people are fundamentally rational, and what they believe is strongly influenced by their material interests. furthermore, there’s some truth to everyone’s ideology, simply by nature of the fact that it was derived from interacting with the same reality that you and i do. you don’t have to become friends or share everything with everyone, but you should be able to find the truth in each person you interact with and latch onto that in almost any non-confrontational setting. i interact with people i significantly disagree with on a regular basis and it doesn’t bother me at all anymore, although i admittedly have had a lot of practice.

it sounds like your mental health is your primary contradiction, so i would use the time and opportunity you currently have to work on that and general self-care.

one thing that has helped me a lot to that end has been clearly distinguishing between validity and truth. every feeling and thought that you experience is completely valid, or in other words it is rational for you to experience it, both now and historically. as hegel said, “the real is rational and the rational is real.” but, just because something is valid doesn’t necessarily make it correct.

in order to separate those two in practice, i would try to determine some thoughts or feelings that you think may be incorrect, try to mull over the rationale behind why you thought or felt that thing in the first place (this can sometimes take a long time, and a good therapist can help with this process), and then start to slowly correct that behavior over time.

a pretty common example of this that i suspect you may be experiencing is feeling a sense of worthlessness by not being able to work. while there may be many reasons for feeling this, both in general and specific to your own life experience, a common reason why people feel this way under capitalism is that people are only socially valued for the productive labor they can contribute to society. this is despite the fact that everyone inherently provides other types of value to society, and a pause in socially productive labor doesn’t necessarily mean a complete stop, either. even though we all want to be as socially productive as we can reasonably manage, feeling worthless is actually counterproductive to that goal.

finally, i just want to clarify something regarding incorrect feelings. it may be confusing to you or others to hear me call some feelings incorrect, but simultaneously valid. after all, we don’t really have direct control over our emotions, we feel what we do in order to process the world around us and help us communicate (to others or to ourselves) what our needs are. however, many emotions (these are typically referred to as secondary emotions) are themselves directly influenced by how we use thoughts and ideas to interpret stimuli, including our own initial emotional response to something (referred to as primary emotions, which i don’t think can ever be incorrect). and we do have the capacity to have control over our thoughts, thus giving us some indirect control over our incorrect secondary emotions.

hope that made sense and is helpful to you! know that you’re not alone, and that i’m in a very similar situation to you too. mental health struggles are real, and are becoming all the more common.

maybe this is a hot take, but because i see next to no effective/correct communist organizing in the west (and the masses are even farther off rn) i don’t get the sense that anyone is seen as a significant threat. i mean, the overton window has shifted so much that left liberals are called communists regularly.

sure, we’re all probably on lists somewhere. sure, the west is still at its heart fundamentally anti-communist. sure, things could suddenly get a lot worst if the house of cards comes falling down. but, i think if you’re currently at the point where you think being killed for your beliefs in the short term is realistic i think you’re either extremely desperate (rightfully so, i’m sure) or simply adventurist.

outside of the west could be entirely different for all i know, but i get the sense that many on here (not all, maybe not even a majority, could be an interesting poll) are from the west. i’m speaking from my own experience as a westerner. in any case, i don’t plan on dying anytime soon.

not sure how unpopular this is, but i’m of the opinion that having a strong education in diamat is more important than any other political/philosophical education, because it is simply more fundamental in the sense that it itself can be applied to all spheres of knowledge and discovery. furthermore, a lack of interest or knowledge in diamat is one of the main problems i perceive from western ML orgs. there’s a lot of room for new theory here but i haven’t really seen anything major published, although i might just not have seen it.

There is logical coherence, which is when we try to make sense of it all. I’ve got some sad news for you: we can’t make sense of it all.

can you elaborate on exactly what you mean by this?

sorry you’ve been put into this incredibly stressful situation when you yourself aren’t feeling up to par either. i can only imagine how much obligation and pressure you must feel.

i tried to write the steps such that they were what i would want to hear were i in a crisis situation and not able to access a crisis hotline for myself, so i hope they are of some use to you in figuring out what you can continue to say; things like validation can be said in response to just about any feeling, since all feelings are rational.

again, best of luck to you. wishing you the best and a speedy recovery for your friend.

i’m no expert, but in lieu of getting them to talk to 988, basically supporting them in the same way a hotline like that would.

