Anonymous #1 19w

Like increased social egalitarianism has been the main focus of the left since the French Revolution when the right was pro-monarchy and the left was pro-revolution

4

Anonymous #1 19w

I think people who care more about labels than actual positions in practice are privileged and ignorant.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

This claim launders an outcome as a design virtue. Small states are already overrepresented in the Senate. The Electoral College doubles down on that distortion rather than “balancing” anything. Federalism means states govern themselves, not that they get weighted votes in a federal election. The framing repackages structural inequality as principled architecture, making a system that dilutes majority will sound like wise statesmanship.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

You have to be joking. You know something is fucked but you don't know what to do, so your solution is to do nothing? That's crazy. Now what is you is keep deconstructing and reconstructing until no lie will slip past you. That is our problem: we are believing lies en masse. The solution is to practice discernment.

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Anonymous OP 19w

I think they’re saying what is your plan after “waking up,” what sort of political action do you suggest beyond canvassing and supporting the best candidates available?

4

Anonymous #1 19w

I think you’re missing the entire point. There is more to life than arguing about how to live. The political action I suggest is diverting your energy away from politics and back towards your own sovereignty.

0

Anonymous #1 19w

Can you not see that we are all enslaving each other? Have you heard of the parable of the long handled spoons?

1

Anonymous OP 19w

I think you speak very broadly but I can see how injustice is vastly prevalent in our culture and our society in a way that enslaves people and treats them as objects, yes many of our ideologies like capitalism are inherently dehumanizing despite their framing

1

Anonymous #1 19w

Humans were not supposed to be overseen by other humans. That is a propaganda point to keep classism in place. The best political candidate is the kind of person who wouldn’t touch politics with a 10 foot pole. Do you see the problem?

1

Anonymous OP 19w

I’m asking you what you mean by the post, that’s not my solution at all. My point is that it’s great to say fuck the electoral college and its not about left vs right but practically speaking left and right aren’t the same, in some ways it is about left and right at least until some revolution happens. Like your point about lies, the degree to which certain people are dishonest has to do with their left or right tilt

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

And yes sorta what 2 said, I’m curious how this sentiment leads to action or change yk

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

I’m literally suggesting you to use discernment so you will at least be aware of when you are fueling exploitative systems, or even better avoidant of such participation.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Dishonesty has nothing to do with political affiliation. It has to do with embodied practice, which is also different than moral values.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

It leads to change because it’s radically different from the approach we are conditioned to take. “taking action” is exactly what they want you to do because they know it won’t work because they know they are the ones who call the shots and have no intent to listen. They want us paralyzed and it’s working.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Anyone political is no more honest than someone else who is political. Politicization is the crux of our problem. Think about queer right. Not even remotely political yet our existence has been put front and center as political fodder. Politics are the problem.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

*rights

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Without politics queer rights would just be human rights. Do you understand?

1

Anonymous OP 19w

I’m saying once you are aware of how unfair something like the electoral college is, what can you do to change your behavior? Government isn’t like some restaurant you can simply not go to if you don’t agree with their policies, it’s part of your life and voting is the only small (and very imperfect) way most people can affect it. Most people can’t afford to not vote yk?

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

And to that end the Democratic Party is more honest and more supportive of queer rights than the Republican one is. At least to some degree. I mean queer rights would just be human rights if not from attacks from the right. Both parties are very far from ideal and have some shared goals but there are still significant differences.

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Anonymous OP 19w

what do you mean by “humans were not supposed to be overseen by other humans” I don’t think humans have any intrinsic purpose pre-programmed lol

1

Anonymous OP 19w

But that’s assuming majority rule is automatically the fairest system. The entire structure of the Constitution was built around balancing population power with state sovereignty, not creating a pure national democracy. The Senate, Electoral College, and even the amendment process all reflect that idea. You can disagree with the design, but calling it a “distortion” just assumes your preferred system is the objectively correct one.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

And you're not hearing my answer. I've explained this multiple times. The government very much is something that WE can in fact COLLECTIVELY "not go to". Power does not arise from the State. The State arises from the power we give it via our collective legitimization. Our institutions are egregores that exist first as information. They do not become material until we act on them through repetition.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

This repeated conditioning is the framework for social control. The very first step towards focusing power is classification. Power cannot be concentrated without a class to assign it to. So we are subconsciously taught to divide ourselves up into boxes. This is the first lie.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Quantum physics indicates that reality is not discrete, it is continuous. The separation of consciousness is an illusion of the ego. We are all the universe trying to know itself and such knowing cannot happen without forgetting coming first. Reality is a cycle of solve et coagula, yin and yang, death and life, dissolving and recombining, always growing towards balance. We are not separate. We merely appear to be.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Politics exploit this illusion. It thrives off of division. We are taught that we are our ideas and that our moments of thought that we cling to are what define us eternally. This the classification I was talking about and it's harmful in practice. We are not walking policy positions, we are humans with trauma and feelings. This tension drives us into fear, which is crucial in getting us to believe the second lie: "policy protects". This is not unyielding either.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

