I generally don’t engage this much with posts of these types, but you seem to be a person who is making statements in good faith. As such, I want to encourage you to look a bit more into those you might label the “alt-left” because I’m quite certain I fall into that category and there’s a lot more than “anyone can do anything they want at anytime” to what we (in the US) were taught in school about things like historical Anarchist movements.
Namely: “Anarchy means no rules and no one is in charge! Burn everything!!!”
If I were to sum things up as succinctly as possible I would say that the primary idea behind “anarchy” as a philosophy isn’t a “return to tribalism” but a flattening of hierarchies. (Not to be confused with anarcho-capitalism, which is in practice very different with regard to hierarchy)
Boiled down to key concepts:
No one person is inherently better or more intrinsically valuable than another person.
Every person should be allowed their own agency, to associate with whom they please, and have access to the necessities of life.
Any decisions made should be made with the consent of everyone they affect.
There’s a lot of actual theory and what not you can get into, it’s all available freely online, because that’s another thing anarchists are big on, free access to education. The first read that springs to mind is “The Conquest of Bread” which lays out how and why an anarchy based society would work in practice. (Tl;Dr: technology has made it so that we can produce far more than we actually need, so we are capable of supporting everyone without starvation, homelessness, and man-made oppression)
Yes and it’s excellent to discuss and think about. Actually implementing it is different though, and we’ve seen a lot of militant advocates that clearly do not appreciate the complexity in applying those theories and principles to an entire city, much less a state or nation. They get very up their own arguments and there’s not much point asking questions.
Genuinely thank you for the correction. I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek there with the ellipses but that seems to not have been all that obvious and anyway you are correct in that it would have helped to have aimed to be more precise even in a flippant offhand remark.
I have no idea if you are Alt-Left or not but from what I see here that seems a firm “no”? I would say that someone who often resorts to using lies is, while someone who at least aims to use only truths is not. Alt-Left isn’t quite the same as extreme leftist, nor are either identical to “tankie”, although there are some who are one or two or all three of those and yet there are also huge schisms between those who merely “play” at being some of them while actually not being thus.
I may not agree with the extremist left (truly I do not) but I will defend your right to hold such an opinion, while the Alt-Left to me represents disingenuous crap that needs to be fought against harder even than capitalism itself - i.e. the Alt-Left is doing the extreme leftist movement no favors, especially by using such easily-debunked lies and false argument practices.
Fwiw, “Any decisions made should be made with the consent of everyone they affect” seems to fly in the face of putting up “memes” that say “we should kill people” (e.g. landlords), not only b/c of the people’s whose lives may be directly or indirectly impacted but also those who have to merely read such content. We did not sign up for such when we joined the community, and now we are affected by it, unless the mods choose to enact the rules that they previously agreed to. It’s not about conversations not being allowed, but about those conversations being held in a RESPECTFUL (& civil?) manner, i.e. not everywhere & everyhow that the poster chooses despite when that is explicitly against the consent of the recipient. Again, if someone wants to make their own instance and/or community… then they can post whatever they like?
Thus a poster knowingly posting out-of-bounds material and then whinging about it having been removed seems to me, admittedly from the outside mind you, not to represent “real/true anarchy”, but a child’s version of it? As if they are merely using the claim that it is “anarchy” as a cover, in order to attempt to win the argument by cowing the recipient into submission, borrowing from the genuine power of the word and thereby cheapening it in the process, which they do not care about so long as they get their way.
I am curious to hear your take though: would you agree with the premise as I have stated it here? Maybe even also the conclusion?
Thank you for both the shortened summaries and the link to go deeper elsewhere.
I see these kinds of things as similar to the “Paradox of Tolerance.”
If your position is that you will tolerate everything all the time, you will be destroyed by the first thing that you allow into your space that does not tolerate you. Tolerating intolerance inevitably leads to the destruction of tolerant society.
If you instead view tolerance as a social contract, an agreement between us, any intolerance becomes a breach of that contract. Meaning that tolerance, should not, and cannot be extended to the intolerant.
With regard to off-color (or sometimes even violent) memes it’s the same type of thing. I’ve certainly seen violent memes directed at violent groups, groups that advocate for the destruction of whole classes of people, either directly or indirectly.
You could have an academic discussion about what constitutes violence. Though insisting upon civility always upholds the status quo, and if the status quo of death and destruction through capital acquisition and paperwork results in as much death and destruction as more direct alternatives, is the social contract any less broken?
Now, to the point of rules enforcement etc. on individual instances. I can’t defend nebulous examples of people being upset about one thing or another and claiming “anarchy” other than to point out that most people educated in the western world don’t have a good understanding of what anarchy means other than the pop culture definition intentionally cultivated to denigrate moderately successful anti-oligarchic movements in the 19th century.
But in practice what is to be done about those kinds of things? Lemmy is a federation of fiefdoms, the admins being absolute monarchs of their instances should they so choose. If you don’t want to see something, you don’t have to interact with them. There are user, community, and instance level tools to clean things up for yourself individually, or there’s the nuclear option of de-federation entirely for an instance that you don’t want your instance to interact with. If you don’t want to, or don’t have the ability to construct and curate your own instance you are at the whim of whoever runs your fiefdom.
