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.
That's the narrative after the fact to justify successful revolutions.
Many revolutions have had setbacks at times, but showed regular growth in the participation of organizations building them and growth in the resources they could mobilize.
Most professional revolutionaries, like Lenin, Ho Chi Min, Guevara etc were middle-upper class who could commit their time and resources to build structure. Revolutions never start from the poor, because the poor are busy working. The best they can do is rioting or protesting, but protests never change things.
What I'm saying is that with this narrative about losing we justify a tolerance for defeat, ineffectiveness and spontaneism that pamper and console people in their powerlessness, breeding activists and protestors instead of organizers. While nobody should be judged for not winning, we also shouldn't be so comfortable with losing. It's also very alienating for normal people: if they have to give up their time and energy to chase a higher goal, they want to win, they don't want to "lose better". Nobody wants to be a loser, except insular dirtbag leftists with an outcast attitude.
So what you're saying is that a bad situation does not always and inevitably lead to victory, and that there are certain material conditions that need to be fufilled? Cool, not sure why you needed 3 paragraphs to say it
Lol
I'm sensing the presence of some personal beef I'm not privvy to and don't care about.
I wish it was personal beef. It's a systemic pathology throughout the left, reason why I abandoned those spaces to organize elsewhere.
ok, best of luck with your...organizing outside of the left?