Sometimes I get really depressed when I think about problems that could be solved if people would just behave slightly differently.
If people would just stop buying lootbox slop, it wouldn’t be a problem. it’s not asking a lot. It’s not asking you to change your diet, or ride a bike twenty miles in the snow. Just stop buying that shit. I just want to smack impulse buyers on the nose with a newspaper, or squirt them with a spray bottle. Stop it!
But that’s not how people work. We barely function at all.
I don’t disagree with you but it’s comforting to me to hold onto the fantasy that the something else would be better, like exchanging a quality good for money in a one time deal.
But yes, capitalism is a common source of many problems. (Though I guess a worker owned collective could produce loot boxes, too. )
We are products of our environment. Always have been, always will be. Capitalism has shaped our environment so thoroughly that it’s hard for the average person to imagine defaulting to anything else. So we need to change people’s environment so they they can see and they can change and they can imagine more.
How do you stop alcoholism? Get rid of the alcohol in your environment. How do you stop doomscrolling in bed? Put your phone charger in a different room. How do you stop paying for overpriced food deliveries? Get a calendar of community kitchen events so you always have a place to eat without effort.
By shaping our environment so that anarchy is easier than capitalism in specific cases, we can wean ourselves off capitalism and see what issues, if any, there are with anarchy fulfilling those or other cases. Then we can overcome those issues, resent capitalism for blocking us, or acknowledge them as limitations, whatever the case may be. Then when it’s clear that we have the means and the people by which to improve society by replacing capitalism in all areas of life, we can.
That is literally the opposite of true. Prefigurative politics is explicitly about acknowledging the limits to executive functioning that every person has. If you “have executive dysfunction”, it means those limits are tighter than for most people.
Prefiguration means shaping the environment so that the behavior you want is easier than the behavior you don’t want, so that it doesn’t take executive functioning to do the right thing. Maybe the specific answers I gave wouldn’t help you, but hopefully you can find others that do. My flavor of executive dysfunction is more in the choosing than the doing, so a calendar helps for me.
But if your flavor of executive dysfunction makes it hard to go places, maybe what works for you is moving into group housing (e.g. a squat) so your housemates can provide a safety net for when you can’t get yourself to make food and you can help them out when you have the space for it.
It’s not about not doing something, it’s more about learning to do something.
I would personally recommend you start educating yourself about anticapitalism / anarchism and communism. Here is a good video to give you an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrTzjaXskUU.
After that, maybe start with joining some leftist protests in your area or joining a local leftist group. Then talk to the people there and learn how to do even more.
It’s hard, but it shure as hell is better than just giving up.
Sometimes I get really depressed when I think about problems that could be solved if people would just behave slightly differently.
If people would just stop buying lootbox slop, it wouldn’t be a problem. it’s not asking a lot. It’s not asking you to change your diet, or ride a bike twenty miles in the snow. Just stop buying that shit. I just want to smack impulse buyers on the nose with a newspaper, or squirt them with a spray bottle. Stop it!
But that’s not how people work. We barely function at all.
Nope, if people stopped buying lootboxes, they would just find something else.
The problem is not peoples behaviour, it is the fundamental incentive structures, that incentivize exploiting your customers.
If we really want to fix this problem, we need to abolish capitalism.
I don’t disagree with you but it’s comforting to me to hold onto the fantasy that the something else would be better, like exchanging a quality good for money in a one time deal.
But yes, capitalism is a common source of many problems. (Though I guess a worker owned collective could produce loot boxes, too. )
How do we abolish capitalism if we can’t even control our own behaviour?
Prefiguration.
We are products of our environment. Always have been, always will be. Capitalism has shaped our environment so thoroughly that it’s hard for the average person to imagine defaulting to anything else. So we need to change people’s environment so they they can see and they can change and they can imagine more.
How do you stop alcoholism? Get rid of the alcohol in your environment. How do you stop doomscrolling in bed? Put your phone charger in a different room. How do you stop paying for overpriced food deliveries? Get a calendar of community kitchen events so you always have a place to eat without effort.
By shaping our environment so that anarchy is easier than capitalism in specific cases, we can wean ourselves off capitalism and see what issues, if any, there are with anarchy fulfilling those or other cases. Then we can overcome those issues, resent capitalism for blocking us, or acknowledge them as limitations, whatever the case may be. Then when it’s clear that we have the means and the people by which to improve society by replacing capitalism in all areas of life, we can.
That’s a lot of stuff which is all incompatible with executive disfunction
That is literally the opposite of true. Prefigurative politics is explicitly about acknowledging the limits to executive functioning that every person has. If you “have executive dysfunction”, it means those limits are tighter than for most people.
Prefiguration means shaping the environment so that the behavior you want is easier than the behavior you don’t want, so that it doesn’t take executive functioning to do the right thing. Maybe the specific answers I gave wouldn’t help you, but hopefully you can find others that do. My flavor of executive dysfunction is more in the choosing than the doing, so a calendar helps for me.
But if your flavor of executive dysfunction makes it hard to go places, maybe what works for you is moving into group housing (e.g. a squat) so your housemates can provide a safety net for when you can’t get yourself to make food and you can help them out when you have the space for it.
It’s not about not doing something, it’s more about learning to do something.
I would personally recommend you start educating yourself about anticapitalism / anarchism and communism. Here is a good video to give you an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrTzjaXskUU.
After that, maybe start with joining some leftist protests in your area or joining a local leftist group. Then talk to the people there and learn how to do even more.
It’s hard, but it shure as hell is better than just giving up.
You are the cliché of a communist online.
How? I actually do the stuff I say, which would defeat my cliche of a communist online.
If you mean by that, that I am a communist and spend some of my time online, then you are correct.
Also, if you didn’t want to know the answer, then why did you even ask?