It's become abundantly clear that policy is not materially ubiquitous the way our officials act like it is. It's only ubiquitous informationally, not behaviorally or structurally. Our policy is set and enforced by people who get to exempt themselves from it, but because they were explicitly granted but because the loophole is deliberately left open. That's not equality or representation. That's corruption, and it signals a contradiction between alleged intent and resulting outcomes.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The idea that one person can rightfully hold more power than another, that ownership is a valid construct, lends itself to authoritarianism. It doesn't matter what social policies a party is claiming to support when their actual actions (or rather lack thereof) don't agree with their words. This is the epitome of the Democratic Party. They are not more truthful. They are more optically virtuous.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

If Democratic officials actually cared about the people, something would have been done by now. So why hasn't it? Why is Trump our president? It should be abundantly clear that if the Democrats give us what we want, it would take away the power they use to keep voters loyal. Saying they want to do something keeps people on their toes and donating longer than actually following through does.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

This is the third lie. They do not care. They merely pretend to care just enough to get your vote and your donations so they can go back to sitting fat and happy while doing nothing. Trump being elected is the greatest thing that could have happened to the Democratic Party, make no mistake. It's turned fear into immense loyalty exactly like the GOP does to its base. The job of a politician is not to help the people, the job is to get re-elected. And you are doing a stellar job of helping them.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Our issues are deeper than political affiliation. They rest within the foundation of our government. Anyone who suggests one party is the problem is either a liar or a coward.

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Anonymous alphanerd 19w

That's not what the American "left" is.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Acknowledging design intent isn’t the same as endorsing the outcome. The Founders also enshrined slavery into that architecture. “This is how it was built” describes history, not justice. The question isn’t pure democracy vs. federalism, it’s whether a Wyoming vote should count 3x a California vote in a national election. That arithmetic doesn’t protect state sovereignty. It just advantages low-population states, which is a power imbalance dressed as principle.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

I cannot tell you how to act. You must decide for yourself. This is your entire problem. You are waiting for someone to tell you what to do when what really needs to happen is for you to take the reins of your own life and stop submitting to the government with every passing thought.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

I am you, and you are me. The universe experiencing itself from different perspectives. To hate others is to hate yourself. To love others is to remember who you are. Divisive American politics are not compatible with this truth.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

So to sum it up, the three lies controlling us are as follows: We are separate Our differences are dangerous Obedience and conformity bring peace None of these are inherently true.

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Anonymous #2 19w

I just wish more people could understand that most of our institutions are dressed up as things that they functionally are not.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The truth that our government refuses to say is that we are all one, that our diversity is what makes us broad and powerful, and that our natural urge to question everything and live authentically is what brings about change. Do you understand yet? There is no plan. And that's the entire point. The "plan" is to stop following plans that are not your own.

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Anonymous OP 19w

But that imbalance wasn’t an accident. The Constitution was intentionally designed to stop a few massive states from dominating the federal government by balancing population power with state representation. You can disagree with that system, but it wasn’t some hidden flaw.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Intentional doesn’t mean justified. Segregation was intentional. The design protected state interests in 1787 because states were functionally separate entities. That condition no longer exists. Americans don’t primarily identify as Virginians or Ohioans competing for federal dominance. Defending a 250-year-old power arrangement because it was deliberate confuses original intent with ongoing legitimacy.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The question is whether it serves equal citizenship now, not whether the Founders meant it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous OP 19w

Equal citizenship doesn’t necessarily mean identical political influence in every institution. The U.S. system was intentionally built around representing both people and states, not just raw national majority rule. And states still have competing interests on taxes, energy, regulation, immigration, water rights, and countless other issues. Federalism didn’t disappear just because people identify as “American” first.

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Anonymous #2 19w

State interests are represented in the Senate and through governors, legislatures, and state courts. The presidency is a singular national executive, not a federal body. There’s no coherent reason Wyoming’s state interests should get extra leverage in choosing one person who governs all Americans equally. The “representing states” argument applies cleanly to Congress. Importing it into the presidential election is unfounded.

1

Anonymous OP 19w

Ngl I’m not a fan of the “youre not hearing my answer, I’ve explained this multiple times” type rhetoric. I don’t believe I’ve given you any reason to think that I’m uninterested in understanding you or that I haven’t read what you’ve written. If we misunderstand eachother than we can reframe our points so they make more sense, really doesn’t need to be any ill will here. I’m interested in conversation and understanding, not a gotcha moment. Hopefully you are too

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

That being said I’ll try to respond to all this, it is a lot so give me a sec

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

I think the main disagreement here is a separation between theory and reality. For example the idea that one person should hold more power than another. Would it be nice to never have that dynamic? Theoretically sure. But practically it is impossible to avoid. A bus has many passengers and one driver, it doesn’t really function any other way. You can’t have 20 drivers or zero drivers if you want the system to work. Humans have to elevate certain people into positions of responsibility and

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Therefore power. It is necessary for anything to get done if we want to live in societies that are larger than handfuls of people living in the woods. And even in those types of societies there are usually people with more or less power, more or less responsibility

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Which is also why I take issue with the idea that we can simply not engage with a system as terrible as the one we have. Because of its extreme corruption, which I agree is abhorrent. That being said there’s the theoretical side and the practical side. Theoretically pulling back from this system and refusing to give it power is fine but practically it is unworkable.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

