Do you have projects that you personally admire? I assume you are choosing to donate to open source because you have an affinity for it. Personally I donate to political causes, particularly ones where I participate in/contribute to. Projects where I can get in the discord and talk to people, learn and really experience the practical side. I'm in a few Foss discords as well, so maybe joining some communities and getting to know people working with it, maybe learn to work with it yourself, will help and inform your decision.
Does anyone know of any legitimate criticisms of Sankara? Or even illegitimate ones that can be disproven? My exposure to him is fairly minimal, but everything ive heard about him is just over the top positive.
I'm not trying to cut down decolonizers either, but often criticisms are reflective of the material obstacles and struggles that a leader or movement faced. I'm sure there are some good histories out there and I would take any recommendations people have. But just given my own nature, ive found I can get into a particular history better by starting with the negative.
It is way too common to confuse the abstractions we use to understand reality with reality itself. Like the scientists who work with this stuff are really consistent in keeping the two separated, but the moment a theory gets in the hands of a journalist or god forbid a politician, it starts wreaking havok
I had played through Sekiro once, but it had been a while. So after playing a bunch of Nightreign specifically as Executor, and was getting a little burned out, I decided to take it back to the source.
So I started a new game, and this time it went much smoother. My first experience was very difficult. I remember spending days fighting grumpy grandson, both Dads, team ape, and zombie Grandpa. This time, everyone took maybe a few tries. Once I saw the move set I could basically get the hang of it.
And yes, on a second run, I beat Genichiro in the tutorial, and then wrecked him mid game. The only bosses ive lost to in this ng+ run so far is, for some reason, Horse Boy got me once, Team Ape got me once, and now I'm learning Waifu Emma and Bathrobe Grandad for the Shura ending.
Siding with Dad for the Shura ending hurts so bad, he's such a dishonorable shithead. Betraying Kuro physically hurts me, he's such a good kid. The things we do for the platinum. But at least the Emma and Isshin fights are pretty fun.
By itself, nothing; or even harmful to our movements.
But it is opening a lot of people up to class based critiques and radical demands. Practical application of criticism and demands is the foundation of Marxist political organizing.
The conspiracy theorist believes that once people know the truth, they will rise up. That sentence alone has three distinct idealist abstractions. But contemplation is half of praxis. If people are thinking about changing their conditions they can be motivated to take action. We can't build our movement on the basis of Marxist theory alone, Marxist theory is how we learn to take the nascent revolutionary potential of the working class and develop it on an actual political basis. The Epstein files provides that basis.
Revolutionary strategy is connecting the contents of the files to the rest of the struggle against racism, nationalism, queer and trans phobia; and help people understand these as fundamental class antagonisms created by capitalism.
Teaching people to think is teaching people to act. So the Epstein files alone could actually hurt consciousness. Therefore their release met with inaction from leftists could be disastrous for our movements.
It isnt moral bankruptcy, it is systematic. The capitalist who produces profit stays in business, the capitalist who does not goes bankrupt. It isnt morals of individuals, the dehumanization of the poor by the rich is a symptom of a system that prioritizes profits over humanity.
Capitalism is, among other things, a system of forced competition.
I'm glad to hear you are on the right side of it. But in order to be effective we have to name the actual problems. I am above all a humanist, and certainly the capitalist class contains some vile and hateful individuals. That is more clear now than ever before. But we are not made rich or poor by our morality; our morality comes from the conditions that dictate whether we are rich or poor.
The distribution of productivity gains and development of new technology are intrinsically and historically connected. New technology is only developed in order to exploit workers, either to make individual something which was previously socialized, or to directly replace workers with industrial advances; and in many cases both.
Marx said it best: Machines were the weapon employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
This was true for the Luddites and it is true today.
It is bad education, evidenced by fascists actively trying to make schools worse, like it is clearly working. But you're also right that fascism is a nascent tendency within capitalism itself, and manifests primarily in the middle class and poor petty bourg, because the middle class is constantly being crushed by capitalism. As the state in its function to mitigate class antagonisms gets swept away, this tendency becomes more acute and activates the Hitler particles in more and more people.
EU social democracies have much better schools, higher education for lower cost and they still have major viable fascist parties and movements. Education is fundamentally progressive, but there are all different kinds of education, and progress is not a straight line, but more like building something brick by brick. The ruling class has lots of experience systematically stifling forms of education that risk activating genuine contemplation, self actualization, curiosity, social awareness, and class consciousness. This makes it much easier to smuggle in narratives about race, class and immigration that keep the bourg on top and the workers divided
I had a suspicion you weren't advocating for capitalism. But just in case someone comes along and thinks "yeah make capitalism more efficient," I like to underline the fact that "efficiency" has a different meaning if someone is a worker than if someone is a capitalist.
Taylorist production has been tried, yielded objectively better results than the old production methods, and they were still scrapped. Workers wouldn't adapt to more efficient production methods without more pay, and it necessitates worker-managers to train other workers. Since the owners of the factory refuse to pay workers more, so it's DOA.
Capitalism isn't rational, and can not become rational. "Increasing efficiency" means firing workers, not improving production. I know you maybe aren't arguing for more efficient capitalism, just saying it has been tried. Taylorism is the Esperanto of production. "Increasing efficiency," to the capitalists, means firing people, not making the system more rational.
Do you have projects that you personally admire? I assume you are choosing to donate to open source because you have an affinity for it. Personally I donate to political causes, particularly ones where I participate in/contribute to. Projects where I can get in the discord and talk to people, learn and really experience the practical side. I'm in a few Foss discords as well, so maybe joining some communities and getting to know people working with it, maybe learn to work with it yourself, will help and inform your decision.