that’s all i can think of atm. hope everything turns out okay.

i know things are super tough for you right now comrade, but i just want you to know that your situation and what you’ve done is incredibly inspiring. everyone here is proud of you and rooting for you. continue to keep us updated.

i think the extreme low level of political education/development in the west means two things:

1. most existing large-scale parties are necessarily shit, because no one is developed enough to know how to correctly run a party in the first place, let alone know the correct line on any or most issues. leadership is ossified and crap usually

2. if the primary contradiction is low development/education, educating ourselves (individually or in groups when possible) is the most important thing we can do right now. if being an autodidact isn’t possible for any reason, then making that possible is the most important thing instead

scientific socialism will take serious, rigorous study in order to become fully developed cadre. and, ultimately i don’t think any existing party in the west can provide that serious rigorous study, we simply have to do it ourselves. one thing you could consider is reaching out to people you think are as developed as you in the org and starting a private study group yourself.

i’m sorry you feel that way, comrade. i think given your particular needs and also general social needs that everyone has, it makes absolute sense for you to feel that way about it. consequently i don’t think you should beat yourself up about it: you didn’t make a mistake by prioritizing your own needs, because i’m sure you had no choice in the matter anyways. whenever shit hits the fan like that, consequences like this can be tough but also let you know who really deserves to be in your support/social system, because you deserve it. i hope you can grieve your loss, move on, and then find something that fills that void.

as someone with years of experience both having and finally overcoming social anxiety and depression, i have a few things to say

i wouldn’t get caught up on labels and diagnoses too much. psychiatry can sometimes pathologize normal, rational human behavior. in my experience it also made it seem like i would be stuck with my diagnoses for life, which i don’t think is necessarily the case, either.

it feels like conscious brain knows what I should be doing as a communist, but my subconscious instinct over protects me and prevents me from actually being able to be social and organize and such.

this is exactly, exactly what i felt, and i felt a lot of shame as a result of my values not being in alignment with my actions. but, a central aspect of marxism is that humans (and really all living beings) are inherently rational, that we react rationally to our material conditions in accordance with our material interests. i was forced to investigate my own history and why i had learned to be so scared of other people, and why i had learned to think so little of myself, so that i could then change myself in the present. this was a process that took several years and was very challenging, but was absolutely worth it because i feel like it tackled the underlying contradiction instead of the surface level symptoms.

and then on top of that, i’ve found that even still (like anything else) thinking positively and socially interacting with other people is a skill that can be learned. i have a much easier time learning it after resolving those issues from my past, but resolving those issues didn’t magically give me those skills either. taking things one step at a time, setting very small and achievable goals for myself has been what i’m working on: like saying hello or making eye contact with at least one stranger in a day, being around strangers a little more often, trying my best to reframe negative thoughts, etc

finally, i just want to say that with all the horrible things going on in the world and all the emphasis put on organization (rightly so), it can be so easy to think that because of your internal problems that you’re not a good enough communist, or that you’re not a communist in practice. but i think there are so many of us that are bogged down by mental health struggles such that sometimes being the best communist you can be literally entails tackling your mental health struggles head on. self care is valuable reproductive labor. this is how i’ve reframed the guilt i used to feel for being forced to work on myself for a time

hope you feel better soon, comrade.

can you explain what you mean by “nobody actually knows how to to do socialism”? what about china, cuba, vietnam, DPRK, etc

and, what exactly does that have to do with our collective consciousness/subconsciousness under capitalism?

congrats! sounds horrible, hope you find something better soon

sounds like you already have a lot of ideas on how to improve, and that’s great! seems like it was a fruitful experience after all. i’m no math whiz, but whenever practicing anything i always try to remember the adage “if you practice like you play, then you’ll play like you practice.” try to simulate the form, content and experience of the exam as much as possible when practicing, while also changing those variables up often enough to keep yourself on your toes. that way no matter what happens or how you feel, you’ll likely feel more prepared. hope that helps!

sorry to hear that, comrade. failure and setbacks can definitely be discouraging sometimes, but there is no success without failure and vice versa. revolutionary optimism applies to the self, too.

in this case failure just seems to indicate a weakness in your strategy/tactics rather than a lack of effort. may i ask how you studied?