I know there are lots of everyday moments of humans being kind to each other, but do you have any good examples on a wider scale to counter that capitalist realist idea?
I usually try and invoke the fact that humanity for hundreds of thousands of years lived in tribes where they had to co-operate or they would die and that “human nature” is just the product of the system under which you live, but are there any better examples you’ve found to convince your lib acquaintances?
I feel like one of the major hurdles towards getting somebody to become a leftist is the idea that humanity can, if organized democratically and if properly educated and with the right ideas of solidatory instilled, create a better system than the capitalists or technocrats have created. It’s easy to look around and superficially see everybody as bumbling idiots or greedy assholes, particularly if you’re socially atomized and apathetic, and so conclude that the working class, if left to it’s own devices, would infight and crumble.
Or is this just one of those axiomatic things where if somebody you know believes it, it’s very difficult to make them not believe it through historical examples unless they do major soul searching after a personal crisis?
Always think of this passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Wampeters, Foma, And Granfalloons”:
“[Dr. Robert Redfield] acknowledged that primitive societies were bewilderingly various. He begged us to admit, though, that all of them had certain characteristics in common. For instance: They were all so small that everybody knew everybody well, and associations lasted for life. The members communicated intimately with one another, and very little with anybody else.
“The members communicated only by word of mouth. There was no access to the experience and thought of the past, except through memory. The old were treasured for their memories. There was little change. What one man knew and believed was the same as what all men knew and believed. There wasn’t much of a division of labor. What one person did was pretty much what another person did. “And so on. Dr. Redfield invited us to call any such society ‘a Folk Society’…. In a folk society, says Dr. Redfield, and I quote him now:
“‘[B]ehavior is personal, not impersonal. A “person” may be defined as that social object which I feel to respond to situations as I do, with all the sentiments and interests which I feel to be my own; a person is myself in another form, his qualities and values are inherent within him, and his significance for me is not merely one of utility. A “thing,” on the other hand, is a social object which has no claim upon my sympathies, which responds to me, as I conceive it, mechanically; its value for me exists in so far as it serves my end. In the folk society, all human beings admitted to the society are treated as persons; one does not deal impersonally (“thing fashion”) with any other participant in the little world of that folk society.
“‘Moreover [Dr. Redfield goes on], in the folk society much besides human beings is treated personally. The pattern of behavior which is first suggested by the inner experience of the individual—his wishes, fears, sensitivities, and interests of all sorts—is projected onto all objects with which he comes in contact. Thus nature, too, is treated personally; the elements, the features of the landscape, the animals, and especially anything in the environment which by its appearance or behavior suggests the attributes of mankind—to all these are attributed qualities of the human person.’
“And I say to you that we are full of chemicals which require us to belong to folk societies, or failing that, to feel lousy all the time. We are chemically engineered to live in folk societies, just as fish are chemically engineered to live in clean water—and there aren’t any folk societies for us anymore.”
Continues along:
“If we become increasingly apathetic in modern times - well, so do fish on river banks, after a little while. Our children often come to resemble apathetic fish - except that fish can’t play guitars. And what do many of our children attempt to do? They attempt to form folk societies, which they call “communes.” They fail. The generation gap is an argument between those who believe folk societies are still possible and those who know they aren’t.
Older persons form clubs and corporations and the like. Those who form them pretend to be interested in this or that narrow aspect of life. Members of the Lions Club pretend to be interested in the cure and prevention of diseases of the eye. They are in fact lonesome Neanderthalers, obeying the First Law of Life, which is this: “Human beings become increasingly contented as they approach the simpleminded, brotherly conditions of a folk society.”
Only possible in a socialist system, in which inter-personal relationships are not commodified as we currently are overwhelmed by today.
Carlin speaks pretty profoundly about this subject too. Will see if I can find some stuff later…