/lit/ - Literature

And you know it too. For how many of you is politics a responsibility? Something you engage in because you feel you should, when in your heart of hearts there are a million things you would rather be doing? Your volunteer work — is it your most favorite pastime, or do you do it out of a sense of obligation? Why do you think it is so hard to motivate others to volunteer as you do? Could it be that it is, above all, a feeling of guilt that drives you to fulfill your “duty” to be politically active? Perhaps you spice up your “work” by trying (consciously or not) to get in trouble with the authorities, to get arrested: not because it will practically serve your cause, but to make things more exciting, to recapture a little of the romance of turbulent times now long past. Have you ever felt that you were participating in a ritual, a long-established tradition of fringe protest, that really serves only to strengthen the position of the mainstream? Have you ever secretly longed to escape from the stagnation and boredom of your political “responsibilities”?

It’s no wonder that no one has joined you in your political endeavors. Perhaps you tell yourself that it’s tough, thankless work, but somebody’s got to do it. The answer is, well, NO.

You actually do us all a real disservice with your tiresome, tedious politics. For in fact, there is nothing more important than politics. NOT the politics of American “democracy” and law, of who is elected state legislator to sign the same bills and perpetuate the same system. Not the politics of the “I got involved with the radical left because I enjoy quibbling over trivial details and writing rhetorically about an unreachable utopia” anarchist. Not the politics of any leader or ideology that demands that you make sacrifices for “the cause.” But the politics of our everyday lives. When you separate politics from the immediate, everyday experiences of individual men and women, it becomes completely irrelevant. Indeed, it becomes the private domain of wealthy, comfortable intellectuals, who can trouble themselves with such dreary, theoretical things. When you involve yourself in politics out of a sense of obligation, and make political action into a dull responsibility rather than an exciting game that is worthwhile for its own sake, you scare away people whose lives are already far too dull for any more tedium. When you make politics into a lifeless thing, a joyless thing, a dreadful responsibility, it becomes just another weight upon people, rather than a means to lift weight from people. And thus you ruin the idea of politics for the people to whom it should be most important. For everyone has a stake in considering their lives, in asking themselves what they want out of life and how they can get it. But you make politics look to them like a miserable, self-referential, pointless middle class/bohemian game, a game with no relevance to the real lives they are living out.

What should be political? Whether we enjoy what we do to get food and shelter. Whether we feel like our daily interactions with our friends, neighbors, and coworkers are fulfilling. Whether we have the opportunity to live each day the way we desire to. And “politics” should consist not of merely discussing these questions, but of acting directly to improve our lives in the immediate present. Acting in a way that is itself entertaining, exciting, joyous — because political action that is tedious, tiresome, and oppressive can only perpetuate tedium, fatigue, and oppression in our lives. No more time should be wasted debating over issues that will be irrelevant when we must go to work again the next day. No more predictable ritual protests that the authorities know all too well how to deal with; no more boring ritual protests which will not sound like a thrilling way to spend a Saturday afternoon to potential volunteers — clearly, those won’t get us anywhere. Never again shall we “sacrifice ourselves for the cause.” For we ourselves, happiness in our own lives and the lives of our fellows, must be our cause!

After we make politics relevant and exciting, the rest will follow. But from a dreary, merely theoretical and/or ritualized politics, nothing valuable can follow. This is not to say that we should show no interest in the welfare of humans, animals, or ecosystems that do not contact us directly in our day to day existence. But the foundation of our politics must be concrete: it must be immediate, it must be obvious to everyone why it is worth the effort, it must be fun in itself. How can we do positive things for others if we ourselves do not enjoy our own lives?

To make this concrete for a moment: an afternoon of collecting food from businesses that would have thrown it away and serving it to hungry people and people who are tired of working to pay for food — that is good political action, but only if you enjoy it. If you do it with your friends, if you meet new friends while you’re doing it, if you fall in love or trade funny stories or just feel proud to have helped a woman by easing her financial needs, that’s good political action. On the other hand, if you spend the afternoon typing an angry letter to an obscure leftist tabloid objecting to a columnist’s use of the term “anarcho-syndicalist,” that’s not going to accomplish shit, and you know it.

Perhaps it is time for a new word for “politics,” since you have made such a swear word out of the old one. For no one should be put off when we talk about acting together to improve our lives. And so we present to you our demands, which are non-negotiable, and must be met as soon as possible — because we’re not going to live forever, are we?

Make politics relevant to our everyday experience of life again. The farther away the object of our political concern, the less it will mean to us, the less real and pressing it will seem to us, and the more wearisome politics will be.

All political activity must be joyous and exciting in itself. You cannot escape from dreariness with more dreariness.

To accomplish those first two steps, entirely new political approaches and methods must be created. The old ones are outdated, outmoded. Perhaps they were NEVER any good, and that’s why our world is the way it is now.

Enjoy yourselves! There is never any excuse for being bored… or boring!

Join us in making the “revolution” a game; a game played for the highest stakes of all, but a joyous, carefree game nonetheless!

--
Thanks to Nadia C for this essay. You can find the source pretty easily if curious.