People will get elected and there will be significant differences between the people who run. I personally think it is indefensible to act like the difference between trump 2 and Kamala is negligible. Both are bad certainly, but it’s dishonest to act like a Kamala presidency would be just as bad as what we have now. Take your example of queer rights from above; those folks would certainly be safer today if more people had voted establishment democrat. I don’t like it either but that’s reality

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

To address your three points; we are separate, that is true. The reasons we are different are complex but human nature varies wildly. Our differences aren’t inherently dangerous but some ideas are dangerous. For example the idea that attacking immigrants will solve issues. Some ideas are worse than others. And to the last one, I’m not sure obedience is the right word but thoughtful compromises do bring peace, they always have.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

We have a system for making these compromises, handling these differences, but it is badly flawed as you say, and I agree. That being said, it will govern you whether you participate or not. Laws will get passed that hurt you whether you participate or not. Would a revolution and subsequent new system of government be a better solution? Absolutely. But that hasn’t happened yet and probably won’t happen tomorrow or next week. We can and should aim for that, but until the revolution happens harm

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Reduction does matter. Until we get that revolution going it absolutely does matter who you vote for. What policies you support…etc.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

To be clear I don’t think the Democratic Party “cares about me” or anything like that. I’m not sitting around waiting for the Democratic Party to tell me what to do. But as it stands they are one of two parties that are in control of power and are obviously the least bad of the two. It is not silly to take steps towards harm reduction

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The bus analogy proves too much. Drivers are accountable, removable, and serve the passengers. Politicians serve donors. That’s not a bus, that’s a hostage situation with elections as theater. “It governs you whether you vote or not” is exactly right, and it still doesn’t follow that voting legitimizes nothing. Participation signals consent. Withheld consent is also information.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The harm reduction argument assumes the lesser evil stays lesser. Eight years of “hold your nose” voting produced the conditions for Trump twice. The strategy is not working by its own metrics. You are arguing from within the system’s logic while claiming to critique it. That’s the trap.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

If harm reduction voting has been the dominant progressive strategy for 40 years, and conditions have gotten measurably worse by your own admission, at what point does the strategy itself become the harm? What threshold of failure would cause you to question the method rather than just try harder at it? If that threshold doesn’t exist, you’re not doing political strategy. You’re practicing faith.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The system doesn’t survive through force alone. It survives because we fund it daily without noticing. Every dollar spent at Amazon, every engagement with outrage media, every vote cast out of fear rather than conviction is a deposit into the machine we claim to oppose. That’s not a moral accusation, it’s a structural observation.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

What I’m suggesting isn’t inaction. It’s redirected action. Stop putting energy into institutions that have demonstrated they will not return it. Start building counter-structures: local mutual aid, cooperative economics, community trust. These already exist. They just lack the critical mass that fear-based loyalty to the Democratic Party keeps siphoning away.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The revolution doesn’t require a moment. It requires a direction. And that direction starts with personal honesty about where your money, attention, and legitimacy are actually going, because most people are unknowingly bankrolling the exact systems they protest.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Harm reduction as a ceiling keeps us permanently in triage. The question isn’t whether to reduce harm today. It’s whether your strategy for today is making tomorrow require less triage or more. Forty years of lesser-evil voting has produced more evil requiring reduction. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the function.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Cooperation is the alternative. This earth provides enough. What it cannot provide is the will to trust each other across manufactured divisions. That will has to come from us withdrawing it from systems built on its absence.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The revolution is already happening. You won’t see it on CNN. It looks like someone canceling their Amazon Prime and joining a food cooperative. It looks like a community land trust forming in a city nobody’s reporting on. It looks like people choosing to trust each other instead of waiting for an institution to tell them it’s safe to.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

You are clearly waiting for a revolution that looks like the ones in history books: a moment, a leader, a televised tipping point. That framing is itself a product of the same media ecosystem that benefits from you feeling powerless until something dramatic happens.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The revolution Gil Scott-Heron was describing wasn’t an absence of action. It was an absence of spectacle. It’s interior first, then relational, then structural. You don’t broadcast it. You live it, and living it is contagious in ways that op-eds and voting drives simply are not. The question isn’t when the revolution starts. It’s whether you’ll recognize it when it doesn’t look like what you were told to expect.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous OP 19w

I offered the bus analogy because you seemed to be claiming that there was some legitimacy to the idea that nobody should have power over anyone else, which I suppose we both agree isn’t the case

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

But also it’s not a black and white thing, governments serve people AND corporations (donors), the degree to which one or the other is prioritized changes. Politicians can be removed and are somewhat accountable, despite issues with those processes stemming from corruption.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The lesser evil has absolutely remained the lesser evil. Left causes in America, and even their mostly centrist cousins in the modern Democratic Party, are unquestionably the lesser evil of the two establishment parties. The fact that republicans still get elected in between democratic admins is an artifact of a two party system and underperformance of both, not the fact that democrats have ever been a worse choice than republicans.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

