Carnival is over, now the Brazilian year of 2026 is finally allowed to begin. Under socialism, January will be fully deleted.
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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GenZedong
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Wild to think my entire lineage can be traced back to some lizard crawling out of the ocean
Soon
but muh 
!
god please let this happen it'd be so fucking funny
Christians will complain about how lgbtqia+ is so confusing while having 100+ different denominations that are supposed to be just following the teachings of one guy
REAL IDENTITY: yeah i’m poly and a panromantic asexual, i’m also agender and go by they/xem/fang
FAKE IDENTITY: i’m a Jehovah’s Witness
ULTRA FAKE IDENTITY: i’m a Mormon
every time i pass this comment i must add one more gender/sexual identity or pronoun, it’s a toll
Been musing on the problems of "temptation" and "corruption" philosophy again. Was thinking how "absolute power corrupts absolutely" (and other sayings like it) are the kind of nonsense adage that causes regular conscientious people to fear trying to have a share of the power, while the least conscientious are not moved by at all because they don't give a fuck about being "corrupt".
It also obfuscates cause and effect by hiding the problems with a given power structure behind human temptation and subsequent "fall from grace"; if a particular system consistently produces people in power who do awful shit and face no consequences, one would think that suggests there's something wrong with the system, but to the empty-headed corruption worldview, they can just brush that aside and say the problem is that it was working just fine but it got corrupted by bad people. And this is in fact one way people defend capitalism when they are upset with how it operates but don't want to go as far as anti-capitalism.
I would go as far as linking it to the story of Adam and Eve that some people internalize as foundational to their worldview. In that story, it's never God's fault for putting Adam and Eve in a position where they could very easily do something that would monstrously offend him and cause him to cast them out. It's always their fault for stepping outside the rails and doing the thing they weren't supposed to. So in a way, if the system is presenting opportunities for people to "sin" and if there are "devils" about tempting them, well perhaps that's just like the Garden of Eden, and God's "testing" them, you know? In this way, a system that is fundamentally abhorrent gets turned upside down and presented as a good thing (and I have heard arguments not far off from this from some Christians in years past, who would excuse the suffering in the world by saying it's because people need to be tested somehow or something along those lines).
your connection of this liberal idealist but ‘secular’ appearing belief to christian culture of sin is really striking to me, i heavily agree with that.
Power does not corrupt. The corrupt seek power. They do not change when they get power they simply have no need to keep up the pretense that they are not corrupt. It is not surprising that the corrupt are not stopped from gaining power under capitalism because the fundamental basis of capitalism is that humans are inherently greedy and selfish. Corruption is rewarded and expected. There is no major criminal corruption cases in western nations because corruption is legalized.
the adam and eve bit is really well said. The idea of "original sin" is propaganda to make us all feel complicit as if we would do the same evils if we were given the opportunity.
People who say “power corrupts absolutely” are telling on themselves. As for your other points, I do agree that our late stage capitalist culture relies on “sinful” activity to turn a profit while demonizing individual choices.
It’s disgusting
I like Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ but, damn, some of the characters (like Beecha and Mondo) are selfish.
As a cis white male comrade, I’m trying to find resources to help others like me embrace Marxism-Leninism or at least some sort of leftist positions. But I know from experience that working through your privileged position and understanding the intricacies of class structure is something cis white men are generally horrible at.
It’s made even harder with grifters like Jackson Hinkle who shepherd potential leftists into some weird brocialist cult.
lol whoever made that post that the chud from predictive history was a clown was right, the guy did an interview with SNEAKO LMAO
I've been calling him a grifter whenever the topic comes up but I don't start conversations about people who I think are fucking idiots because if I start I'd never stop.
I do like to play with the idea that he is a Chinese misinformation agent sent to make westoids even more stupid.
Sometimes I wish I could have one day in which I go back in time to a warm summer day in high school, coming back from school logging in to Habbo or Minecraft or GTA or COD Zombies and just vibe with the homies
I think I have problems not doing things that are wrong that simultaneously don't hurt people.
I know that didn't come out well, I'll elaborate.
If it involves someone else who's alive, then I'm basically constantly trying the best way to make them happy. I'll try not to be rude, demeaning, etc. And I especially won't try to hurt them. I've had a thought that I would rather kill myself than do that to someone else (as counter productive as it can be, obviously). The only exception is the internet, but I try to be cordial when I can.
But...if it doesn't hurt someone else I turn into a big libertine. Like I used to cheat on tests in high-school [I dont now because it's impractical in college]. I know there's the kantian argument of "if everyone did it it'd be bad so no one should do it," but...idk
The thing is that i don't feel guilty. If I make someone feel bad or something I'll feel guilty for years. I had a friend who I treated poorly (long story, family trauma related) and I've still felt naturally guilty. But when I cheated on those tests I didn't feel naturally bad. My conscious brain tells me "that's wrong" but my emotional center just doesn't register it. Idk why. Maybe it's how I was brought up.
