I’m gonna be honest. I kind of probably was sort of somebody like that back in my liberal days.
I put in a lot of wiggle words because I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to, but it definitely is how I felt.
I’ve done a lot of college. I have science degrees, I have a computer science degree, and I have spent a lot of time in my free time, in my liberal days studying math and science and skepticism and woodworking and finance and repairs and all kinds of stuff.
Pre-Marxism, my favorite types of podcasts were literally just random podcasts talking about random science-y or factual things, and I absorbed it all, and honestly it probably prepped me to learn about Marxism too because I learned to be very focused and able to take in a lot of information very quickly. In essence, I practiced being able to learn a whole lot even when not under school pressure.
But…
I don’t think anybody would have called me a mean person or an asshole. In fact, even when I told people I felt that way, they were like, “Nah man, you’re fine.”
But I was talking to liberals, not Marxists. My perspective has changed a little bit ( Just joking, it’s changed an exceptional amount.), and in a lot of ways I actually do kind of consider myself a douchebag compared to what I know now.
No matter how much someone knows about a particular topic, it’s really easy to put blinders on about every other topic. I got pretty good at this over time trying to admit what I didn’t know, but I think that’s what helped open me up to Marxism versus all the people who aren’t willing to learn about it because of the scary communist terms.
I put on my alternative hat and I think, “Okay, from this person’s perspective, what do I think? What would they think? How would I feel if I was in that position?” A lot of people don’t do that. They learn science or facts or something very specific, but they aren’t very good at emotionally connecting to other people.
It’s why emotional intelligence is considered something completely separate from typical intelligence. And of course you can’t really measure either of those things very accurately. They’re just words that we use to describe them. But you can tell when somebody has low emotional intelligence.
I definitely held emotionally charged beliefs about China and Russia and pretty much anybody that the Western newspapers told me to hate. It wasn’t very easy to see things from other people’s perspectives. It took a lot of time to open up and that requires dedication. And if somebody’s really interested in math or science but not interested in people, they aren’t going to put in the time.
Liberal democracies really like it when people learn science and mechanics and engineering and finance because that is stuff that the professional managerial class does, and that helps the bourgeoisie make money. But learning about Marxism and communism and the idea that there is oppressive systems and not just individual faults of individual people, well that threatens the existence of the establishment. These indirect, or even direct, threats of the establishment get translated into a culture among liberal democracies that biases against these ideas, even among the intellectuals.
I’m gonna be honest. I kind of probably was sort of somebody like that back in my liberal days.
I put in a lot of wiggle words because I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to, but it definitely is how I felt.
I’ve done a lot of college. I have science degrees, I have a computer science degree, and I have spent a lot of time in my free time, in my liberal days studying math and science and skepticism and woodworking and finance and repairs and all kinds of stuff.
Pre-Marxism, my favorite types of podcasts were literally just random podcasts talking about random science-y or factual things, and I absorbed it all, and honestly it probably prepped me to learn about Marxism too because I learned to be very focused and able to take in a lot of information very quickly. In essence, I practiced being able to learn a whole lot even when not under school pressure.
But…
I don’t think anybody would have called me a mean person or an asshole. In fact, even when I told people I felt that way, they were like, “Nah man, you’re fine.”
But I was talking to liberals, not Marxists. My perspective has changed a little bit ( Just joking, it’s changed an exceptional amount.), and in a lot of ways I actually do kind of consider myself a douchebag compared to what I know now.
No matter how much someone knows about a particular topic, it’s really easy to put blinders on about every other topic. I got pretty good at this over time trying to admit what I didn’t know, but I think that’s what helped open me up to Marxism versus all the people who aren’t willing to learn about it because of the scary communist terms.
I put on my alternative hat and I think, “Okay, from this person’s perspective, what do I think? What would they think? How would I feel if I was in that position?” A lot of people don’t do that. They learn science or facts or something very specific, but they aren’t very good at emotionally connecting to other people.
It’s why emotional intelligence is considered something completely separate from typical intelligence. And of course you can’t really measure either of those things very accurately. They’re just words that we use to describe them. But you can tell when somebody has low emotional intelligence.
I definitely held emotionally charged beliefs about China and Russia and pretty much anybody that the Western newspapers told me to hate. It wasn’t very easy to see things from other people’s perspectives. It took a lot of time to open up and that requires dedication. And if somebody’s really interested in math or science but not interested in people, they aren’t going to put in the time.
Liberal democracies really like it when people learn science and mechanics and engineering and finance because that is stuff that the professional managerial class does, and that helps the bourgeoisie make money. But learning about Marxism and communism and the idea that there is oppressive systems and not just individual faults of individual people, well that threatens the existence of the establishment. These indirect, or even direct, threats of the establishment get translated into a culture among liberal democracies that biases against these ideas, even among the intellectuals.