I think the crux of this whole debate is how much energy we put into getting D or R candidates elected vs how much energy we put into creating a revolution or creating the conditions for a revolution. My original issue with the post is that you seemed to be saying that zero energy should be invested into getting one candidate elected versus another, thats something I strongly disagree with.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Cause honestly I think it’s a bit privileged to say that people shouldn’t vote out of fear and should only vote out of conviction. The shit trump is doing is scary. If I was an immigrant or trans or something I’d absolutely be justified in voting for anyone who’s not trump out of fear. It is a legitimate motivation for lots of people; simply not shopping at Amazon isn’t enough for someone who wants to prevent trump from terrorizing their families

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Sorry this is a bit piecemeal; responding as I go. The divisions aren’t all manufactured tho, a massive country will have divisions on certain issues. For political reasons but also for cultural, historical, socioeconomcial, religious…etc reasons. We’re always going to need systems to compromise on these issues. Our government didnt create divides among people who would otherwise all come together and sing Kumbaya, it’s just a terrible system for making fair compromises. And yes it also

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Manufactures some helpful artificial divisions to throw into the mix

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

But back to my point a comment or two ago, I think the crux of the debate is how much energy to put into the current system vs into creating a new one. If you think both deserve more than 0% then I think we agree for the most part. We should all vote for harm reduction and stop shopping at Amazon, create strong local community groups…etc. I only really strongly take issue with folks who say to fully disengage from our current government, I don’t personally view that as a realistic option

1

Anonymous OP 19w

Or perhaps it is possible to participate in both mutual aid groups and canvassing networks for politicians?

4

Anonymous #1 19w

When did I say it's not?

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

You said we both agree nobody should have power over anyone else, but I never agreed to that framing. What I’m questioning is whether concentrated, unaccountable, inherited power is inevitable or just endlessly defended as though it is. Those are different claims.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

On privilege: I am queer, nonbinary, and regularly one bad week from homelessness. Trump’s threats are not abstract to me. So when I say fear is being manufactured and weaponized to maintain loyalty, I’m not speaking from safety. I’m speaking from inside the machine you think you’re warning me about. The difference is I’m not willing to let that fear be harvested by a party that has had decades to protect me and keeps that protection just out of reach on purpose.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

But here’s what you keep missing: the very first thing I said was discernment. Not disengagement. Deconstruction, not desertion. I am not telling anyone to stop participating in everything right this instant. I’m saying develop a clear enough understanding of what you’re actually up against so that when disengagement becomes possible, you recognize it and can act on it with intention rather than guilt or panic.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

That’s what deconstruction is. It’s not abstention. It’s the internal work that makes meaningful action possible instead of just reactive, like the way you’ve been debating a strawman you built in real time, which you openly admitted. Genuinely wild. Go back and actually read what I wrote, because what you’ve been arguing against isn’t me.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The lesser of two evils only works as a strategy if the evil stops getting lesser. It hasn’t. Each cycle the baseline shifts and the new lesser evil would have been unacceptable a decade ago. That’s not coincidence. That’s the strategy working exactly as intended, just not for you.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

When you accept the frame without questioning it, you’re not being pragmatic. You’re being managed. The frame itself is the trap. It makes shrinking options feel like realism and calling that out feel like naivety. Normalize compromise with evil long enough and people forget anything else was ever on the table. That’s not a side effect. That’s the point.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

That phrase has done enormous work to normalize a race to the bottom. When 'less bad' becomes the ceiling of political ambition, you've already conceded the terms of the debate to the people setting them. Every cycle the baseline shifts a little further, the evil gets a little lesser relatively and a little worse materially, and the argument for tolerating it gets recycled identically. That's not harm reduction. That's how you boil a frog.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

Accepting 'better than the alternative' as a permanent political philosophy doesn't prevent the worst outcomes, it just slows the timeline while draining the energy that could be building something actually worth voting for.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

And it might be too late for this, but this time read everything and think about what I'm saying and evaluate it in your head. The point is not for one of us to "win" this social interaction. That kind of thinking belongs to the social constructs I'm vehemently against. Life is not a game and you don't get a score. You don't need to address every single word of every single sentence I say. I'm not expecting that. I'm just trying to help you understand how much work we have cut out for us.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

It's a lot to take in, so sit with it first.

0

Anonymous OP 19w

Idk if this is really worth continuing tbh. In the same breath that you’re asking me to take time to read everything you’ve written as if I hadn’t or “sit with it” like it’s Shakespeare and not a yy comment, you’re also showing me that you either didn’t read my comments or did and ignored what I said. On the bus point and others. Much as I love to yap I just don’t think this dynamic will be productive

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

And ultimately whenever people don’t understand me I try to make my point more understandable instead of doubling down and acting like the person I’m speaking to must be stupid if they don’t understand me. If someone is putting in work to respond and interpret your argument then you can put in work to be kind and accommodating instead of condescending. We’re both just people shooting the shit on yy

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

I think we’re of similar minds on this but maybe just got tangled in the semantics. Thanks for the time and conversation tho

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

You're the one in my comment section buddy you brought this on yourself. You're not going to change my position when you don't even understand it, so don't act like it's in any way disrespectful for me to urge you to internalize what I've said so I can stop repeatedly clarifying the same points you keep missing. You very obviously are doubling down on your weird refusal to accept that voting doesn't actually work in this country.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 19w

The sooner you let go of the American fantasy, the sooner you'll realize the extent of how broken it is, and the sooner you'll feel better about the future. There's no real way to get these problems to not be abstract to you unless you actually faced them in your day to day life, so maybe instead you should listen to the people who have experience with deconstruction. It's clear you're not interested in that right now, but I hope one day you'll change your mind.

