There’s a lot of people on here who are part of what I’d call losing causes, causes that run counter to the consumerist capitalist mono-culture, I.e. socialism, veganism, FOSS, anti-car urbanism, even lemmy and the fediverse.
I want to know what made you switch from being a sympathizer to an active participant. I believe it’s important for us to understand what methods work in getting people involved in a movement that may not have any immediate wins to motivate people to join.
EDIT: A lot of people objecting to my use of losing so I’ll explain more, all of these causes benefit from popularity and are weakened by there lack of adoption and are thus in direct competition with the capitalist consumerist mono-culture, a competition which they are currently losing.
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Socialism on a small scale cannot solve the inherent issues of a capitalism that surrounds it.
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Veganism benefits from more people becoming vegan and restaurants and grocery stores providing vegan options.
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FOSS, or more specifically desktop Linux, benefits from more people being on it and software developers designing for and maintaining applications for it.
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The more people that use transit, the more funding it gets and the better it gets.
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the fediverse benefits from more people veing on it and more diverse communities so those with niche interests besides the above causes can find community here.
On the flip side the capitalist consumerist alternatives to all of these benefit from there popularity and thus offer a better value to most people. The question is about what made you defer that better immediate material value in favor of something else.
I feel like you’re missing the point a bit. Living by values you hold dear is not losing, winning or even necessarily a cause. If your values happen to align with a cause, then supporting it in a way you can is at least somewhat fulfilling.
Now, there are definitely people who join a cause for tangential reasons. For example because they are a vehicle to what they want, such as someone who wants to build and use explosives can just as easily become a fundamentalist, anarchist or fascist. (And history has examples of these sordid folks.) They barely care about any of the causes and will drift wherever they can live by their own values, even if it’s about blowing shit up.
I disagree with the notion that these are “losing causes.”
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Socialism is necessary. Not only is the largest economy in the world by PPP a socialist country, and is using it to dramatic effect, capitalism and by extension imperialism are dying systems that have no future. Despite governing more of the world, capitalism is in decay, and is thus the “losing side.”
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Veganism is ethically correct. Not only is animal liberation a valuable pursuit, but it has far lower of an environmental impact. It isn’t a “side,” it’s the correct conclusion.
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FOSS isn’t losing, it doesn’t need mass adoption because it doesn’t need profit. FOSS is growing though.
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Anti-car urbanism is improving, socialist countries like the PRC are building huge amounts of effective urban transit. Between the car centric society of today and the urbanist future we desire, there is a transitional period marked by electrification and building up urban transit.
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Lemmy/fediverse is healthy and stable, and already does what it needs to: provide an alternative for those who want one.
At the end of the day, framing movements as “winning” or “losing” purely on adoption rates is an error. What is important is trajectory and the material basis for transitioning from the present state of things to the next, ie how do the problems of today make the solutions of tomorrow physically compelled? For socialism, it is the decay of capitalism due to its inevitable contradictions, as well as capitalism’s centralization making public ownership and planning in a post-capitalist society remarkably effective.
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My dear friend, my entire life is a losing cause. :)
I’ve been vegan foss-using anti war anarchist since high school, once I figure out what’s right social pressure doesn’t particularly sway me. In addition to all of the above I’m trans and still mask too.
I can’t really point to anything in particular that “switched” other than legitimately not caring about fitting in.
Many of the things you mentioned are not “loosing”. They are chugging along. Slow and steady.
It’s frustrating how slowly things are going (urbanism at least had the excuse of involving expensive physical infrastructure that turns over on the span of decades) but Lemmy didn’t exist 5 years ago and now we have piefed and enough activity that it’s nit a ghost town anymore too. After enough cycles of Yet another corpo hellsite we’ll hit critical mass
Because I’d rather be right than win. Nice to be both, but the former is a higher priority for me.
This answer goes hard. I guess stubbornness is needed in some cases.
I still object to your definition of losing. Ethics diets are on the rise, and if Linux became less popular at any point that’s new information to me. I’d say we’re underdogs but things are going well.
As for actually answering, I think I just have a weird attachment to abstract conceptual correctness. Or rather, other people don’t seem to, and that’s why they can ignore things like animal welfare and creepy digital mega-corporations even if they know, on some level, that it’s inconsistent with their stated priorities and values.
I want to live in a better world. You can’t change the world (win) by giving up. You can’t change the status quo easily and I can’t live with myself if I do nothing.
I don’t think of them as “losing causes”. While it’s important to be realistic about the current state of your cause, framing it this way assumes they have already and permanently lost, so nothing can ever change. Assuming a mindset of defeatism is demoralizing even if it is only in the language you use.
1: Because it’s historically been the nature of these causes that they’re losing right up until the moment they win. Seems impossible till it’s done, journey of a thousand miles, single step and all that.
