Companionship in Left-Wing Politics

One needs silence to write.

Silence inside, not outside.

Earlier I used to write to get clarity. Now my fingers aren’t able to keep up with my thoughts.

I wrote a poem the other day.

Can you believe it? I. Wrote. A. Poem.

I was like, aren’t poets supposed to be the tortured souls? Don’t they write when the agony hits the roof?

I took the “Notes” app on my phone and just wrote:

Anger
First you're angry at the world
Then you're angry at the people who are not angry at the world
Then you're angry at yourself that you're not able to do anything about your anger
So you bottle up all your anger and swallow the bottle
The bottle will try to stay at the bottom of your chest
But you push it down further, somewhere deeper inside, near your rectum
As far away from your mind as you can
And then you start to think
Think about what you can do
And that's when you realise you're all spent now
There's nothing left to do but weep
Weep at what we could have done if only more people were angry enough
Weep at the irony of it
The people who need you don't need you
And you are here figuring out where you took the wrong turn
Maybe you should have never woken up from the dream
Stay in a 9-5 job and excuse yourself from everything
At least then your mind will be protected
It'll be frozen in a corporate refrigerator
Far away from anger
Maybe you need sleep
Eternal blissful sleep
Go back to sleep, mind
Anger is everywhere
But not the anger you wanted.

---

Impossible jigsaw puzzles

What is clear by now is that I’m living too far from the present. Nobody’s fault. Not my fault that I thought that everything would be obvious to everyone and that all it needs is a moment of collective articulation. Not their fault that they don’t open things and look inside to see the “obvious”.

I feel like Rancho in 3 idiots. Opening up everything and learning. But unlike machines, society doesn’t move forward without collective work. (Or does it?). Just me learning is not enough. Others have to learn. And my impatience helps nobody. But how patient can one be?

Imagine you’re in a burning house. And you run out. And you see others sitting inside and saying “oooh, it’s getting hot in here”. How many expletives are you allowed to call them?

Is it hypocritic to call out hypocrisy when you don’t have the alternative?

What hurts is the hypocrisy.

Siddhesh (popularly known as @bakeryprasad) wrote that in this blog called: “Loneliness in the Left-wing politics“.

I’ve been too afraid to say this in public.

Not exactly. I’ve said this in public and gotten reprimanded several times. And so I’ve stopped saying this in public.

The so-called “progressive” or “left” spaces are dominated by people who are too happy to continue “questioning” the status quo without changing it.

Things that are completely in their control, they refuse to change.

Things that are not in their control, they’re happy to criticize.

All problems are outside them.

And when you call this out, they play the reverse Uno card.

They’re like “Oh, what have you done so radical that you’re speaking to us with condescension?”

I wonder if nobody has put Siddhesh on that spot. Maybe Siddhesh can claim their whole family has been resisting. Maybe Siddhesh will say “I’ve been producing art”.

And then they will ask/say, “Oh, but how many people can do what you’re doing? We’re all trying to do what we can!”

So then you’re suddenly put in a position where you have to demonstrate to them how you might do what they do, in a better (more radical) way.

And you can never be in another person’s shoe. You will always do things your own way. Your constraints and capacities will be different. And so it can never be a blueprint for them.

So it becomes an impossible jigsaw puzzle.

You want people to be radical. When you demand it from them, they show their (self-imposed) shackles. And you’re then left looking like an arrogant person who don’t understand where people are and what difficulties they face.

What to do with panel discussions?

I’ve been invited to a panel discussion next month.

How do I tell people that the problem is that we do too many panel discussions and people end up thinking that panel discussions are themselves radical change?

I’ve said “no” to many discussions in the past.

I’ve said “yes” to many “movements” that turned out to be just discussions.

I’m now confused what to say.

Whose responsibility is it to organize change?

Whose responsibility is it to compensate for other people not taking up their responsibilities?

Whose responsibility is to break the cycle first?

Paradox of humility

You’ve heard of the paradox of tolerance, right?

The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. ~Wikipedia

Well, let me introduce you to paradox of humility.

