I'm talking about the mechanisms by which the words we use to describe ourselves and our conditions get subverted by those who seek to control other people, and how that subversion confuses the concept. Americans are confused about what "Freedom" means, because freedom has been rebranded to mean things like the open road, and feelings of patriotism, and being able to smoke wherever I damn well please. It makes us miss the things like the long working hours, and the mountains of debt, and how badly my boss could ruin my life if they so chose, and how much power that gives bosses. We think what we have is freedom, and are confused because the concept itself has been subverted. Via Branding, in this case. I hope that answers the question, I... thought we were both talking about that.

I have individualized vibes? What are they like?

I love reading political theory. I read it critically, the way I would read a peer's code. I internally check it against my own understanding of the world, and if there's a dissonance I check to see which of us, if either, is correct. It's slow work. There's so much political theory I haven't read. The vast majority of it, I expect. And I balance political theory with some lighter topics because if I read all the political theory I want, I despair of the future of humanity and wish for death to take me. So I take my time.

I do listen to the voices of those I oppress, both myself personally, and in my capacity as an American citizen, and in my capacity as a white person, and in my capacity as a landowner, as an older adult, etc. etc. There are millions of demographic dimensions on which I relate to my fellow people, and none of them are independent of the others. People are complicated, that's just the system we got. I listen as closely as I can, because the voices can be faint or distorted in transmission. They are easily misunderstood, especially if misunderstanding redounds to my benefit. I think I have gotten better at hearing, but that sort of thing is difficult to quantify. I think I can identify more easily things that bear close attention, anyway. I'm interested in all suffering in the world, which can roughly be divided into the two categories, "caused by me" and "not caused by me". the categories are similar in a lot of ways, different in some ways, and many things are a mix of both. It does necessarily introduce bias because things I cause and things I observe have fundamental differences that are difficult to account for. My heuristic is to see if I can act to help them, and coming up with a solution often casts some light on whether I am a cause. Then I do the solution and see if it worked. Some of the time, it does not and I have to go back to the drawing board. But, sometimes it helps.