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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4493698
As for people who are politically backward, Communists should not slight or despise them, but should befriend them,unite with them, convince them and encourage them to go forward. -Mao Zedong
I believe most people are inherently bad. They are selfish, greedy, envious, and uncaring towards anyone outside their immediate friends & family.
It is this observation from dealing with people all across the political spectrum that leads me to being a ML compared to, say, an Anarchist. I don't believe people can get along without control structures in place. Most will live in harmony but there are always people who will take advantage of others.
We need a strong state to structure society and give people the ability to shift away from their individualistic ways into accepting communal forms of living. Unfortunately not everyone is going to accept democracy in their workplace, true democracy in government, and we need to have a strong state to weed those elements out in order to protect the rest of us from the tyranny of the individual.
I don't think people are inherently anything. We are capable of incredible good and evil. Evil is getting the last laugh right now, though, and at pretty much all levels of social strata, which makes it difficult for me to take the basically good helpless lemming rhetoric seriously.
I hear you. FWIW I don't subscribe to the "helpless lemming" idea either. To me the "evil" I see in the average burgerlander (I'm from the US) is an apathetic one. Not ignorant, just uncaring. I talked about this in an a post I made about messaging: