🐌🧠 progressive antipragmatism vs strategic discatharsis

27 Apr, 2025

i have come to believe that one of the most frustrating barriers to success for both sides (but most critically the liberal/leftist) is the conflation of emotional satisfaction with progress. that we have been taught catharsis carries with it a meaningful impact on the world, rather than a purely internal state of emotional resonance. i'm reminded of the incandescent lightbulb, nine-tenths of its energy emitted as waste heat rather than the intended luminosity.

this waste energy is indicative of the efficiency of a system, and often causes issues that require their own solutions - a heatsink, a cooling system, an airflow wicking it away to dissipate in the surrounding air. in a world where heat was much less plentiful, and every iota of warmth cherished as relief from bitter cold, i think we'd be less stringent about this waste energy. a similar dynamic plays out with emotional satisfaction in our atomised, spiritually diminished lives under neoliberalism. the expectation is to divorce emotions from your interactions with the rationalist system, suppress your reactions to those around you to maintain what few connections you have (particularly in the less atomised communities of religion and rurality) and feed all of that energy into networked system of interactions for the profits of big tech.

this colossal libidinous capture goes some way to explaining the overwhelming adoption of social media - converting this waste energy and transforming it into a flow of technocapital. it is a free energy after all, a byproduct of a spiritually stifled humanity with little room to channel it into meaningful work, love and community. like all power flows it reinforces as it moves, driving deeper channels into the social psyche until it seems a natural, timeless system. it influences everyone captured by it, changing how they relate to their own emotional byproduct. this is an example of a potential source of power that is currently converted into technocapital. we lead into, then, the dangers of emotional satisfaction.

every mote of attention, intellectual effort, messaging, time, space, energy is an input into any given system. your interactions with your social media are free labour, whether you recognise it to be in the pursuit of some effort (political activism) or just entertainment. if you have any intent to change a system, change someone's mind, change anything, you want the maximum value of outcome for your given input. you are working at a significant disadvantage already, spear against supercomputer, and at your size the multiplier on your energetic inputs is far more impactful.

so let's look at the ideal form of propagation to aim for: strategic discatharsis.

strategic discatharsis

the source of an idea is easily attacked and disregarded, especially in a polarised world of thought-terminating signifiers. you carelessly identified yourself as a socialist with that eat the rich retweet three months ago? now anything you've been associated with is inaccessible to 100 million Americans. the idea itself could travel far further than the source, so propagating an idea sourcelessly is, it follows, the better method. it is from this perspective i assert the importance of allowing others to own your ideas as if they are their own. better yet if the ideas exist in isolation from you already. this is not possible with a dependency on emotional catharsis as a source of feedback for your actions, you must enact a strategic discatharsis. indeed, your need for emotional catharsis and egoic supply is a deeply destructive force. you must have a firmer and more stable foundation outside of your activism.

this is ableist, racist, sexist, bigotry of low expectations etc. of course it is - the only system stable enough to maintain itself indefinitely would be one whose opponents cannot bring themselves to do the things required to overcome it. you cannot love nazis, you cannot overcome their alternative reality, you cannot accept or understand them, they are inhuman, antihuman, NPCs. the right wing is innoculated against you via antibodies that target your moral principles. refusal to embrace a discathartic mode of activisim is prioritising your self-concept (or more dangerously, your ingroup status signalling) over outcome. this is the trap most leftists fall into as they rise in status - performative antipragmatism.¹

i'd go further to say if you leave a conversation miserable, and your opponent leaves spewing your ideas as if they are theirs to a new audience, you have won. growth is statistically unlikely and definitionally limited by association with you. it is an imposition on your ego, it is not accessible to those with unstable foundations, it is not a tactic that can be replicated without a base of support, a fulfilling life, a firm ego. but these are traits that must be cultivated first before one can fight any ongoing battle, and without which you are likely to fall or be captured by a greater system. it takes a continuous exertion of egoic force to hold against the many fathoms deep pressure of repelling neoliberal social decay. you should not fight if you are not already doing this with energy to spare. you will not gain emotional satisfaction from real outcome-oriented work without spending potential gains on your own egoic self-reinforcement. you will siphon energy from your cause in ways ultimately destructive to it.

