Meeting people where they are¶

"Meeting people where they are" does not mean letting them stay where they are. We are here to change everything, not just the things the average person is already on board with changing, and that requires challenging some widespread assumptions about how the world works. (1/21) If someone believes, for example, that men are intrinsically more rational than women, or that different races have different psychologies, you don't "meet them where they are" by allowing them to continue believing that. You find a way to directly confront and overcome that. If someone believes the universe is buffeted about by arcane, metaphysical forces, knowable only through mystical ritual and esoteric indoctrination, rather than materialism, they are similarly hampered in the pursuit of revolution, and those beliefs need to be overcome as well. If someone has a conception of "progress" that leaves room for a national or gender hierarchy, that conception requires serious education to excise. Same for if their political vision is eugenicist, idealist, or otherwise ill-suited for the world in which we exist. Our purpose as revolutionaries is not to "appeal" to people on a thin basis of "shared values" so we can "convert" them to supporting our "message." We are trying to fundamentally restructure every aspect of social existence. Our goal is complete transformation, at every stratum. This transformation requires the complete destruction of regressive thought. It takes time, it takes concerted effort, and yes, it takes compromise and tact. But it cannot be done by ceding ideological ground from the start. We need to begin the war of position. The key thing to understand is that you can't really "change minds." People change their own minds, and they do so for a number of reasons beyond simply hearing a well-reasoned argument. Certain individuals may change their views based on evidence and debate, but not en masse. People tend to construct their worldviews based on what feels right, and that's largely based on social context. This is why, for example, you can convince an entire population to wear masks to avoid illness -- and then if you convince enough to stop, it becomes anathema. Masks became hegemonic, the unquestioned norm among a vast cohort of the population. Now, NOT wearing a mask is hegemonic, and convincing someone it's still as useful as ever is as much a nonstarter as convincing them that skipping is a better form of locomotion than walking. Maybe you could find a few individuals willing to hear out your rational argument. But for most, the immediate response is "Yeah, whatever. If it was that much better, then why is no one doing it??" You could even explain WHY no one is -- it still wouldn't change their mind. The same is true with religion, spirituality, and even superstition, with people's beliefs being directly informed by social context, leading to people claiming the same belief system having wildly different conceptions of the "fundamental tenets" of those beliefs. Multiple Christians, for example, might have completely opposite views on homosexuality, with both claiming their beliefs are rooted in the teachings of Jesus. Individuals may even adapt those views based on social context without feeling like their precepts have changed. People often become more or less religious out of "habit," as they become acculturated to new social contexts -- or recommitted to engaging with their existing one -- rather than out of any explicit interrogation of the "correctness" of a particular belief. People can become more or less ANYTHING in a similar way. Someone can live their entire life with the concept of transness being completely foreign to them, and not even question their gender. Even after being exposed to the concept, it might not click until years later. In this sense, transness is being "spread" socially, with more people becoming aware of what it means and what the implications are for themselves -- and then deliberately integrating themselves into social contexts that allow them to evolve their self-conception. And the same is true in all political spheres. Liberalism is hegemonic, as are bourgeois conceptions of family, gender, nation, ability, what it means to be a good citizen, what it means to be a good person, what society owes you, what you owe society, etc. People can enter "radical spaces" and become acculturated in an environment with specific notions of appropriate values, methods, language, and even the furthest horizon of political aims. Their relationship to existing ideals is modulated by these constructed political environs. Since these spaces are constructed by people who were also acculturated by a broader social context, if there is not an explicit program for rooting out regressive notions, the spaces become little more than the reproductive cells of liberalism -- albeit a mutated liberalism. They reify liberal precepts whose logic they don't even question. They instill and reinforce in their fellow-travelers liberal concepts of how to engage with existing institutions, they carry forward hegemonic forms of chauvinism, they fail to overcome passivity and complicity. In their quest for "power" and "relevance," they deliberately make themselves "big tents," allowing regressivism and counter-revolutionary ideals past the baggage check. They may want to be progressive, but they are powerless against the regressivism they refused to challenge. So congratulations on meeting people where they are. You have waded into the muck to try and reach them, and you have successfully avoided making them thrash and sink deeper. Now what is your plan to get both them AND you out? (21/21)