I was a “Free Market Libertarian” for most of my adolescence. Mainly because the selling point of individualism to a outcasted socially awkward autistic queer kid was a massive power fantasy. What happened was two things.
real life and experience with real people who didn’t hate my guts (no pun intended).
My vaguely socialist/social democratic irish republican father.
I came from a pretty well off family of teachers and other academics so money wasn’t a major issue (until recently at least) and i was pretty sheltered as a result. Combine that with plagues like r/PCM and other internet personalities and you have a dumb kid who thinks he’s smart but unable to see through the bullshit because the height of her struggles was people at school thought they were weird and a couple of mental health incidents related to being outcasted or treated poorly. I had no real lived experience and as such just spouted bs because the internet forum guys made a half assed argument and i bought into it.
But then, real life happened. My friends start being directly affected by capitalism, as i got out more i started to directly see people struggling, as i got more involved with other queer youth and pride and the like it only became even more apparent and then, a mentor i looked up to and helped me so much through rekindling my love for reading and my love for the world takes her own life over the stress of keeping a stable living. That was the breaking point where i couldn’t lie to myself any longer.
This is where my da comes in. I was ranting away about how abhorrent it was that a society could just let someone down that hard and how her death was completely avoidable and unnecessary it was. This lead to a long conversation of him telling stories of his involvement in left leaning movements and irish republican movements in his life. I was always pretty patriotic and that seed of an idea of “end all unnecessary suffering in Ireland” being a serious, attainable goal rather than just a naive fantasy really broke a lot of mental boundaries that liberal ideology had instilled within me. This lead to me to getting into different leftist spaces eventually reading lenin’s state and rev and joining r/genzedong.
I’ve come along way since then and I’d just like to thank you guys for being unfathomably based and stuff like book recommendations over the past 2 years of shitposting, it’s been a real inspiration to go out and make real change in the world.
I was a “Free Market Libertarian” for most of my adolescence. Mainly because the selling point of individualism to a outcasted socially awkward autistic queer kid was a massive power fantasy. What happened was two things.
But then, real life happened. My friends start being directly affected by capitalism, as i got out more i started to directly see people struggling, as i got more involved with other queer youth and pride and the like it only became even more apparent and then, a mentor i looked up to and helped me so much through rekindling my love for reading and my love for the world takes her own life over the stress of keeping a stable living. That was the breaking point where i couldn’t lie to myself any longer. This is where my da comes in. I was ranting away about how abhorrent it was that a society could just let someone down that hard and how her death was completely avoidable and unnecessary it was. This lead to a long conversation of him telling stories of his involvement in left leaning movements and irish republican movements in his life. I was always pretty patriotic and that seed of an idea of “end all unnecessary suffering in Ireland” being a serious, attainable goal rather than just a naive fantasy really broke a lot of mental boundaries that liberal ideology had instilled within me. This lead to me to getting into different leftist spaces eventually reading lenin’s state and rev and joining r/genzedong.
I’ve come along way since then and I’d just like to thank you guys for being unfathomably based and stuff like book recommendations over the past 2 years of shitposting, it’s been a real inspiration to go out and make real change in the world.