It is the same as browsing r/All 10 years ago. You will see everything, even stuff you don’t want to see, unless you just stick to your subs or local instance only.
I wouldn’t have recommended reddit to everyone I knew 10 years ago, just like I don’t recommend Lemmy to everyone I know now, only those who understand all the asterisks that come along with it.
EXACTLY! So if e.g. the rules of [email protected] include “5. No Enciting Harassment”, then that’s their decision whether to remove something or not? Someone could make a new community like [email protected], and then they could say whatever they wanted?
Instead, they complain here, and I stated how I stand with those who choose to serve the community by making instances (admins) and communities (mods) work, rather than those who would tear it all down simply to watch it burn or in a highly short-sighted attempt to get their way and “win”, at whatever cost.
Contracts are only meaningful to those who read them, understand, or in general care i.e. act in good faith.
So if someone wants to make memes glorifying violence - then do it? But that’s not what we’re discussing here: the topic as I understand it is why people are okay to “merely” complain about why others won’t simply do as they say, even when the former don’t bother to expend any effort on their own behalf, i.e. to make a new community that will allow such content.
I wouldn’t have recommended reddit to everyone I knew 10 years ago, just like I don’t recommend Lemmy to everyone I know now, only those who understand all the asterisks that come along with it.
I don’t know if Lemmy will survive in anything close to resembling its current form. Many seem entirely okay with that, but I’m just saying that it is what it is. Lemmy.ml for instance has lost many of its subscribers, and they have migrated over to other instances. Now with non-extremists being turned away by the “leaky” nature of the communities here, which have rules but they are not enforced, it will harden further.
Our userbase is already shrinking. Last year I had 1 account, today I have 3 different ones that I actively maintain, so as of now I count for 3x active users, or 4 total. But I am only 1. Thus, I don’t believe the stats showing our monthly active users remaining static - if people leaving Lemmy.World and making alts as they move to other instances are likewise either in transition during the time period of the measurement or possibly check back with their old account (to receive notifications on older content, and messages, etc.) then they too will be counted multiple times. How to reconcile the growing number of total accounts with mostly static number of “active” ones, except that our total actual non-bot user numbers are shrinking.
Again, some large fraction of the userbase here seems to think that’s okay. But some of us had hopes that this could be a Reddit replacement. For those of us in the latter camp, we feel disappointed now to find our hopes dashed, as mainstream normal people simply are not coming here - nor are we even comfortable inviting them in the first place.
Upvoting bc I wanna.
Although I it’s (far) worse than that I fear - I genuinely believe it. There is no “hope” for me it would seem.:-)
I generally don’t engage this much with posts of these types, but you seem to be a person who is making statements in good faith. As such, I want to encourage you to look a bit more into those you might label the “alt-left” because I’m quite certain I fall into that category and there’s a lot more than “anyone can do anything they want at anytime” to what we (in the US) were taught in school about things like historical Anarchist movements.
Namely: “Anarchy means no rules and no one is in charge! Burn everything!!!”
If I were to sum things up as succinctly as possible I would say that the primary idea behind “anarchy” as a philosophy isn’t a “return to tribalism” but a flattening of hierarchies. (Not to be confused with anarcho-capitalism, which is in practice very different with regard to hierarchy)
Boiled down to key concepts:
There’s a lot of actual theory and what not you can get into, it’s all available freely online, because that’s another thing anarchists are big on, free access to education. The first read that springs to mind is “The Conquest of Bread” which lays out how and why an anarchy based society would work in practice. (Tl;Dr: technology has made it so that we can produce far more than we actually need, so we are capable of supporting everyone without starvation, homelessness, and man-made oppression)
Yes and it’s excellent to discuss and think about. Actually implementing it is different though, and we’ve seen a lot of militant advocates that clearly do not appreciate the complexity in applying those theories and principles to an entire city, much less a state or nation. They get very up their own arguments and there’s not much point asking questions.
Genuinely thank you for the correction. I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek there with the ellipses but that seems to not have been all that obvious and anyway you are correct in that it would have helped to have aimed to be more precise even in a flippant offhand remark.
I have no idea if you are Alt-Left or not but from what I see here that seems a firm “no”? I would say that someone who often resorts to using lies is, while someone who at least aims to use only truths is not. Alt-Left isn’t quite the same as extreme leftist, nor are either identical to “tankie”, although there are some who are one or two or all three of those and yet there are also huge schisms between those who merely “play” at being some of them while actually not being thus.
I may not agree with the extremist left (truly I do not) but I will defend your right to hold such an opinion, while the Alt-Left to me represents disingenuous crap that needs to be fought against harder even than capitalism itself - i.e. the Alt-Left is doing the extreme leftist movement no favors, especially by using such easily-debunked lies and false argument practices.