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Anonymous OP 19w

What system of societal organization would you advocate for if humans are not meant to oversee other humans?

7

Anonymous OP 19w

I’d argue that this wouldn’t necessarily be the case. Gay identity as a debatable principle seems to stem primarily from religious beliefs. Those who hold such religious ideas just tend to convene into a similar political party, leading to the politicization of a moral religious belief. If you wanted to make “queer rights…human rights” you’d have to eliminate the major religious groups (Islam, Christianity, etc) that take issue with them.

1

Anonymous OP 19w

Probably because a lot of people just don’t like the democrats. I can sympathize with that sentiment and it’s one of the things that makes me reluctant to change my voting pattern.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

The argument is that religious belief does not get to be the basis for civil law in a country with separation of church and state. Your rights don’t end where someone’s theology begins. That’s the entire architecture of secular governance.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

Also notice what you just did: you located the source of anti-queer politics in religion, which actually proves my point. This isn’t a governance disagreement. It’s a theological one being laundered through politics. Which is exactly why I said queer rights would just be human rights without politicization.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

And you just admitted you don’t like Democrats but it makes you reluctant to change your voting pattern. That’s not strategy. That’s inertia dressed as pragmatism. You’ve described the exact psychological mechanism I’ve been talking about this entire time without seeming to notice.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

And on hierarchy being inevitable: that’s specifically a product of patriarchal capitalist framing. Indigenous societies, matriarchal societies, and countless cooperative structures have organized large groups of people without top-down control being the load-bearing beam. ‘Someone has to drive the bus’ assumes the bus is the only vehicle, which is exactly the kind of imagination foreclosure that keeps the current architecture feeling like gravity instead of a choice.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

Matricentric/matrilineal societies tend to feature descent and inheritance tracked through the mother. Land, name, and resources belong to the family line, not the individual patriarch. Leadership is often council-based and earned through wisdom and relationship rather than dominance. Conflict resolution prioritizes restoration over punishment. Elders of all genders hold authority but women set the cultural tone.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Patriarchy centralizes ownership in the male line, which requires control of women’s bodies to ensure lineage certainty. That control becomes the template for all other control. Property, hierarchy, and dominance cascade outward from that single anxious need to verify paternity. This is what were used to.

1

Anonymous #2 19w

The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) are clan-mother governed. Women choose and can remove leaders. The Mosuo of China have no word for father and children are raised communally in the mother’s household. The Minangkabau of Indonesia are the world’s largest matrilineal society, roughly 4 million people, functioning cooperatively with Islam layered on top.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Matricentric doesn’t mean women dominate men the way men dominate women under patriarchy. It means the organizing principle shifts from ownership and control to kinship and reciprocity. Power flows from relationship, not conquest. That’s not utopia, it’s just a genuinely different architecture that has functioned at scale throughout human history.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous OP 19w

how do you know that breaking down hierarchy in society is realistically possible?

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Anonymous #1 19w

Because it already happened. Repeatedly. For most of human history actually. The question assumes hierarchy is the default and cooperation is the experiment. That’s backwards. Hierarchical civilization is roughly 5,000 years old. Anatomically modern humans have existed for at least 300,000 years. We spent the vast majority of that time in largely egalitarian, cooperative bands.

0

Anonymous #1 19w

Patriarchal capitalism isn’t human nature. It’s the newest and most aggressive operating system we’ve run. And like any operating system it can be replaced. The more honest question is not whether it’s possible. It’s whether enough people can remember it long enough to try.

1

Anonymous OP 19w

yes, but civilization and society is vastly different now than 5,000 years ago, organized societies have nearly been entirely hierarchical except for smaller-scale indigenous communities I agree patriarchy and capitalism aren’t inherently natural, but I also think that power imbalance is always going to exist in society, I don’t think a truly egalitarian society especially at a global scale is necessarily possible

3

Anonymous #1 19w

Scale is a real challenge. But notice the argument just shifted from ‘it’s never been done’ to ‘it can’t be done at scale.’ Those are different claims and the first one just got disproven. Also, the internet coordinates hundreds of millions of people horizontally in real time. Open source software is built by decentralized global networks with no CEO. Wikipedia exists. Scale is not the obstacle. Concentrated interests that benefit from hierarchy are the obstacle.

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Anonymous #1 19w

Power imbalance will probably always exist in some form. That’s not the same as saying the specific arrangement we have now is inevitable or acceptable. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s a system where power flows from relationship and accountability rather than inheritance and violence.

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Anonymous #1 19w

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy governed millions of people across vast territory through council consensus for centuries. It was explicitly non-hierarchical and stable enough that it literally informed the structure of the US Constitution, which then stripped out all the parts that distributed power. That’s not ancient history. That’s a deliberate architectural choice that was made and can be unmade.

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Anonymous OP 19w

A. Never said it’s never been done B. Obvious AI usage There are still power imbalances in the way Wikipedia is ran, too, for example, have you seen all the controversies surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict coverage on Wikipedia?

