I personally think optimism is better than doomerism, and that there is hope. Seriously!
My perspective is that it’s going to get hella worse, before it gets better: an addict who isn’t ready to fight addiction is going to go deeper into it, & when they try turning against it, then their own unconscious-mind will trash their life, maybe even kill them, to protect what their unconscious-mind is holding-onto, you know?
& naive making-believing isn’t help, it is “help”.
So, I recommend investing in the fundamentals of enduring decade-long Civil War:
the psychological leverages identified in Kegan & Lahey’s “Immunity to Change”, a book on our unconscious-mind’s stages-of-development, & its fighting-off of growing-up…
IF one allows one’s unconscious-mind to fight-off growing-up, THEN one is more likely to be abuses beating-on-toy, AND one is more likely to be dead, without earning one’s underlying life-potential.
Therefore, learning how to get one’s unconscious-mind to help one grow-up, is one of the more powerful leverages.
Next is Logan, King, & Dr. Fischer-Wright’s “Tribal Leadership”, on the 5 CultureLevels ( they call them “stages”, but caterpillar->moth is stages, irreversible, & frozen/liquid/steam isn’t stages, it is states or modes, because they aren’t 1-way. The CultureLevels only become irreversible at 4 & 5, among some people… anybody bashing around among the lower-3 levels, can go down or up, endlessly )
Five: Positive-Sum Game, Win-Win Alliance culture Four: WE are awesome, THEY are not culture Three: Zero-Sum Game: competitive-narcissism culture, like doctors ( go walk into any normal hospital, & see how the junior-staff won’t look you in the eye, if you walk-in wearing a professional’s clothes & manner: their validity/dignity has been obliterated in the narcissism of medical-culture. Look around for somebody whose bodylanguage REEKS of narcissism: that’s going to be a doctor. It’s comically bad: acting-schools should be using clinics & hospitals for studying that bodylanguage! The book-authors aren’t as cynical about it as I am: dad was a medical-researcher & doctor, & I ended up going no-contact with both parents, for years-at-a-time, to undo the butchery they put in my mind… Not their fault, but … I hope this world changes ) Two: “MY life sucks”, subject-to-narcissism culture One: Negative-Sum Game, Competitive Nihilism. mass-shooters, dictators who’re destroying as much lives as they can, racking-up some kind of “high score”, before they die. Netanyahu & Putin seem to be doing that now, & Trump seems bent on outclassing all of them, soon.
Notice how manufacturing CultureLevel1 “justifies” police-state, which enforces CultureLevel1 even more?
Notice that Trump’s manufacturing homelessness as fast as his regime can?
Once he finally crosses the tipping-point, he’ll just de-naturalize everybody who won’t vow allegiance to him, & everybody else suddenly is “illegals”, & that is what ICE really is for: Civil War 2.
Now is just “appatizer”.
So, becoming competent in making one’s CultureLevel be 3 or 4 or 5 becomes a survival-means, see?
All this is of the “The kingdom of establishment, without, is inferior to the kingdom of G-D, within: one’s meaning, one’s Soul” paradigm.
“21 Days to Resilience” and “Gaslighting” are books I’d recommend, to build psychic muscle & immunity…
Fundamentally, one has to have help, though: grow your relationship with LivingSpirit.
Not this, or that, “religion”, but with universal, endlessly-healing, LivingSpirit.
All the religions which put themselves in G-D’s place, with their “it isn’t G-D that is The Only Savior, it is OUR RELIGION-REGIME that is The Only Savior”, or you can substitute the word “Way” for “Savior”, & it’ll still be the same thing: putting itself in G-D’s place…
That isn’t universal.
It doesn’t really work.
LivingSpirit’s universal.
Grow relationship with it, however many years it takes to get the hang of something so subtle ( unlike the junk/distractions/addictions of this world ), but it IS real, & it DOES grow healing in one, the more one’s … weaving into it, or weaving it into one, or something like that ( embracing, or weaving, … something like that ).
Ah! Know, also, that there is a cycle of 4 stages of life, & it makes sense to be doing one’s-own stage, not what others are telling one to be!
- absorbing-experiencing ( correlates with Kegan’s unconscious-mind-development stage 3 )
- pushing-out-meaning-violating-one’s-identity ( correlates with Kegan’s stage 4 )
- systems-of-systems unconscious-mind-development, ( stage 5 )
- letting-go, dissolving & making-do, preparing for going into dissolution…
IF one were to pretend that some lives spend 3 decades in each condition, THEN one would have a “crayons” picture of human-life, an oversimplified-cartoon…
But even an oversimplified-cartoon can communicate enough to help people orient, right?
So, while Kegan identified that many never leave the absorbing-meaning stage, until they die, of old age… so there’s NO law making people go into the next stage…
but knowing that each phase is going to last decades, not mere-years…
that is important.
IF someone is in the absorbing-meaning phase, THEN pushing them to be “alpha” is pushing them to be what they aren’t: they’re supposed to be experiencing all kinds of meaning, to discover what’s in them!
Once one gets into the pushing-meaning-out phase, THEN pushiness becomes natural.
The whole domineer+doormat “relationship” which is traditional, a Kegan4 with a Kegan3, isn’t as “wonderful” as it pretends to be.
( Kegan doesn’t index the states the way I do: he names them all.
I’m fed-up with zillions of psychology-dimensions all needing individual-names, so I’m only indexing them, now.
Kegan0-7, in my system, Kahneman1-2, etc… )
Domineer+doormat is only ego-food for the domineer, really…
Diversity-of-experiencing. That is what the young adult-minds need: finding which meanings within one are worth cultivating, see?
& if one gets to Kegan6, which Robert Kegan never identified, but it’s obvious, if one is experiencing it, self-conquering: all the advantages of Kegan4 & Kegan5, together…
Life, then, becomes … self-inherently better.