Bump

too long lol

The alt right is also boring, most people just want to fuck and live fantasy lives

>>14724447
It's like a page and a half of single spaced text broken up into easily digestible paragraphs you smooth brained degenerate

>>14724261
I was already being charitable reading the entirety of the first post you cunt jesus christ

>>14724466
Nothing charitable about reading
>>14724457
You missed the point

>>14724261
We also know they're the tranny jannies of global capital.

Cyberterrorism is the only viable option for real change in this post-indutrial technological society.

>>14724488
>only viable option
I disagree but it seems like a front rich with opportunities. Let's stay away from the t word, though, right?

>>14724476
My charity was in taking your self-important ramblings seriously enough to read a portion of. Especially when it comes down to 'leftists need to cheer up and be less gay'.

>>14724513
Not my writing. If you read it you wouldnt expose your ability to revel in ignorance so obviously.

>>14724513
I saw, I just didn't care about the distinction, since you bothered to post it here.

>>14724528
>>14724520
Also it's from 1997? wtf literally who cares

>>14724503
My bad. Cyber freedom fighting more like it

>>14724447
based. give me the twitter version

>>14724261
What's wrong with boring politics? Should politics be entertaining? I stand by my boring politics.

i don't care how interesting my politics are i care about how moral they are

>>14724458
>It's like a page and a half of single spaced text broken up into easily digestible paragraphs
but it's made by some faggot on 4channel. Not worth the time

This is me. This is how I win.

>>14724261
where did you get that image. I cropped it myself, and attempting to upload it gives me a duplicate

>>14725666
you must have posted it at some point. maybe you were drunk and forgot

>>14724261
God I hated that movie. Just seeing that jew's fucking face gives me PTSD flashbacks to 2 straight hours of "fuck this", "fuck that", and "fuck you". Absolutely terrible to watch. I admit it was a good movie, like a fine bourbon is a good drink. It's simply not a taste I have acquired as of yet.

/lit/ is for literature

>>14725686
i enjoyed it, it was like a long episode of curb your enthusiasm, though it wasn't a masterpiece

>>14724261>>14724281
1997. part of what makes the postmodern condition hell is that everything has to be made ludic and fun. liberals gleefully ragefully consume Trump's ludic outbursts. of course they get off to it, they hate themselves and want Trump to fuck them and dominate them. likewise /pol/ is obsessed with cuck porn because all politics is really about psychosexual humiliation. Comfortable middle class feminists are obsessed with True Crime and sexual violence they don't experience. the so called lgbt community are a disgrace to true perversion and sodomy, they grovel before the other and ask him to recognise their sexual deviancy as actually normal and good. Minorities consume their own representation in the mass media and get angry about the oscars being too white, because everything has moved to the plane of pure pornographic simulation.

The true successors to the ludic politics of the 60s and 70s, the yippies the hippies and the situationists and Charlie Manson's Family are not on the left, but the radical nihilist accelerationists that stalk the fringes of the alt right, for what could be more transgressive than literally worshipping Hitler and calling for race war not as a means of 'preserving the white race' or muh future for white children but of making our race jump headfirst into the meat grinder of history going out in a last nihilistic deathgasm of ultimate ludic and transgressive rebellion,

Imagine the person this isn’t obvious to

>>14724457
Most people are better off being ruled than ruling, this is why mass democracy is a mistake.

>>14724457
on the contrary, right-wing political action is fucking hilarious and frequently makes the news and catches the eye of very interesting people

>>14725874
>this is why mass democracy is a *tv show*
Fixed that for you

>>14724261
your writing is boring too

>>14725676
probably. fuck.

>>14724261
politics is for teenagers

Yea but the thing is that the working class isn't disinterested in communism for any of these reasons and none of this rebranding is going to make you look cool.
They don't like you because you attack the things they love, things that make their lives worth living, these aren't material things, they've got plenty of fucking food.

>>14725759
Insanity

>>14725285
This.

>>14724261
jokes on you i am a national socialist
it is extremely based

>>14727264
Wow

>>14724261
>crimethinc

didnt read the op post but you should kill yourself

>>14725874
the masses aren't ruling and we'd unironically get better outcomes through governance by polling idiots than by what we have now. our problem is quite the opposite - the "intelligentsia" are delusional.

>>14724261
>You know it’s true. Otherwise, why does everyone cringe when you say the word?
People cringe because they know "politics" encompass a lot of sensitive issues that might interrupt the social peace happening in a given group of people. Most people hate confrontation, because they never worked on the relationship between their thoughts and emotions, so they can't handle it.

>your marches, hand held signs, and gatherings — are now powerless to effect real change because they have become such a predictable part of the status quo
You must be politically ignorant if you think these ever had any effect at all, the point of marches, signs, and gatherings is not to "change things", it's all about awareness, political group awareness, it's only a step in the protestation, and not the ultimate one.

From an European's point of view: the Americans never had many strong political moments, because you guys are all about one thing: shows, sure, you are fantastic at large-scale protests, gatherings, but you'd never do a true revolution.

Marxism Leninism is the solution

>>14724261
>>14724267
>>14724274
>>14724281
Are you self-aware at all? Do you not know how ironic it is to call something boring over the course of several long posts? Didn't read past the OP.