@reedlindwurm
Shame the writer seems to be a heartless jerk, though...

@pteryx Hm?

@reedlindwurm
See exchange we wound up having in replies.

Frankly, I am *sick* of holier-than-thou, sneering, heartless jerks acting like we just *know* how to magically overthrow a fascist government from within a socioeconomic system stacked against us and a political system that doesn't respond to us while surrounded by people better-armed than us both literally and metaphorically, and if we claim otherwise we're "just not willing to make sacrifices".

@reedlindwurm
Oh, *and* acting like despair is at best irrational and unjustified, and at worst a sign that you're *really* a collaborator with the enemy trying to sabotage those trying to do something, who really and truly exist cross our hearts even if there are no signs of results.

Though at the same time I'm *also* pissed off by the "Survival is enough! You're doing good by getting through the day! ️ " passive toxic positivity crowd.

@reedlindwurm
Seriously, between the actual Nazis, the "martyr yourself while accomplishing nothing or you're a Nazi and always have been!" side, the "nothing is actually wrong and if you say otherwise we'll put you in an institution!" side, and the "being alive and happily distracting yourself is all the resistance you have to do because you're perfect and special!" side, I feel like we're better off just being bombed out of existence.

@pteryx I couldn't find the relevant posts (they're just not showing up when I went to the thread), though I feel like I kinda get the gist based on what you've written.

I don't think anyone really has particularly great ideas for how to deal with things, especially as chaotic evil jackasses keep lobbing chaos balls and doing evil deeds everywhere. The people who do stuff, I think, tend to be just involved in whatever local/personal communities and trying to do good things there, in spite of the chaos and suffering.

The message of positivity, which might not (evidently not) be for everyone, is just a thing meant to get people's spirits up to try something, whatever, anything that might help make the world less horrible, rather than just be in a depressive slump of feeling unable to do anything. A personal sense of happiness obviously doesn't magically make the world a better place, but for some, it can make the suffering easier to bear and make it easier to take whatever actions they can.

The situation at large is definitely disheartening, and I don't think anyone knows what to do about it. People are just, each in their own ways, trying to find ways forward, even if that means different people drawing from conflicting inspirations or coping mechanisms.

@reedlindwurm
For me, the positivity social pressure is a demand of both conformity and fundamental inhumanity. ("Go stand in front of the armed goons who want all your friends dead, holding up a sign they won't read, *and be joyful about it!*") Is *yet again* demanding that I feel what others *want* me to feel supposed to convince me that I'm on the side of freedom instead of oppression? Based on my life experience, "happiness is mandatory" clearly didn't come from nowhere.

@reedlindwurm
There's also the whole ableist insistence on going out and forging connections with just whoever's available and getting along with them well enough for long enough to make a difference. Look, it's hard enough finding people I can get along with sufficiently to *play games* with, and you're expecting me to be a perfect social butterfly among the kinds of jerks described in the other branch of this thread long enough to save the country?!

@pteryx I don't think anyone could sanely be happy in a tense situation like that. But to be fair I think the message of finding happiness is meant as a way to help people stay motivated overall, to live their lives and/or to stay in the fight of pushing for change, even against stacked odds in horrible situations. It doesn't make sense to mean "you are not allowed to be upset", and it would make even less sense to mean "you need to remain happy even when facing armed oppressors". Any sane person would be a combination of scared and angry there.

As for being happy, different people respond to different motivators and messages of validation, so obviously this isn't necessarily a message for everyone.

But I'd like to note that this sort of mutual-support discourse also frequently talks about how feelings of outrage, anger, sadness, grief, and despair are real and valid. It's just that, for many people I guess, these feelings can be demotivating (or for some, even encourage self-harm or otherwise unhealthy behaviors), which is why people talk about trying to lift up each others' spirits.

Simply living one's life can be a valid goal. There can be a real danger of self-harm in these crises, especially with compounding risk factors like emotional and financial stress. Things like protests aren't necessarily for everyone; suggestions that people take to the streets aren't about guilting those who are simply unable to do so.

@reedlindwurm
It doesn't help that protests feel less like actually *doing* something and more like convincing everybody else that you're doing something. Or that protests seem to be the only socially acceptable option, and anything potentially *effective* will get you shamed, arrested, or both... *and* people act like anyone who "really" wants to help will automatically know what to do that somehow is a gainful sacrifice instead of throwing yourself off a cliff, and anyone *asking* is a spy.

@reedlindwurm
It may not make *sense* that people are saying "you are not allowed to be upset", but that's absolutely happening. People call it "doomerism" and ban it. People brag about how fun protests supposedly are. It just makes me angrier every time I hear it.

