MovingThrowaway [none/use name]

Movies like Beau is Afraid, with a lot of themes and symbolism to dissect that rewards repeat viewing.

You might say that all movies have themes and symbolism, intentional or otherwise, and I agree. But what I mean and why Beau might be a good example is a lot of people call it self indulgent and meandering and way too long, and that’s exactly what I want it to be.

They may not always be coherent or even have any substance behind all the smoke and mirrors and layers but I still enjoy the vibe.

Wouldn’t want to dilute their mediocrity with good writing

Is that the instance filtering that out? Thats removed lol

What are you trying to say?

Tankie is an empty signifier

That is to say, it’s a label that can be used to describe an array of different and conflicting ideas, values, and identities. Because of this it serves as an obfuscatory device rather than a communicative one. The sub-logic becomes tankie = bad, so if someone I don’t like = tankie, then person I don’t like = bad.

Almost none of us were alive when Khrushchev rolled tanks into Hungary. Most MLs aren’t particularly fond of Khrushchev.

It’s made a resurgence in this new, weird context because most of the terms used during the previous red scares lost their power through similar misuse. It’s become unfashionable to hate on leftism in progressive spaces, doing so using old terminology makes you sound like a fox news conservative. But you can do the same thing by calling it this instead.

Worth keeping in mind that these ideologies each have multiple self-definitions (the ideal with which they describe themselves) as well as a set of definitions from the perspective of each other ideology. Tack on semantic drift (words changing meaning over time, or growing different meanings in different contexts) and it can start to feel hopelessly complicated. And they each offer different ways of understanding the world and history, so on top of all the aforementioned complexity, they also interpret historical events and real-world applications of each ideology differently. So learning about them is a process where your understanding slowly moves from abstract to concrete by getting rough definitions then tempering them with seemingly contradictory definitions, over time building a network of understanding that includes the contexts of each perspective.

My perspective is largely coming from a communist ideology fyi. But here’s a quick rundown.

Capitalism is a system in which a class of owners leverage their ownership of productive assets to engage in non-equal exchange with the un-owning classes, most notably the exchange of labor value for a fraction of the products of said labor value. It necessitates a large government to enforce these hierarchies of ownership and exclusion. (Classical) liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. Conservatism is generally a subset of liberalism. It’s the culturally dominant ideology now, so most of what you see and read will come from this perspective, explicitly or not.

Communism is a theoretical system in which class tensions have resolved themselves. No one knows what it’ll look like, it’s explicitly a theoretical ideal. Communism as an ideology is advocating for the interests of the working class against the owning class. A country that calls itself communist would probably be doing so in reference to the ideology, rather than claiming it has achieved communism.

Socialism as an ideology can be synonymous with communism, although there are subsets of liberalism that have taken on the word to mean capitalism with welfare and regulations. Socialism as a system is the interim stage between capitalism and communism, the point where workers have seized control of the state and means of production and now have a strong influence over how class tensions develop.

Freud was all about building interesting models for human consciousness, then using them to come to the wildest conclusions.

Tbf, with the sexually repressed and patriarchal society he was working in, there may have been some truth to the complexes he described. But to try and universalize them was a mistake imo.

Some interpret “penis envy” as a purely symbolic metaphor for envying the power and freedom given to men, with the inverse “castration anxiety” being fear of losing said power.

Freud hypothesized the subconscious had its own logic that was more about association than rational connection.

If this is true I think it’s a bathtub curve

But I’m not even convinced it’s necessarily true, at least with regard to generalized well-being (not acute emotional reactions to specific experiences). As far as physiological determinants of well-being, those are universal. I work with people with disabilities, and people that have mental/learning disabilities deal with the same variables that other people do: exercise, diet, sleep, socialization, medication, etc, which contribute massively to general happiness. And many of these people have fewer facilities and resources than other people to get their needs met.

On a philosophical level, intelligence and/or knowledge about the world doesn’t inherently necessitate unhappiness in the general sense of the word. A negative outlook implies the existence of expectations that the world failed to meet, but the expectations are arbitrary, and thus is the value judgment that follows.

Learning more about the world should add complexity to our expectations. A binary value judgement resulting in philosophical pessimism is an active choice (albeit interconnected with or superstructural to the aforementioned physiological determinants) that refuses to engage with reality in all its complexity, a dialectical stagnation. Unrefined expectations about an idyllic world that never existed.

And I think ignorance is bliss only temporarily or only for a statistically small subsection of people who have their physiological needs met and can use escapism to ignore the suffering of others (or who materially benefit from said suffering). Righteous fury is just as viable a reaction to suffering. Revolutionary suicide or revolutionary nihilism at the very least.

Again, not to disregard acute reactions to specific events, I’m talking about one’s choice of philosophical outlook.

Eh mister “I will own slaves after the apocalypse” probably doesn’t deserve the grace

Been pretty rough. Lucky to have made it this far I guess. I know a lot who’ve had it worse.

But yeah it’s been interesting to witness other people be able to weather the same things that put me on the street simply because they had a support group to lean on. I’m not bitter anymore, it’s just a testament to how important that is. We just have much less of a barrier, if any, between us and homelessness, and the state violence that comes along with it.

I’m only now sort of stable due to undeserved kindness from people who barely know me. Intersections of privilege made a difference too I’m sure. Definitely nothing to do with any merit or personal strength.

Moving countries with a language barrier sounds incredibly difficult. Being a statesian that’s not something I’ve had to deal with. Hope things go well for you!

Not just a long time, that’s been the primary purpose of NATO since its inception