmoset of exotic bird right in the eyes a few feet away from them?

It feels like we’ve all become trained to whip out our phones and start filming the moment anything interesting starts happening. The way everyone prefers this mediated experience to just being in reality experiencing art or living things or a concert or whatever just makes me feel kind of bleak. To me this is a great example of what is meant when we talk about Alienation.

Anyone else agree or am I being a grumpy geriatric shaking my fist at the kids on my lawn?

Wanted to take a second to make some positive cases for why we believe in Scientific Socialism/Anarchism. We spend a lot of time belittling historically illiterate smug lords (which is awesome) but I think it’s important to take a second to appreciate why these ideas resonate with us so much and why we find these ideas so important that they are worth fighting for online and IRL. I’ll go first;

Demystification: that’s a big thing for me. The imperial core is a place that is full of institutions that, can technically be understood, and yet do not make a whole lot of sense in their function. Health insurance companies are a great example of this. The entire process of acquiring and using insurance in the U.S. is a Kafka-esque beauracratic nightmare. And at every step there are individuals who are happy to help you understand the process, and yet even once you gain the understanding they impart, it all still feels wildly inefficient and punitive. Even to a very young person, it doesn’t make sense. It is Only beneficial In comparison to the monstrous social violence of medically induced poverty. Meaning it only makes sense when you accept that violence as a necessary societal inevitably.

So growing up in the U.S. you are faced all the time with complex and baroque financial institutions and practices that society insists you understand even if doubt persists that what you are understanding doesn’t really make sense. Ultimately when this practice confers practical economic benefit the cognitive dissonance is assuaged and is even completely resolved in some individuals. Credit cards and credit scores are another great example of this.

Understanding Mystification as a Marxist term finally gave me the vocabulary to understand this phenomenon and hence be less bothered by trying to make sense of things that I understand and yet don’t make any sense.

Another big thing: The labor theory of value; perhaps my understanding is too cursory but when I tried reading Capital this part really stuck with me because it is profound even though it seemed rather obvious to me from my lived experience.

Without trying to get out of my depth In philosophical jargon, my understanding of the LTV is that the value of currency is derived from the surplus value generated by the application of labor to raw materials. I know the states ability to enforce the transaction is also key. I welcome any clarification/insight on LTV.

The point I’m trying to make about LTV and why I find it profound and worth Blooming about is that it means that as workers we generate the force that actually changes the world. That force is labor. It’s not money, It’s not Gold, it’s not big ideas from big job titles. It is the people who turn the earth, teach the young, or just sell their labor hours doing any number of things.

It’s easy to be pessimistic in the face of the incredible accumulated political power the west still holds. Yet we should have hope, because the power that money has is only ever borrowed from labor. Under that framework it becomes a struggle to organize enough unalienated labor hours to put towards building something better.

Our labor hours are the most important building block we have towards revolution. That is the real “capital” that reshapes the world. The struggle is to take as many back from your boss as you can, and if you can, invest those hours into something bigger than yourself.

That’s what gets me blooming. Constructive feedback always welcome (would love more insight on LTV)

What makes you feel hopeful about communism/anarchism?

Truly the most inveterate losers on earth

As the hexbear cadre becomes dug in for the protracted people’s posting war I find myself reflecting on what makes Hexbear a great place. IMO there are a lot of things; our trans comrades (who we love unconditionally), a pig w/ poop on it’s balls, a dope ass bear. But I think it’s you scattered few that really help maintain that special hexbear vibe that we all appreciate.

I, like the majority of users here, would not describe myself as an Anarchist. But an opinion I often see and one I tend to agree with is that we cannot and should not ignore the tactical contributions of past anarchist struggles. Even further, I read a very thought provoking comment somewhere the other day (can’t remember who made it) that as ecological conditions deteriorate to below the level of stability necessary to maintain a state, anarchist theory could become more relevant and important to grapple with. I found that idea to be very thought provoking.

But what I’m really getting at here is that I appreciate the ideological diversity you precious few contribute. Here’s the thing; I think the magic ingredient for any enjoyable social media experience is a certain level of friction. Echo chambers are genuinely boring. Thank you for your contributions here.

Don’t be afraid to generate some friction because the struggle that generates sharpens all of us. My liberal ass is proud to be here in the posting trenches with you folks.

Tell me you don’t know what words mean without telling me you don’t know what words mean lol “small Government communist” read a book you Reddit ass dork

Welcome! Don’t let the ironic detachment fool you, this is one of the kindest and most well moderated places on the internet.

Be open to having your opinions challenged because if you’re from the anglosphere I promise you the propaganda and indoctrination run much deeper than you expect. No one challenging your views is doing so out of some desire to personally attack you. Feel free to report if that’s what it feels like because our mods are A1 best in the fediverse and they will attend to that shit. Most of us are just trying not to feel hopeless and powerless, especially those of us in the west. Sometimes that can manifest as vitriolic rhetoric but our mods are pretty good and catching and stamping that shit out.

We all believe that growth happens through struggle and we’ve all had to struggle a lot with each other and ourselves to arrive at the positions we carry. And do not mistake this for a hive mind because there’s actually a pretty wide range of beliefs here and we’re all the better for it.

And we all recognize that we are all fallible and so it’s ok to be wrong about things. We get stuff wrong all the time here. But often times the difference between correct and incorrect is not so much whether “X thing happened like this” vs “actually X thing happened like this” but “X thing happened like this” vs “I do not have the firsthand knowledge or resources to say how X thing happened or whether it’s happening at all”. This is especially true when it comes to current events. (Uyghur “genocide” being a great example of this)

Just keep an open mind and remember that the atomic unit of propaganda is NOT falsehood, it’s EMPHASIS.

And if that comment about Xinjiang is too spicy for you then DM me so I can set you up w/ my homie Mehmet. He’s no Authoritarian tankie totalitarian apologist and he can get you an incredible deal on some Iraqi WMD’s!

Oh and don’t clean the owl, we like them that way!