There was a man in Auschwitz, who became a world-renouned psychologist…
don’t remember his name, sorry,
he realized that the guards had physical-liberty, but their minds were trapped by ideology.
He had no physical-liberty, but he was free.
THAT is the kind of freedom which can get one through what’s coming, alive, but it takes guts & renunciation, both, it takes intelligence & wisdom, both, it takes LivingSpirit relationship & it takes getting the evil & harm forced into one, OUT from one, so one can have living within one’s own self ( opposite of PTSD ).
IOW, I’m recommending that one be inherently-living, instead of ideologically-“living”, as a means of surviving the coming Republican dictatorship, until it implodes, next decade.
_ /\ _
That’s a very long schema. Also, I looked who you were talking about, and I’m pretty sure you were talking about Viktor Frankl who pioneered logotherapy in which it involves finding meaning in life as the central motivation force.
That said, is it okay you boil down this schema for me?
Before 1865, slavery was legal, then it wasn’t anymore (well… except for the prison cave out)
Before 1898 Wong Kim Ark case, children of Chinese immigrants were presumed to be not eligible for Birthright Citizenship.
Before 1965, segregation was legal, voter disenfranchisement of non-whites were rampant, then it changed.
Interracial marriage used to be illegal.
Gay marriage used to be illegal.
Now they are legalized.
Sometimes, progress is momentarily undone due to backlash from conservatives/regressives, but eventually, we will move forward.
Despair is billionarire propaganda to make people feel powerless, so that it become a self-fullfilling prophecy.
Their numbers are only like 100 rich dudes, we the people are many.
Together we can win.
Have you seen the response from communities? libs and apolitical people are on the streets ready to throwdown against armed thugs, that’s giving me a lot of hope.
Electorally (sorry anarchists), even Democrats are talking about abolishing ICE, we’ll see what happens in the primaries if such Democrats can win control of the party, but even if they can’t what we’ve seen on the streets should scare them into compliance! Time to remind them that what is “legal” doesn’t matter if the will of the people is at odds with the “law”.
Anarchist praxis and using the levers in the current system to better ends are not mutually exclusive. The line is understanding that the state itself is largely not built or operated in the interest of the common people.
We can hold our noses and vote, and show up to local councils, and not put all our eggs in one government/corporate-appointed basket by building mutual aid and having each other’s backs.
If politicians are actually throwing some action behind slowing down the mess they’re complicit in, that’s great! In the meantime, there’s a video on here showing the BPP protecting people in Philadelphia as a solid example of good anarchist(adjacent) organization and action.
One-or-the-otherism leads to nothing getting done. And hope is definitely an important part of resistance. We’re all in this together, for better or worse so we should fight side by side.
TL;DR: anarchists are on your side, no need to frame us otherwise. /gen
Anarchy means no hierarchies not no voting. We can still vote on shit if we wanna.
There is no chance president newsom or whatever snake they pick will abolish ICE. Bet on even more funding. Basic pattern recognition from the last several Administrations shows us this is the most likely outcome
Basic pattern recognition from the last administration should teach Dems that a buisness as usual candidate, will be their last.
They’re rather lose than change
I don’t think ICE should be abolished. They do serve a purpose, just not the one they’re currently being used for. They do need their budget reduced back to pre 2025 levels, though, and a massive culling of all the recently hired thugs.
Edit after being corrected: Yes, abolish ICE.
ICE was established in 2003 (Futurama is older than ICE) and since it’s creation has been a shit show.
What purpose do you think they serve?
Personally I think borders should be abolished, but even if you disagree border security is already handled by CBP and anything else can be handled by existing police structures (this is litterally how the rest of the world does it).
ICE ONLY exist as a tool of white supremacy, they exist to terrorize non-white residents far from the border (a border that has existed for less time than indigenous people have lived here), because as previously noted border security is handled by CBP.
Fair enough. I thought they handled regular customs and immigration stuff. I wasn’t aware that CBP was a separate department. Why indeed do they need both?
The best thing to do right now is to work with others and help build your local community so you have people and resources in case of hardship or emergency. Build and grow things. Be peaceful but have a plan if trouble comes to you.
You need to get together into groups, strategize, and campaign. Use comedy, costumes, and music. Go to university campuses, host talks, hang out on quads, get attention. Changing a country is not a thing you do at home by yourself without disrupting your entire life. And since you’re fundamentally campaigning against the monied and powerful, it’s not a thing you do while being financially secure and well fed.
I CAN’T go outside without permission. What else should I do in the comfort of my bedroom?
I’m a big fan of tabletop RPGs, and I like sci-fi, so a few years ago I moved from playing standard-issue cyberpunk to a homebrew solarpunk game instead.
It was such a radicalizing experience that my friends and I eventually released it as a totally free game, along with a ready to run starter campaign. It’s called Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG.
If you’re a fan of TTRPGs and looking for a fun, social way to get better at believing in a better world, go download it. It’s a blast, and really makes you want to go out and overthrow fascism.
Is it free?
Yes. It’s free and open-license. It’s free as in speech AND as in beer.
Myself, I know Trump is sicker than his handlers have let on so I’m just waiting for him to die.
If you really think someone with a 73 IQ is really calling the shots you’re fooling yourself. He’s allowed to act like an idiot just so far.
Of course I agree that Trump is an idiot, but he’s also a belligerent narcissist. From what I’ve read his staff didn’t know the tariffs were coming until he started imposing them on random countries via social media.
The insane part about that is that anyone went along with it. The president doesn’t have that power.
People are fighting back and it seems like it’s working
Pragmatism is probably the best way to go about it, at this point in time.
given what’s happening in the US?
Just don’t be there.
