Opportunism is a real problem in every system, but you can stop it if you’re well organized. Ultimately I reject your framing because if we were all power hungry we’d be licking fascist boots, not talking to the powerless.
Problem is, you are not my colleague or my boss or similar people. You are someone I might not even end up interacting IRL.
Most people will just ignore the people slowly amassing power because they tend to be discreet enough to not raise too many alarms and the same thing might look like just incompetence unless one is looking closely enough.
Then there will be people who just find it easier to de-escalate situations, no matter what the outcome, that end up helping the malicious ones get out unscathed. Cover-ups follow.
And the power-hungry will mostly be found in places of power. Whether you interact with them directly, depends upon where you end up working.
The most hard working and benevolent people I have seen, are coincidentally also those who tell you to care about yourself.
They won’t preach teamwork or communality, but that comes naturally to them. They won’t ask you to help others, but will help with what they are good at and not treat it as a favour. They don’t bid you to be helpful, but enable you to get to a place where you can be helpful. Also, they won’t act like they overtly care about you.
I feel like you’ve interacted with too many socialists online. That is not my irl experience at all. In fact, your last paragraph there does describe most irl socialists.
Except that they neither identify as socialists, nor do they care about the other’s *-ism.
So you see, one neither needs to be any *-ist nor requires to accept all terms of any group, to be able to have +ive interactions with them. The only time that is required, is when it is an extremist group.
I think you’re way too hung up on labels. Why do you give a shit what somebody else calls themselves? Maybe you’ve just been meeting socialists that know you have a weird anti"-ism" thing, so they just don’t use that word and instead describe ideas to you (which is a fairly common tactic to take around somebody that is slightly unhinged). Nobody said everybody needs to be any kind of anything. There are lots of helpful people to socialist causes who don’t consider themselves to be socialists. That’s called critical support is is highly valued.
Opportunism is a real problem in every system, but you can stop it if you’re well organized. Ultimately I reject your framing because if we were all power hungry we’d be licking fascist boots, not talking to the powerless.
Problem is, you are not my colleague or my boss or similar people. You are someone I might not even end up interacting IRL.
Most people will just ignore the people slowly amassing power because they tend to be discreet enough to not raise too many alarms and the same thing might look like just incompetence unless one is looking closely enough.
Then there will be people who just find it easier to de-escalate situations, no matter what the outcome, that end up helping the malicious ones get out unscathed. Cover-ups follow.
And the power-hungry will mostly be found in places of power. Whether you interact with them directly, depends upon where you end up working.
The most hard working and benevolent people I have seen, are coincidentally also those who tell you to care about yourself.
They won’t preach teamwork or communality, but that comes naturally to them. They won’t ask you to help others, but will help with what they are good at and not treat it as a favour. They don’t bid you to be helpful, but enable you to get to a place where you can be helpful. Also, they won’t act like they overtly care about you.
I feel like you’ve interacted with too many socialists online. That is not my irl experience at all. In fact, your last paragraph there does describe most irl socialists.
Except that they neither identify as socialists, nor do they care about the other’s *-ism.
So you see, one neither needs to be any *-ist nor requires to accept all terms of any group, to be able to have +ive interactions with them. The only time that is required, is when it is an extremist group.
I think you’re way too hung up on labels. Why do you give a shit what somebody else calls themselves? Maybe you’ve just been meeting socialists that know you have a weird anti"-ism" thing, so they just don’t use that word and instead describe ideas to you (which is a fairly common tactic to take around somebody that is slightly unhinged). Nobody said everybody needs to be any kind of anything. There are lots of helpful people to socialist causes who don’t consider themselves to be socialists. That’s called critical support is is highly valued.