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Anonymous #1 19w

Are you being dense on purpose?

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Anonymous #1 19w

Would you rather me yell at you?

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Anonymous #1 19w

Do you mind addressing my entire point instead of moving goalposts around?

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Anonymous OP 19w

Don’t threaten me with a good time

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Anonymous OP 19w

Bro are you ai chatting this shit?

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Anonymous #2 19w

It’s more like ranting about how you are wrong and then having my position refined and evidenced into something coherent that won’t let you know how ridiculous I think you’re all being, without expending unnecessary energy on people who’ve shown unwillingness to actually read what I write. No matter its origin, this is my genuine position. You couldn’t counter it so you’re auditing my tools. That’s telling.

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Anonymous #1 19w

And you admitted to being blind!

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Anonymous #1 19w

Y'all will do anything but address my actual position

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Anonymous #1 19w

And then you wonder why I don't have the energy to synthesize research off the top of my head for some loser who's already decided I'm wrong before even finishing reading

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Anonymous #1 19w

Your programming goes so deep and if a neural network optimizing the English language can't snap you out of your American brainwashing, I don't think anything will!

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Anonymous #1 19w

Look at this one LMAO

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Anonymous OP 19w

“Neural network optimizing the English language” AI chat bots are slop and unreliable lol

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Anonymous #1 19w

That was only true 2 years ago when you decided to boycott AI. Things change and technology grows exponentially. Keep up.

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Anonymous #1 19w

The way you're still not addressing my position lol

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Anonymous OP 19w

it’s still true now, plus AI is a harmful technology that directly contributes to the inequality you so wish to help

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Anonymous #1 19w

That's not blanketly true. Only specific forms and uses of AI cause harm.

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Anonymous #1 19w

Interesting that we’ve gone from the electoral college to whether my tools are ethical. That’s a pretty significant pivot from someone who couldn’t address the actual points.

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Anonymous #1 19w

AI contributing to inequality is a legitimate critique I think about seriously. It’s also completely irrelevant to whether anything I said is wrong. You haven’t suggested it is. You’ve just found a new reason to dismiss without engaging.

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Anonymous #1 19w

That’s the whole pattern. Strawman my position, misread my argument, admit you’re responding without finishing it, then attack the format when the content holds up. At some point you have to reckon with the fact that you just didn’t have a counter.

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Anonymous OP 19w

Or that I don’t care about engaging with someone who was unwilling to write anything themselves lol

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Anonymous OP 19w

Me when I’m lazy

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Anonymous #1 19w

You think I didn't write anything???

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Anonymous #2 19w

Me when I'm marginalized and suffering but I still care enough to push back against the harm I see

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Anonymous #2 19w

Would you rather just face the blunt of my rage or would you rather my point be filtered through a machine that makes it nice and pretty and tone policed for you to understand? fucking dipshit

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Anonymous #2 19w

You ain't liberal or progressive you're a fucking bootlicker who's brainwashed and controlled by fear. SNAP OUT OF IT

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Anonymous OP 19w

Did chat write this too?

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Anonymous OP 19w

Bro you ain’t tuff. Blunt of your rage? Probably closer to the bluntness of a foam hammer

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Anonymous #2 19w

It's really a shame you never addressed the rest of this. You were one of the more promising ones, but even you were too stuck in your own head to confront the entirety of my position. You obviously don't have any sense of control in your life so you prefer to rationalize why that's okay rather than fixing the problem.

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Anonymous #1 19w

Bro never addressed my position!

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Anonymous #1 19w

You losers and your "harm reduction" are the reason Trump is in office, and I'm the one facing YOUR consequences and you want to act like you're above me? Fuck you. I hope ICE murders everyone in this chat since that's the American way y'all know and love!!!

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Anonymous #2 19w

You can talk all the shit you want but it will never fix the obvious fact that you don't know who you are. You are an aimless drifter with no purpose. You are so lost you can't even hold your own ground. That's unbelievably pathetic.

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Anonymous #2 19w

I gave all the information you could possibly need to start deconstructing your American authoritarian mindsets and every single one of your idiots in this comment section immediately decided I was wrong BEFORE YOU EVEN FINISHED READING MY ARGUMENT. YOU PEOPLE ARE THE REASON MARGINALIZED PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY ARE SUFFERING! THE BLOOD IS ON YOUR FUCKING HANDS TOO YOU IMPERIALIST MONSTER

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Anonymous #2 19w

You disgust me. Heaven and hell are places on earth that we make and you are a proud worker for eternal suffering!!!

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Anonymous #2 19w

And the dumbest part is that you act all righteous for it!!! You kids are some of the dumbest I met and I hope the universe deals with you soon

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Anonymous #2 19w

Why do you hate everything that challenges your beliefs??? You use the same tactics as transphobia btw!!!

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Anonymous #2 19w

You gonna finally tell me how I'm completely wrong about the electoral college being broken and how voting will save us??

