We overcame feudalism and abolished slavery in the strict sense of the terms, but did we really overcome the whole concepts or did they just shift to a more socially acceptable and insidious version of them? We do have what are commonly called “Technofeudalism” and “Wage Slavery”, and while they’re substantially better than the “original versions” for the “vassals” and “slaves”, the outcome for the ones benefiting from them are relatively the same: corporate giants can still get free money/services just by “renting” stuff they still have ownership on, and billionaires can pretty much “own slaves” from their perspective, since they get labor at a cost that is insignificant in relation to their net worth.

So, again the pessimist in me says, did we really get rid of those concepts with our own efforts or did most of the elites just “allow” us to do that after realizing it wouldn’t really be a problem for them (Mostly speaking about slavery, as quite a bit of time passed between feudalism and technofeudalism)? Will getting actually rid of those concepts be as “easy” as that? (Not that it was easy to get rid of slavery, but we did manage to do it in the end)

And most importantly, in the time since we abolished slavery we did gain more ways to organize across a country or across the world, but at the same time the ruling class gained mass media and social networks which are a MUCH more effective way of spreading propaganda than simple newspapers. What if that was the missing piece that ultimately allows them to make sure we can never get meaningful change going?

When something isn’t going well and we don’t think it’s our fault, the first instinct is to point the finger at someone else, and they know. That’s why the ruling class made sure that we keep pointing our fingers at each other so that the people pointing at them are never enough to consistently organize for change.

Thank you too! I feel like a lot of times online discussions get derailed by tribal mentality, and that prevents both sides from understanding each other’s points, even when they might actually be similar. I think if we all focused on discussing our ideas without personal attacks or assumptions there would be a lot more intelligent dialogues, and while apparently not everyone agrees, it’s always nice when it does happen.

I feel that if you can perceive/understand a problem and it’s consequences, you become morally culpable for solving it, however hard that might be.

This is a valid reasoning, the issue is that mass media does its best to first convince you that there’s no issue, then that there’s an issue but the consequences aren’t that bad, then that the consequences are bad, but we can’t really do anything about it (the fact that Learned Helplessness is a named concept should be enough to tell how prevalent it is).

And even if someone manages to not fall for that and conceive a plan on how to change things, in a society where you have to work 40+ hours weekly for enough money to get by, how many people have the resources, time and willpower to work towards that plan?

I admit that my outlook might be too pessimistic, but I really feel like it’s going to be hard to correct course until there’s a very large amount of people in a situation so dire that they have nothing to lose. And while that could theoretically happen over time with the political landscape, I fear that for climate change we don’t have that much time.

I wouldn’t say it’s any generation’s fault, it’s simply that, even in a (supposed) democratic age, the elites still have way too many tools to sway the public consensus in their favor. Most people ultimately get greedy when they have the option to do so, and there can never be enough safeguards to prevent that from happening (or maybe there can be and we just haven’t thought of them yet, who knows).

Our generation (but mostly, the Silent Generation and Boomers) have in a sense enabled the elites to do so, but can you really say it’s our fault when the game was rigged from the start?

The problem is that pretty much everything economic still moves on a left/right axis. Capital market reform/redistribution is a left-wing concept, and polarization of wealth, or lack of market regulation, is a right-wing one.

Then at present time there’s a lot of other concepts that have been stapled onto the simple economic axis to further divide the population, such as culture war, religion, discrimination and whatnot, but even if you remove all of that, there’s the fact that a lot of people simply don’t want wealth redistribution. The infamous “temporarily embarrassed billionaires”, as they’re often called. You can’t convince them to “stop fighting” if the very thing you want to achieve is the same one they’re fighting against.

The only way to convince them is to straight-up depropagandize them, to make them realize that the “American Dream” is bullshit, that they’re never going to magically become a billionaire and benefit from all the stuff they’re fighting for, and that wealth redistribution would benefit pretty much everyone on the planet. But there’s people that have tried and failed to do so with their own family, how possible is that to successfully do for the whole country? Especially when every form of information, whether it’s mass media or social networks, work to convince them of the opposite?

By the same logic, the more either party wins, the more the Overton window stays fixed on the current systemic status quo being the only viable, or even imaginable system.

Then by that logic, how do you explain Republicans going more and more off the deep end after they kept on winning? The system isn’t “fixed on the status quo”, it’s actively getting worse.

Both parties serve elites, that’s true. But they can only afford to do that because one party promotes Christofascism and half the country joyfully votes for them, so the other can basically do nothing and still be the better choice for a sane person.

There’s a lot that we could theoretically do to change the system, but is that possible when the majority of people in voting age are forced to have a stable job to survive and mass media does everything they can to push narratives in the few spare time they might have to get informed? I’d love if everyone could afford to organize general strikes to, for example, put in place an actually functional voting system instead of FPTP, but that’s just not a likely outcome and probably won’t be in our lifetimes.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying all we can do is vote for “our team”. But we NEED to keep doing that, at minimum. Then, if you can afford it, you can also organize to push for reforms, protest, strikes and everything else. But if we keep on letting fascists take office because “the other side was better, but still bad so I didn’t vote them”, soon it’ll even be illegal to do anything else.

The more a party wins, the more the Overton window shifts in its favor.

If Democrats win enough times, Republicans will have to push less radical ideas to get a chance at being elected.

And if Republicans aren’t as much of a threat, Democrats will have to come up with an actual platform that isn’t just “we’re not Republicans”.

You can see the difference in Democrat Presidents from before and after the three consecutive R terms of 80-92, and how Middle-of-the-road the following ones have been. Which allowed Republicans to get more extreme.

We just need to make that happen in reverse.