There’s a lot of people on here who are part of what I’d call losing causes, causes that run counter to the consumerist capitalist mono-culture, I.e. socialism, veganism, FOSS, anti-car urbanism, even lemmy and the fediverse.
I want to know what made you switch from being a sympathizer to an active participant. I believe it’s important for us to understand what methods work in getting people involved in a movement that may not have any immediate wins to motivate people to join.
EDIT: A lot of people objecting to my use of losing so I’ll explain more, all of these causes benefit from popularity and are weakened by there lack of adoption and are thus in direct competition with the capitalist consumerist mono-culture, a competition which they are currently losing.
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Socialism on a small scale cannot solve the inherent issues of a capitalism that surrounds it.
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Veganism benefits from more people becoming vegan and restaurants and grocery stores providing vegan options.
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FOSS, or more specifically desktop Linux, benefits from more people being on it and software developers designing for and maintaining applications for it.
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The more people that use transit, the more funding it gets and the better it gets.
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the fediverse benefits from more people veing on it and more diverse communities so those with niche interests besides the above causes can find community here.
On the flip side the capitalist consumerist alternatives to all of these benefit from there popularity and thus offer a better value to most people. The question is about what made you defer that better immediate material value in favor of something else.
When debating the efficacy of my privacy measures, my friend asked,
You know, what if it just is compromised already? By the NSA, Facebook, Google, and so forth.
And I said, at least I am making it known that I hate them all, I’ll stand up for what is right, and I’m not leaving without a fight.
Education. Good luck
I’m adopting FOSS because commercial products are inevitably enshitified for profit. Fuck the billionaires, I like my money and my personal data and I am not ok with them putting their grubby, sticky little fingers in my personal shit. I was raised a private person and I like my privacy.
I’m not vegan but I reduced my red and pork to 0 because it’s unhealthy and I don’t really like eating things for breakfast that are as smart as small children. Ew.
I fucking hate cars and always have. They smell bad, they’re expensive, they take up huge amounts of time, and idiots on a power trip are always being assholes in them. Coal rolling trucks make me want to puke in disgust. It’s always a guy and he’s always a dropout moron on a power trip who’s gonna die of lung cancer at 56 while complaining about chemtrails.
Socialism is necessary because capitalism promotes the tragedy of the commons and I like my clean air and drinkable water. I grew up on stories about the wilderness, I lived running around in the woods, I value a healthy ecosystem rich in genetic diversity. I am also an absolutely enormous asshole at heart who is cheap as fuck and who hates litter, and homeless people are untidy, expensive, and dangerous. Sticking them in apartments to keep their shitty decisions out of my view is cheaper than cleaning up their feces all the time and dealing with begging and grabbing and crime, and it makes me able to ignore them more easily. Out of sight, out of mind, I get to live my life in peace knowing they’re not homeless anymore. Also their kids don’t deserve that shit even if their parents are depressed abusive junkie trash who couldn’t keep a job if it was “lay here all day long”.
I’ve been vegan foss-using anti war anarchist since high school, once I figure out what’s right social pressure doesn’t particularly sway me. In addition to all of the above I’m trans and still mask too.
I can’t really point to anything in particular that “switched” other than legitimately not caring about fitting in.
I want to walk away from Omelas.
I wouldn’t say Palestine is a losing cause. All the ones I listed are minoritarian, some in the low single digit percentage of people, especially in the US. A majority of people in the US and a large majority of the world want a ceasefire. It’s not failing due to lack of popular support, its failimg because a small minority of very powerful people really want this genocide.
A majority of people in the US and a large majority of the world want a ceasefire.
That is only a very recent development though. And “a ceasefire” is very different to an actual free Palestine anyway
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somebody gotta do it
I wouldn’t really consider any of those ‘losing causes.’
None of us have a crystal ball and know what the future will bring.
Many of the things you mentioned are not “loosing”. They are chugging along. Slow and steady.
It’s frustrating how slowly things are going (urbanism at least had the excuse of involving expensive physical infrastructure that turns over on the span of decades) but Lemmy didn’t exist 5 years ago and now we have piefed and enough activity that it’s nit a ghost town anymore too. After enough cycles of Yet another corpo hellsite we’ll hit critical mass
Most of the causes you list are not defined by losing so idek what this is asking
I’m a hipster.
Well, I was born here and it seemed like the thing to do.
I follow my conscience, and I work hard to live up to my principles. If I didn’t, I would have a hard time living with myself.
I don’t agree with causes to win. I agree with causes because they’re correct. If everyone stopped believing in gravity I wouldn’t follow suit.
I don’t really understand why you think a lot of these things are losing causes. FOSS is the backbone of IT. Anti-car urbanism is common in some areas of the world. Lemmy and the Fediverse have been doing great over the last 2 years. Socialism/leftist ideology is on the rise alongside the fascist takeover—it would have been unheard of to have “the squad” in the 90’s.
So where you see losing, I see slow and steady progress happening alongside capitalist fascism that is trying and failing to stop it completely.
FOSS is the backbone of IT
FOSS is the backbone of a mlitiary-corporate monstrous machine of death and exploitation. I get that originally the movement was more concerned with the freedom of software than the freedom of people, but I would say “FOSS being a force for good” is definitely a battle that was lost.
The part that gets me is why it’s slow. I figured it out, what’s taking everyone else so long?
Because you live in a bubble and your needs are not the needs of the vast majority of human on Earth. Also change is not a matter of opinions or conscience, it’s a matter of organizing and building power. Most people can agree on a topic without anything changing.
I don’t live in a bubble? I’m very exposed to people who are Not like me and I’m rarely the majority opinion in a room