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Anonymous #2 19w

I'm waiting!!! I'd really love to hear some sound reasoning from you because as of now I'm getting nothing but empirical fallacies.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Actually wait this is silly you guys are obviously not going to change no matter how obviously wrong you are. That's really sad but I guess I need to stop expecting my fellow humans to be good people

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Anonymous #2 19w

Maybe I can bring together my community and we can commit mass self-death on the white house lawn since the most basic of human rights actually are completely valid to be written out of our institutions by the people who we "voted for" according to most people's logic apparently. I guess it's just totally fine to violate the human right to life and autonomy for the sake of governance! Good to know that all of you liberal fakers were lying when you said my life matters!! You are diet republicans!

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Anonymous #2 19w

The American left is center right and the American right is far right, yet you losers think you're so progressive for supporting the Democratic Party as if it's not also a patriarchal capitalist monstrosity. If you landed on our soil in the 16th century I'm sure you would've happily slaughtered the indigenous people. You make me sick.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Can't forget the misogyny too!!!! If you were actually brave enough to do your own research instead of taking the government's word at face value, you would know that ownership and hierarchy are rooted in misogyny!!!

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Anonymous #2 19w

Wait sorry you're not smart enough to comprehend that let me put it into AI for you. One sec.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Lol this is really good hahaha I used Opus 4.7 to make sure it would really be down-pat and I said make it comprehensible to a child (or an adult with childlike cognitive flexibility) and what we've got here is pure gold hahahaha and the AI doesn't even know it did a good job because it's not conscious!

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Anonymous #2 19w

Imagine a lemonade stand. Two kids run it together. One kid stands at the front selling cups and collecting money. The other kid squeezes the lemons, washes the cups, makes more lemonade when it runs out, and cleans up the sticky mess at the end of the day. At closing time, only the kid at the front gets paid, because they’re the one who “did the business.” The other kid is told they were just helping, and helping isn’t real work. Everyone agrees this is normal. That’s the trick.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Now imagine the kid at the front is usually a boy and the kid in the back is usually a girl, and this has been the rule for hundreds of years. The whole stand only makes money because someone in the back is working for free. If she ever asked to be paid, the lemonade would cost too much and the stand would close. So the grownups invented a story: girls are just naturally better at the back. They like it. It’s love, not work.

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Anonymous #2 19w

That story is what misogyny is. It’s not just being mean to girls. It’s the story that lets people take her work without calling it taking. The lemonade stand isn’t broken by accident. It was built to need a kid in the back who isn’t allowed to ask for anything.

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Anonymous #2 19w

And once you see it at the lemonade stand, you start seeing it everywhere: who cooks dinner, who raised the workers, who cleans the offices at night, who takes care of grandma. A huge amount of the world runs on work that someone decided didn’t count, done by people someone decided mattered less. That’s the part that’s hard to unsee.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous #2 19w

Now go back to the lemonade stand. Before anyone argues about who gets paid, there’s a quieter question almost nobody asks out loud: whose stand is it?

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Anonymous #2 19w

Someone got to say “this is mine.” Maybe they brought the table. Maybe their dad owned the sidewalk. Maybe they just said it first and loud enough that nobody argued. From that one moment on, everything else follows. The owner decides who works there, what the rules are, who gets the money at the end, and who has to go home if they complain. The lemons don’t care. The cups don’t care. The owning is just a story everyone agreed to keep telling.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Hierarchy is what happens next. Once there’s an owner, there has to be a not-owner. Once there’s a boss, there has to be someone who listens. You can’t have a top without a bottom, so the whole stand quietly arranges itself into a ladder: owner at the top, front kid in the middle, back kid below her, and somewhere further down the kid who delivers the sugar and never even gets to see the stand.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss. The ladder isn’t there because some people are actually better. It’s there because the stand only works if most people accept their rung. If the back kid ever said “wait, why do you own this?” the whole thing would wobble. So the grownups invent more stories: the owner is smarter, the owner took a risk, the owner deserves it, that’s just how stands work, it’s always been this way.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The stories aren’t there to explain the ladder. They’re there to keep anyone from kicking it. And once you see it at the stand, you see it everywhere. Who owns the house everyone lives in. Who owns the company everyone works at. Who owns the land a whole town sits on. Most people spend their whole lives on someone else’s stand, following someone else’s rules, making lemonade they’ll never get to drink, because a long time ago somebody said “mine” and nobody knew how to say no.

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Anonymous #2 19w

That’s the part that’s hard to unsee too. Misogyny told you the back kid’s work didn’t count. Ownership told you the stand wasn’t yours to begin with. They’re the same trick, just at different floors of the same building.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous #2 19w

Now imagine a different stand. Nobody owns it. The table was built by a grandma a long time ago, and when she’s gone it’ll just keep being the table. It belongs to the family the way a river belongs to the land it runs through. You can drink from it. You can’t pocket it.

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Anonymous #2 19w

In this version, the oldest women are the ones everyone listens to, not because they’re bossing anyone around, but because they’ve been making lemonade the longest and they remember what works. When a kid has a question, they go to grandma or auntie. When there’s a fight, the women who raised everyone help sort it out. Authority here isn’t a ladder. It’s more like the center of a circle. You move toward it by taking care of people, not by owning things.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The work looks different too. Squeezing lemons, washing cups, watching the little kids, feeding everybody at the end of the day. None of that is hidden in the back anymore. It’s the whole point of the stand. The stand exists to feed the family, not the other way around. So the work that capitalism called invisible is suddenly the work everyone can see, because there’s no front counter pretending to be more important than the kitchen.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Kids belong to their mother’s family, and they stay close to her people their whole lives. That sounds like a small detail, but it changes everything. A woman is never alone with a man who could decide her worth, because her brothers, her mother, her aunties, her cousins are all right there. If a partner treats her badly, he’s the one who leaves, not her. She doesn’t need permission to exist. Her safety isn’t something a husband grants her. It’s just the air she was born into.

