It just feels so hard. People constantly complain about their material conditions, yet when someone comes to them with Marx-Engels, they immediately brush it off. They are more keen on falling to mysticism and far-right ideology, in regards to “solutions”. I know you cannot convince people by debating them, you can only make yourself feel good when you “win”, but otherwise you are likely only making them less likely to latch on to socialism. Still, I don’t know how to approach this. How do I convince them? Do I constantly, in every conversation about how the grocery prices are too high, mention the theories of Marx? Do I just sit around until they, on their own accord, pick up Capital or even just the Manifesto?
Whaddoido?
First, realize the average adult American reads at a 5th grade level, and that 20% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate.
If you’re using words that a 5th grader would not understand, 50% of the people you’re talking to don’t know what those words mean.
Second, realize many or even most of these people are functionally in a cult, that they are basically brainwashed cult members, their minds are programmed with a million landmine like triggers that will cause them to fallback to thought terminating cliches, erroneous apologetics, false counterfactuala, or just become angry at or untrusting of you, and all your progress will be lost.
You have to become their friends first, establish personal trust, and if you can, limit their exposure to echo chambers… which at this point is basically all corporate social media, which will automatically algorithmically slot them into echo chambers.
Ok, got it?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-mind/202104/the-definitive-guide-helping-people-trapped-in-cult
Good luck.
Normally, properly deprogramming/deconstructing a cult member takes years and years of therapy with psychologists that specialize in precisely that, while the subject is isolated from the cult.
I really had a horrible education knowing what I know today in my mid 40s. Took a decade to change and understand some ML ideology. I think I always had a heart, not a self serving personality, so deep down I knew something was not right about the world.
lol this is exactly what the below banger is pointing out. Most people are not idiots. They definitely have false ideas, but that is because those ideas bring them some sort of security, and/or they have not had sufficient access to alternative perspectives (in the ways people actually learn). While we are no logic machines (closest to that is philosophers and the amount of times we’ve realized reason doesn’t really work), we are all just looking for the most satisfying explanation of how things work.