I know it's not exactly a good marxist way of thinking. But this is my conscious, logical part of me writing this. That instinctual part is just rolling their eyes at me and wondering why I'm taking it so seriously. I'm gonna talk to my therapist about this too.
i understand u !!!
youve mentioned being brought up w religious family, right? anyway, so did i (actually i had a scrapped comment responding to one of ur comments about it but i digress i’ll focus on this rn) aside from what Commiejones said about how they wouldn’t feel guilty over exploiting the broken schooling system, one way i’ve tried to grow and get better is to stop feeling like any emotional/internal response is the Right One to have, in regards to being a better person.
i do think it’s something i got instilled with at first by religion (catholicism) and i held onto it for a while as well as other moral principles that i later discarded when my faith in absolute ideals began degrading (i told a lie and the earth didn’t swallow me up, and by then i was starting to get a little confused)
more often than not, guilt was something leveraged against me, that i had to spend a lot of time and energy measuring my Sins and feeling bad, being god-fearing, all that. i think that wasn’t good, but i see now how it influenced me and i think this religious leaning to guilt and impurity and self-flagellation has embedded itself in a lot of people.
guilt in and of itself is seen as redemption. to toss and turn over your own sins and feel like a piece of shit is Redemptive, even for those who aren’t explicitly religious, since, well, it is an expression of remorse and a recognition of that, which should, ideally, motivate someone to then improve.
but it’s not really as simple as that, people feel paralysis about self improvement all the time, or seeking forgiveness/mending relationships. and so you get people who act like Bojack Horseman, constantly berating themselves, and none of that energy goes to actually remedying their behaviors, because that self-punishment is Good on its Own, a moral act in and of itself!
it’s much less daunting than, say, truly apologizing to their Herb. it leads to yankees on the net complaining about how they feel sooooooo bad that they have to pay attention to Gaza, it leads to veteran schlock movies whining about the fact that they killed all those people and now feel BADDD!!! dont you get it?? i feel BADDDD!!! now i am a good person, since i felt BADDDDDD!!!!
all that really matters in proving your actual morality is just producing better outcomes, though, rather than thought Crime or thought Purity. thoughts are just shit my little electric sack produces, based on a million stimuli, i no longer feel disgusted that i produced a weird one, that sack just does shit!
anyway, if you are able to rationally take apart what you’re doing, identify what conflicts with your principles, and then act differently, literally nothing else matters aside from the final outcome. so i wouldn’t mentally persecute myself for not doing the ‘good’ thing of self-flagellation, which is something i kept doing back then, which led to my occasional stagnation.
i just think it’s a healthy way to approach guilt and striving to Be a Good Person. i think you’re doing well. i think you don’t need to try to find ways you can feel worse so that you can earn your penance. i think you’ve got it :3!
like, of course not saying an emotional response is wrong, but like, as long as you Do Something that’s fine. it’s totally fine. and we’re removing this as is from the real world context and reality that like, half the shit we do is not as evil as what the system does, as Commiejones said!!!
i mean, like i might know that i pushed someone’s buttons talking about xyz, i might know i was a dick to my brother. but what if the guilt only pushes me to feel i’m a corrupted, sinful being with no hope for redemption, so i don’t try? in the end, guilt helps many people Feel and Understand a moral burden, and CAN motivate them to act on it. but alone, it’s essentially worthless, apart from being able to convey sincere desire to change in a way that might resonate with people more deeply.
sorry, i will go back and shorten/simplify both of these long comments for any redundancies TT
i reread the comment and i feel like my two points generally miss the primary issue you’re talking about, so maybe i shouldn’t have said “I understand you!!” first sentence, how silly and embarrassing. but again, it’s a really soothing and, pardon the silliness, healing habit to just rationally take apart What Harm You Even Did from XYZ. if you don’t see anything legitimate, let it go and go about your day. the only example i would legitimately say you should try to mend would be that personal situation with a friend, which you said you DID feel emotional guilt over! but why stress over trying to compel your brain to release Sadness over cheating on a test? who did you hurt? i mean, if it was a test that was like, i’m qualified to give you open heart surgery, and then you were made to do open heart surgery and you killed some guy cuz you actually didn’t, then yeah that would be pretty bad, but you didn’t do all that!
How can something be "wrong" if you aren't harming anyone?
Cheating on tests isn't "wrong." Essentially you are just fabricating a lie and lying to a teacher/school that only cares about you as a commodity to be shipped off as a worker to be exploited by capitalists isn't amoral.
If you harm another working class person you should feel guilty. But morality doesn't apply to the class war. You cannot do anything "wrong" to the ruling class or their institutions. They have been doing wrong to you your whole life anything you do against them is justified self defense and nothing you or I can do would ever reach a fair punishment for their crimes.
Reddit has this hate boner for Eileen Gu because she chose China over the US to represent at her sport and schooling everyone else doing so. They can't handle someone not wanting to compete for the US, even less so if China is the one instead.
Probably residual Ellen Pao hate boners.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/mco7b9/what_is_the_deal_with_ellen_pao/
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New joke: Anytime you see a picture of Epstein in public you say "God! Hunter Biden looks like shit these days."
Got stuck without internet access for a almost a whole week, came back and Trump is still threatening Iran like an apartment cat staring at a bird outside. Seems there were no decades this week.
Anxiety has been killing me these days, i feel so powerless just observing my country and other latin american countries just standing still against the ongoing genocide preparations towards Cuba. Like when are we going to start developing ANY deterrence against the fascist americans, there is a negative amount of sense of urgency here.
Reports in our media of the US attacking Iran this weekend. No idea if legit, though.
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