The words of people saying negative feelings are valid instead ring hollow, either because they're not offering a productive outlet or at least a *hug*, or because they're adding the caveat "but shut up about it".

@reedlindwurm
Heck, I heard *another* version of it just yesterday: "Resist with fierce joy."

@pteryx I get that it's a message that obviously doesn't resonate with you, though I would disagree with the idea that it's trying to "enforce" positivity.

I personally don't agree with it on a broad level either, but I might find it useful depending on the context. Like it makes sense if the point is to make someone feel like they're not just fighting against something (a common complaint) but fighting for something worth fighting for. Or perhaps even to encourage someone to not get so overwhelmed by anger that they do something inadvisable.

But broadly speaking, I'd say outrage and anger are the dominant (and most natural) emotions, along with sadness. Some people probably want a pick-me-up in a circumstance like this, one that feels tragic and hopeless, and for some, it can be a message like that.

@pteryx As for myself, I'm hopping mad at the Trump administration and their enablers, for almost uncountably many reasons. Just that I have no particularly useful direct ways of doing anything about it, so for now I just try to keep myself sane and keep doing something to move forward with my life. Not necessarily what everyone should do, but that's because everyone's circumstances are different.

@reedlindwurm
It doesn't help knowing that decades from now, everyone who was just "keeping themselves sane" to the exclusion of anything that makes it into a history book will be smeared as a fascist. Just like how only a handful of individual non-Jewish Germans during WWII get to evade the label of "Nazi".

So not knowing how to fight back in ways that don't demand that one be super-social, feel exactly how others want you to feel, and that *works* makes me feel I'm going to live in shame.

@reedlindwurm
And yes, I *do* think this is about controlling emotions and/or expression of said emotions. Setting aside just how common a demand that is in our society in the first place, to the point that I get the sense that you aren't even considered an adult unless you've done some unholy necromantic ritual to kill all your emotions... that "resist with fierce joy" quote I mentioned was followed up by something like, "At a minimum, it'll piss them off."

Feel *this way* to fight the enemy.

@pteryx Is it *a* way to fight the enemy? Yes, especially when the enemy wants people to cower in fear and conform to their ideology, or else.

Is it about controlling one's own emotions? Yes. Is it about controlling others' emotions? No, not more than any other casual suggestion to "put on a smile" or "you should totally be mad".

Re: "at a minimum, it'll piss them off": That statement itself implies an understanding that effectiveness will vary. It's neither a one-size-fits-all guide nor an absolute command. It's just a suggestion on how to resist oppression in one's social situation. I get that it feels wrong for you in your situation, but I don't think it's fair to accuse others of wanting to force you to conform to it.

I don't know how to judge the ethics of my, your, or anyone else's actions and the legacy we'd leave in history, but I certainly don't think we should be judging ourselves by a hypothetical person in the future who lazily judges the literal millions of people in a given country at a given time with broad and uncharitable strokes. That just seems unnecessarily depressing. And frankly, the notion that everyone in a country who doesn't openly oppose a given government should be counted as endorsing it, is stupid and inaccurate. There are many people who don't necessarily have the capacity to do something.

I get that you don't know how to fight back, and frankly speaking, I don't know either, and I don't think anyone really knows. People are just trying various ideas. So it doesn't make sense to think that anyone's trying to saying "thou must fight back this way and only this way". If all you're hearing is statements like "resist with fierce joy", then you're definitely not hearing all the chatter in the background debating anxiously whether peaceful methods have failed and what that may mean going forward.

The suggestions from others regarding how to oppose oppression are just that -- suggestions. Not everyone can do them, and it's okay. I, too, would like to do more but I can't. But -- and here's *my* suggestion -- I don't think it's worth feeling shameful about.

And to be fair, I don't think too hard about the ethics of it because I know I don't have answers. I could make myself feel worse and worse by overthinking them, but it'd just annoy me while not helping me get anything done in any way. There's still things I want to get done with this life, and getting those things done doesn't equate to complicity in the horrors around me.

@reedlindwurm
I'll note that "put on a smile", "it's not worth feeling shameful about", and even just "calm down" grate on me as implications of choice of emotion too. ("You should totally be mad" seems to come more from a place of support most of the time, though, rare permission to actually *be* mad.) And it's not *just* saying how people should feel, but blocking or banning people who express feeling otherwise, hence my feeling it's about control.

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@reedlindwurm
If it were only targeted at me, instead of this happening to other people who are upset (indeed, today I watched someone get blocked from a news aggregator for "doomerism" for daring to talk about much harder problems to solve that they don't know how to resist yet believe shouldn't be ignored, *and* pointing out that protest has been defanged by decorum), I wouldn't necessarily think this is a wider problem of trying to make others conform to "correct" resistance.

2/4