2: pure spite towards the smug, arrogant and cruel status quo supporters. I will.never give them the satisfaction of falling into despair, from hell’s heart I stab at them
Because it’s historically been the nature of these causes that they’re losing right up until the moment they win. Seems impossible till it’s done, journey of a thousand miles, single step and all that.
That’s survivor bias. Sometimes it goes like that, but in the vast majority of cases you just lose. This narrative is toxic because it keeps people stuck into an anti-strategic mindset, turning politics into morality and making all of us worse off.
No, it really is just the nature of socialist struggle that you’re getting stomped on for the first 90% of it. Every successful revolution started from some of the worst and most squalid conditions with the worst odds imaginable: illiterate, starving, under the thumb of theocrats and warlords, war-torn, hyperexploited. You seem to think I said that bad situations always and inevitably lead to victory, which…???. History is pretty clear about the conditions that need to be met for success, and they’re not “moral” ones.
That’s the narrative after the fact to justify successful revolutions.
Many revolutions have had setbacks at times, but showed regular growth in the participation of organizations building them and growth in the resources they could mobilize.
Most professional revolutionaries, like Lenin, Ho Chi Min, Guevara etc were middle-upper class who could commit their time and resources to build structure. Revolutions never start from the poor, because the poor are busy working. The best they can do is rioting or protesting, but protests never change things.
What I’m saying is that with this narrative about losing we justify a tolerance for defeat, ineffectiveness and spontaneism that pamper and console people in their powerlessness, breeding activists and protestors instead of organizers. While nobody should be judged for not winning, we also shouldn’t be so comfortable with losing. It’s also very alienating for normal people: if they have to give up their time and energy to chase a higher goal, they want to win, they don’t want to “lose better”. Nobody wants to be a loser, except insular dirtbag leftists with an outcast attitude.
So what you’re saying is that a bad situation does not always and inevitably lead to victory, and that there are certain material conditions that need to be fufilled? Cool, not sure why you needed 3 paragraphs to say it
Revolutions never start from the poor
Lol
insular dirtbag leftists with an outcast attitude.
I’m sensing the presence of some personal beef I’m not privvy to and don’t care about.
I wish it was personal beef. It’s a systemic pathology throughout the left, reason why I abandoned those spaces to organize elsewhere.
ok, best of luck with your…organizing outside of the left?
Morality and ethical behavior are not defined by popularity
I don’t agree with causes to win. I agree with causes because they’re correct. If everyone stopped believing in gravity I wouldn’t follow suit.
I know you phrased it as “losing” here, but it still made me think of that moment in Firefly when somebody refers to Mal having fought on the wrong side in a battle, and he says “May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”
When a person has convictions and is put at a certain sort of fork in the road, they would rather do anything else before ever seeing themselves transform into the sort of person who would take one of those paths. Some would sell their souls to survive, and some know that their cause is worth several times more than their souls are worth, and the bill comes due at some point.
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
I think you nailed it with the Firefly quote. I’ve always loved that one.
Even if our movements don’t succeed, I want to be able to say that I did my part and didn’t go down without a fight.
There are no lost causes, just struggles you don’t face.
I don’t really understand why you think a lot of these things are losing causes. FOSS is the backbone of IT. Anti-car urbanism is common in some areas of the world. Lemmy and the Fediverse have been doing great over the last 2 years. Socialism/leftist ideology is on the rise alongside the fascist takeover—it would have been unheard of to have “the squad” in the 90’s.
So where you see losing, I see slow and steady progress happening alongside capitalist fascism that is trying and failing to stop it completely.
The part that gets me is why it’s slow. I figured it out, what’s taking everyone else so long?
Because you live in a bubble and your needs are not the needs of the vast majority of human on Earth. Also change is not a matter of opinions or conscience, it’s a matter of organizing and building power. Most people can agree on a topic without anything changing.
I don’t live in a bubble? I’m very exposed to people who are Not like me and I’m rarely the majority opinion in a room
FOSS is the backbone of IT
FOSS is the backbone of a mlitiary-corporate monstrous machine of death and exploitation. I get that originally the movement was more concerned with the freedom of software than the freedom of people, but I would say “FOSS being a force for good” is definitely a battle that was lost.
I wouldn’t say Palestine is a losing cause. All the ones I listed are minoritarian, some in the low single digit percentage of people, especially in the US. A majority of people in the US and a large majority of the world want a ceasefire. It’s not failing due to lack of popular support, its failimg because a small minority of very powerful people really want this genocide.
A majority of people in the US and a large majority of the world want a ceasefire.
That is only a very recent development though. And “a ceasefire” is very different to an actual free Palestine anyway
thanks, johnny silverhand.
