I suppose the question might be more: when wouldn’t you use PPB? If you’re familiar with Huey P. Newton, in an interview he gave the same year he was assassinated (RIP; Rest In Power) he spoke against what he referred to (and what I am suggesting is quite similar) as the dirty word movement. Is it really so difficult to accept one of the consequences of using some language, whatever it is, can be deleterious or on the whole considered by comrades to be less than helpful in specific circumstances?
I have a carrot and stick philosophy to brainworms, if I see a person as genuinely potentially possible to talk to and turn then I engage with them in as friendly a way as I can possibly muster - earnestly demonstrating that I’m educated and worth listening to and a potential source of learning.
If however they are clearly not going to allow that to happen I use the stick.
My interaction with this person is not the last ever interaction this person will have with a communist. They will have others in future, and I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade. I don’t view interactions in a vacuum, I view things hollistically. The general intent being that having an incredibly negative experience as a result of the way they engaged me results in them engaging with someone else in a different way.
also;
i do think the carrot and stick is a good heuristic, it really makes a clear distinction i think to like, how to frame one’s responses & engagements
ah that’s fair and it makes sense. you’d say something like my confusion would be a consequence of not knowing or being familiar with your engagement philosophy and history, right? it feels like it would be difficult for others maybe to know that as well which may also explain some reticence on others’ part.
i also don’t see things in rather short slices, and don’t think my internal presumptions–i.e. inherently containing a tendency towards non-scientific positivist thinking; it lacks peer-review or the broader phenomena of explicit social critique of which all have the reference materials available which in this case are categorically excluded from such folks, for good reason of course and, holistically, it would be amiss i think to ignore its lack of presence.
i think i honestly got super excited and really did not read the room well vis-à-vis the original poster. after rereading your prior comment and other comrades i think i severely misunderstood and misconstrued what the OP was saying… it honestly kinda reminds me of dronerights a bit and my interactions at that time.
I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade.
That’s a great strategy, and way to think about interacting with people.
The idea that we have to only use the carrot in all situations because that is the sole interaction that will determine whether the other person becomes a comrade or a fascist, is, besides being silly, a lot of pressure to place on an individual.
It’s also entirely unrealistic. Like, do people only meet nice liberals? Nice fascists? Is each interaction people have with them something you only view in a vacuum?
The decision to join a political camp is not determined by how nice your interactions with the people in that camp are, but by how significant their political positions resonate with your lived experiences. The biggest barrier, for communists, is that anticommunism and mccarthyism closes people off to even considering our political points. The biggest and most important thing then is to develop a strategy for the destruction of that barrier. Once you destroy that barrier you gain access to a person’s mind. Without the destruction of that barrier you are literally wasting your time.
And this is generally what informs my somewhat rough behaviour with people when I recognise they have that barrier up and are not doing anything to try and break it. I can’t break it for them, they have to want to break it themselves. The only way I have to encourage them to break that barrier down is to give them a god awful experience because of its existence, and to make it very clear that it’s because they have that barrier up that they’re getting this awful experience. This, I then hope, results in them taking a different approach to the next comrade they come across. Or it might even be me next time, and my completely different attitude and behaviour with them because they don’t have the barrier up results in reinforcing that they lower it.
I whined about cracker being a slur and those mean ol Hexbears just called me a cracker more instead of debating me
I have a carrot and stick philosophy to brainworms, if I see a person as genuinely potentially possible to talk to and turn then I engage with them in as friendly a way as I can possibly muster - earnestly demonstrating that I’m educated and worth listening to and a potential source of learning.
If however they are clearly not going to allow that to happen I use the stick.
My interaction with this person is not the last ever interaction this person will have with a communist. They will have others in future, and I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade. I don’t view interactions in a vacuum, I view things hollistically. The general intent being that having an incredibly negative experience as a result of the way they engaged me results in them engaging with someone else in a different way.
also; i do think the carrot and stick is a good heuristic, it really makes a clear distinction i think to like, how to frame one’s responses & engagements
ah that’s fair and it makes sense. you’d say something like my confusion would be a consequence of not knowing or being familiar with your engagement philosophy and history, right? it feels like it would be difficult for others maybe to know that as well which may also explain some reticence on others’ part.
i also don’t see things in rather short slices, and don’t think my internal presumptions–i.e. inherently containing a tendency towards non-scientific positivist thinking; it lacks peer-review or the broader phenomena of explicit social critique of which all have the reference materials available which in this case are categorically excluded from such folks, for good reason of course and, holistically, it would be amiss i think to ignore its lack of presence.
i think i honestly got super excited and really did not read the room well vis-à-vis the original poster. after rereading your prior comment and other comrades i think i severely misunderstood and misconstrued what the OP was saying… it honestly kinda reminds me of dronerights a bit and my interactions at that time.
That’s a great strategy, and way to think about interacting with people.
The idea that we have to only use the carrot in all situations because that is the sole interaction that will determine whether the other person becomes a comrade or a fascist, is, besides being silly, a lot of pressure to place on an individual.
It’s also entirely unrealistic. Like, do people only meet nice liberals? Nice fascists? Is each interaction people have with them something you only view in a vacuum?
The decision to join a political camp is not determined by how nice your interactions with the people in that camp are, but by how significant their political positions resonate with your lived experiences. The biggest barrier, for communists, is that anticommunism and mccarthyism closes people off to even considering our political points. The biggest and most important thing then is to develop a strategy for the destruction of that barrier. Once you destroy that barrier you gain access to a person’s mind. Without the destruction of that barrier you are literally wasting your time.
And this is generally what informs my somewhat rough behaviour with people when I recognise they have that barrier up and are not doing anything to try and break it. I can’t break it for them, they have to want to break it themselves. The only way I have to encourage them to break that barrier down is to give them a god awful experience because of its existence, and to make it very clear that it’s because they have that barrier up that they’re getting this awful experience. This, I then hope, results in them taking a different approach to the next comrade they come across. Or it might even be me next time, and my completely different attitude and behaviour with them because they don’t have the barrier up results in reinforcing that they lower it.