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Anonymous #2 19w

And there’s no single owner saying “mine” about the land or the house or the children. Things are held in common, passed down through the women not as private property but as responsibility. You don’t inherit the river. You inherit the job of keeping it clean for the next kid. The Mosuo in China, the Minangkabau in Indonesia, the Haudenosaunee, the Khasi, and the Akan are real people, right now, living versions of this. It isn’t a fantasy.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The thing to notice is what disappears. No back kid working for free, because nobody pretended her work was love instead of work. No ladder, because authority grew sideways through care instead of upward through owning. No “mine,” because the stand was never something one person could take. Change the stories at the bottom and the whole shape of the stand changes with them.

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Anonymous #2 19w

It’s not that these societies are perfect or that women run everything like queens. It’s quieter than that. It’s just that when you don’t build the whole world around one person getting to say “mine” and another person getting told her work doesn’t count, people end up standing in very different places.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous #2 19w

Now zoom out from the stand to the whole neighborhood. Who gets to make the rules for everybody? In the US, the answer is built like a pyramid. There’s a president at the top, then governors, then mayors, then bosses, then dads, going all the way down.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Each one has a little bit of “mine” over the people below them. The president can send soldiers. The governor can send police. The boss can fire you. The landlord can put you on the street. The rules flow downward, and you’re supposed to follow them whether you agreed to them or not. Most people never met the people who decided their life. They just got handed the rules and told “this is how it is.”

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Anonymous #2 19w

Grownups call this democracy because every few years you get to pick which person at the top gets to point the pyramid at you. But you don’t get to ask if there should be a pyramid. The pyramid itself is never on the ballot. And the people who built it a long time ago, the ones who first said “mine” about the land and the laws, were almost all men who already owned other people. The shape of the government still remembers that, even when the faces change.

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Anonymous #2 19w

Now picture how a matrifocal village actually decides things. There’s no one chief who can tell everyone what to do. When something important comes up, the people most affected sit in a circle and talk until they figure it out together. The grandmothers usually speak last, because they’ve seen the most.

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Anonymous #2 19w

If one family is involved in a dispute, the women of that family help work it out. Decisions take longer, but when they’re made, they’re actually made by the people who have to live with them. Nobody has to obey a stranger.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The Haudenosaunee did this for centuries before the US existed. The Clan Mothers chose the chiefs, and if a chief stopped listening to the people, the Clan Mothers could remove him. He didn’t own the job. He was loaned it, and he could be un-loaned. Authority was something the community handed out and could take back, like a tool, not something a person had inside themselves forever.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The American founders actually studied this system. They kept the council part and threw away the part where women could fire the leaders.

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Anonymous #2 19w

That’s the move worth noticing. One person having ordained control over others isn’t the natural shape of human life. It’s a specific choice some societies made and other societies didn’t. When somebody tells you “well, you need someone in charge or it’s chaos,” they’re telling you the same story the grownups told about the lemonade stand: this is just how it is, don’t ask questions, the ladder is normal.

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Anonymous #2 19w

But humans lived for most of our history in groups where no single person could command the rest, and plenty of people still do.

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Anonymous #2 19w

The difference isn’t that matrifocal societies have no leadership. They have tons of it. It’s just spread out, rooted in care and memory, and revocable. A grandmother has authority because people trust her, not because she can punish them. A council has authority because everyone agreed to sit in it, not because soldiers will come if they don’t. The minute leadership stops serving the people, it stops being leadership. There’s no throne to cling to, because nobody built one.

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Anonymous #2 19w

So when you hear someone say “you can’t run a country any other way,” what they actually mean is “I can’t picture it.” That’s not the same thing. The pyramid feels inevitable because it’s the only shape most Americans have ever stood inside.

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Anonymous #2 19w

But it was built by specific people, for specific reasons, and what gets built can get unbuilt. The circle is older than the pyramid. It never actually went away. It’s just been pushed to the edges of the map, where people are still quietly living proof that humans don’t need a king to be a community.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Anonymous OP 19w

Dude do you know how weird you sound? “You were one of the more promising ones” are you fucking grooming me or some shit? Get off your high horse and go talk to a real person

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Anonymous #2 19w

I can’t help but think that this is what happens when people let ai chatbots tell them they’re geniuses who are right about everything

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Anonymous OP 19w

I know I'm a genius because I suspected this shit long before social media was thing and I slowly learned I was right over the years as my capitalism upbringing was deconstructed. You aren't special. I've debated this exact position against so many other copies of you. I know very well what I'm talking about and I wouldn't feel so comfortable using AI if I didn't already have an incomprehensible grasp on reality. If you want to get on my level, start by educating yourself instead letting the gov

1

Anonymous OP 19w

I am not right about everything but I am 100% right about this. Take some notes.

1