If you want people to have humility to listen, you’re gonna have to have the arrogance/hubris to tell them that they don’t have the humility to listen. And they’re going to use that as an excuse to say that you’re the one without humility to listen to their issues.

Good judgement

It’s very easy to figure out who are the bad people in this society — those people who believe in patriarchy, caste, religion, and/or capitalism and make it obvious.

We call them right wing for short.

But where judgement is required is to judge those who are not clearly in the right wing, but could as well be.

Those are the people who talk about revolution and change and never once asks “But how?”

If you are an honest left-wing person, you’re bound to be confused:

• What to do with savarna feminism?
• Is identity politics doing good or bad? How to even measure that?
• How do we make people stop needing god (and all of god’s conditions on them)?
• How much criticism of capitalism is possible in today’s society? Where to get bread from while criticizing capitalism?

Let me make it more concrete:

• Algorithmic feeds are screwing up democracy. Do we continue to use Instagram for “reach”?
• Do we give up perfectionism and settle for the good?
• Do we take money from billionaires/millionaires?
• How do we pay people well without taking money from rich people?
• Is volunteerism exploitation?
• Do we work with toxic people if the output may be good for the world?
• What if those toxic people then get visibility and keep doing more toxic things?
• What to do when nobody seems to know the answers?

And so many more questions!

So, when you see people talking about change without asking these questions, can we consider them part of the problem?

Pardon the differences arising from uncertainty

When things are certain and people choose to do things differently — that’s their politics. That’s unpardonable.

But when things are uncertain, unclear, confusing, and then people choose to do things differently (because of the uncertainties), then that’s a matter of randomness. That’s pardonable. That needs to be pardoned.

We can’t cancel people just because they are doing something different from us. If they share our values, and they share our uncertainties, and they choose a different path simply because there’s no telling which path is better, then they have to be considered community.

If I draw the line such that the only person on the good side is me, then I’ve over-fitted the criteria.

I need to draw the line slightly looser. To allow for differences in personalities and preferences and skills and capacity.

When we do that we end up with slightly more people. Maybe not millions, maybe not thousands. Maybe tens. Maybe a handful.

That is where I find companionship.

What about differences arising from ignorance, what about people’s potential to change?

Who remains ignorant? Whom do we allow to remain ignorant?

I have a simple rule. If someone is 25 or more years old, have been using internet since 5 years, can read/write English, and has had some sort of formal education, then no matter what identity they carry, I don’t afford them the excuse of ignorance.

People have the potential to change. Yes. It’s always possible, at whatever age. People can always learn. They can have life-altering experiences. All that’s true.

But the chances of such change is very rare. If there’s a chance, it’ll show up as green flags. And then you can make an exception for those individuals.

Akshay, you are probably going to fail the criteria of other people

I’m not afraid. I know exactly the measure of my humility-arrogance ratio, my praxis, my privileges. (Except my blindspots).

But none of that matters! Because it is not about me!

The problems of the world are so huge that it doesn’t matter if I get qualified as “bad” by someone else. I’m happy as long as people are making these judgements and move forward with their politics.

The task before the left

The to-do list for the left is rather straightforward to list down, and perhaps slightly difficult to do.

1. Call out the hypocrisies. Debate on what being “left” or “progressive” truly means.
2. Draw the line more strictly. Do not lower your standards simply because things appear too difficult.
3. Realize that things are difficult, especially because the alternatives have to be created (unlike status quo which needs to merely be sustained).
4. Give space for slack. Revolutionaries need rest too.
5. Don’t let perpetual slackers claim that they’re revolutionaries taking rest. Notice patterns. Rest of the restless looks different from comfort of the status quo.
6. Continue building the alternative without fear of failure.
   • Organizations that don’t exploit.
   • Platforms that don’t exclude.
   • Power that doesn’t get corrupted.
   • Ideology that doesn’t lose its vision.
   • Smash brahminism. Dismantle capitalism. Fuck patriarchy. (And religion will disappear automatically then).