Yeah, you're misunderstanding what I'm saying dude. Everything you just said is plainly obvious to anyone with eyes. I'm saying that killing yourself and "competing" within the system are the same thing, letting the system win. And you have a third option, which you describe as "collaborating with others" (pretty accurate I might add), by which the system can be defeated. But if you kill yourself or assume the system is infallible, you are complicit in allowing the system to continue to fester and make everyone else miserable.

The working class has always had the power to end this when acting as a collective, but hyperindividualism and decades of propaganda have convinced people that it is impossible. People like you, who could've truly made a difference but ultimately chose to suffer in silence believing it was what was best for their family. Even those who are aware enough to recognize these problems still are crushed under the weight of the sheer number of problems to solve. This is by design, it makes it more intimidating to overcome and prevents anyone from even attempting. Yet the system will crumble on its own sooner or later, it's already an unstable system built on the impossible dream of infinite expansion. We need only exploit this dream to accelerate the destruction of the system, and as a side effect, the liberation of the oppressed.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm not keen to blame the degradation of either labor power or the communal ethic on the working class when we have actual accounts of organized efforts of the ownership class conspiring to change US culture into the property-is-sacred crap that it is today.

Nor am I going to think of the system as some anthropomorphic opponent who is besting me at sports. The system certainly isn't winning, what with establishment resorting to fascism in order to preserve the current power structures, and meanwhile the species is driving a global extinction event which puts even itself at high risk within the next few centuries.

In the States, every year over 40,000 men and women kill themselves successfully, that is, they die as a result, and we track that it wasn't accidental or homicide. Another 120,000 in the US try and fail but end up in the hospital, or being caught in time. None of these people care about whether the system wins or loses. They care that their own misery stops. And the US and state governments care about as much as 4Chan edgelords that we off ourselves at a higher rate than Japan (though to be fair, Japan is actively seeking to change centuries of culture that regards suicide as acceptable).

Mutualist organization takes time, and it's not going to do anything for people in need today. If not letting the system win works to keep you alive to see tomorrow, that's great. But it's not an argument for why to go on living when our resources have run out and we're now exposed to the elements.