Fwiw, “Any decisions made should be made with the consent of everyone they affect” seems to fly in the face of putting up “memes” that say “we should kill people” (e.g. landlords), not only b/c of the people’s whose lives may be directly or indirectly impacted but also those who have to merely read such content. We did not sign up for such when we joined the community, and now we are affected by it, unless the mods choose to enact the rules that they previously agreed to. It’s not about conversations not being allowed, but about those conversations being held in a RESPECTFUL (& civil?) manner, i.e. not everywhere & everyhow that the poster chooses despite when that is explicitly against the consent of the recipient. Again, if someone wants to make their own instance and/or community… then they can post whatever they like?
Thus a poster knowingly posting out-of-bounds material and then whinging about it having been removed seems to me, admittedly from the outside mind you, not to represent “real/true anarchy”, but a child’s version of it? As if they are merely using the claim that it is “anarchy” as a cover, in order to attempt to win the argument by cowing the recipient into submission, borrowing from the genuine power of the word and thereby cheapening it in the process, which they do not care about so long as they get their way.
I am curious to hear your take though: would you agree with the premise as I have stated it here? Maybe even also the conclusion?
Thank you for both the shortened summaries and the link to go deeper elsewhere.
I see these kinds of things as similar to the “Paradox of Tolerance.”
If your position is that you will tolerate everything all the time, you will be destroyed by the first thing that you allow into your space that does not tolerate you. Tolerating intolerance inevitably leads to the destruction of tolerant society.
If you instead view tolerance as a social contract, an agreement between us, any intolerance becomes a breach of that contract. Meaning that tolerance, should not, and cannot be extended to the intolerant.
With regard to off-color (or sometimes even violent) memes it’s the same type of thing. I’ve certainly seen violent memes directed at violent groups, groups that advocate for the destruction of whole classes of people, either directly or indirectly.
You could have an academic discussion about what constitutes violence. Though insisting upon civility always upholds the status quo, and if the status quo of death and destruction through capital acquisition and paperwork results in as much death and destruction as more direct alternatives, is the social contract any less broken?
Now, to the point of rules enforcement etc. on individual instances. I can’t defend nebulous examples of people being upset about one thing or another and claiming “anarchy” other than to point out that most people educated in the western world don’t have a good understanding of what anarchy means other than the pop culture definition intentionally cultivated to denigrate moderately successful anti-oligarchic movements in the 19th century.
But in practice what is to be done about those kinds of things? Lemmy is a federation of fiefdoms, the admins being absolute monarchs of their instances should they so choose. If you don’t want to see something, you don’t have to interact with them. There are user, community, and instance level tools to clean things up for yourself individually, or there’s the nuclear option of de-federation entirely for an instance that you don’t want your instance to interact with. If you don’t want to, or don’t have the ability to construct and curate your own instance you are at the whim of whoever runs your fiefdom.
It is the same as browsing r/All 10 years ago. You will see everything, even stuff you don’t want to see, unless you just stick to your subs or local instance only.
I wouldn’t have recommended reddit to everyone I knew 10 years ago, just like I don’t recommend Lemmy to everyone I know now, only those who understand all the asterisks that come along with it.
EXACTLY! So if e.g. the rules of [email protected] include “5. No Enciting Harassment”, then that’s their decision whether to remove something or not? Someone could make a new community like [email protected], and then they could say whatever they wanted?
Instead, they complain here, and I stated how I stand with those who choose to serve the community by making instances (admins) and communities (mods) work, rather than those who would tear it all down simply to watch it burn or in a highly short-sighted attempt to get their way and “win”, at whatever cost.
Contracts are only meaningful to those who read them, understand, or in general care i.e. act in good faith.
So if someone wants to make memes glorifying violence - then do it? But that’s not what we’re discussing here: the topic as I understand it is why people are okay to “merely” complain about why others won’t simply do as they say, even when the former don’t bother to expend any effort on their own behalf, i.e. to make a new community that will allow such content.
I don’t know if Lemmy will survive in anything close to resembling its current form. Many seem entirely okay with that, but I’m just saying that it is what it is. Lemmy.ml for instance has lost many of its subscribers, and they have migrated over to other instances. Now with non-extremists being turned away by the “leaky” nature of the communities here, which have rules but they are not enforced, it will harden further.
Our userbase is already shrinking. Last year I had 1 account, today I have 3 different ones that I actively maintain, so as of now I count for 3x active users, or 4 total. But I am only 1. Thus, I don’t believe the stats showing our monthly active users remaining static - if people leaving Lemmy.World and making alts as they move to other instances are likewise either in transition during the time period of the measurement or possibly check back with their old account (to receive notifications on older content, and messages, etc.) then they too will be counted multiple times. How to reconcile the growing number of total accounts with mostly static number of “active” ones, except that our total actual non-bot user numbers are shrinking.
Again, some large fraction of the userbase here seems to think that’s okay. But some of us had hopes that this could be a Reddit replacement. For those of us in the latter camp, we feel disappointed now to find our hopes dashed, as mainstream normal people simply are not coming here - nor are we even comfortable inviting them in the first place.