we can see this in the Obama administration - a cathartic release of libidinal relief - the final proving of the civil rights movement's success - The End of Racism. this cathartic excess was one of the greatest emissions of waste energy potential in the 21st century² - resulting in absolutely nothing of value to any institution other than liberalism. "Yes We Can" leaving unspoken an inevitable "But We Won't", encapsulated in the enduring meme left behind - a bitter, sarcastic "Thanks Obama".³ the aesthetics of victory superceded the outcomes of a real victory. we must avoid the overwhelming desire for catharsis over outcome.

so this next bit might be unpleasant.

an appeal to power

those privileged in power by definition have power already to wield in excess of that entitled to them. it should be used to improve the station of those who do not - to voice the voiceless, aggress for the oppressed. better still that this group, can operate in and amongst the powerful - that they do not carry immutable signifiers of dismission to be identified by. you cannot claim the mechanisms of oppression advantage some groups without demanding members of those groups sympathetic to your cause aid you in relative excess to your own capacity. indeed this is where we again come to catharsis. ultimately all structural successes have been manipulations of and appeals to power, supported by some portion of those in power selfishly or altruistically, but always with some proximity to the upper hierarchy.

there are countless examples⁴ of this, and yet there is an understandable but self-destructive entitlement to heroism detrimental to the cause. there is an egoic impulse to be remembered, to leave legacy, to have been on "the right side of history" when this does nothing but serve individualistic interests. to attack the "white saviour" not realising that this is a status you can grant in exchange for concessions. your only cause should be the community you exist in and that which follows. i believe this to be another example of emotional waste energy - and particularly detrimental to oppressed groups. what the fuck was this all for? you spent a life dealing with the consequences of an unequal oppressive system and you can't even be remembered for fighting back against it? this is understandable. but selfishly myopic.

i am suspicious of the narratives of heroic and bold activism by oppressed minorities that paint over the pathetic reality of white bureaucrats feeling genuine sympathy, concern or fear and legislating on behalf of these activists. MLK himself understood that the entire purpose of his movement was an appeal to power, an appeal to white sympathy and an appeal to bureaucratic outcomes.⁵ perhaps the reason MLK is allowed a space in the american mythology is because it is a narrative that teaches the wrong lessons - in favor of liberalism - that bold liberating politics comes from bold oppressed activists. in practice this doesn't make sense - the oppressed are the most repressed, they are the most in need of liberation and the least capable of fighting for it. they may not even have the best understanding of their oppression, denied an understanding of the internal machinations of powerful mechanisms they lack access to.

yes, i am saying that black people may have a limited view of the black struggle, in the same way yemeni people have a limited view of why they are bombed by the american military. if you believe this to be an antagonistic oppressive structure you have to acknowledge that there is an intelligence framework designed to misinform and misdirect the enemies of the oppressive structure. if you believe your enemy is competent, as you always should, you should not mistake narratives designed to compel the masses for narratives designed to compel you. they are many layered, highly informed and founded on decades of psychological operations. the conclusion then is twofold: if you are oppressed, you must acquire power by any constructive means necessary (including infiltrating systems of power while innoculating yourself against corruption) and if you are privileged, you must similarly prevent yourself developing a warped view based on the information structures you reside in (those understanding these warped perspectives may help you reach others beside you in these power structures).

unless you are already sitting on an unassailable power base, no less than many millions of dollars or a charisma that has cultivated millions of diehard loyalists, you are not in a position to build your own station at the same time as that of your community. you do not have the spare energy when competing with those who do have this unassailable power base to spend time, energy and effort on your own image, status and power. investing that power in one person is itself the very system we're trying to combat - one slip up and you have doomed your organisation. this is a kindness, few humans can handle that responsibility, and even fewer can handle it without harming others. you deserve a fallible human life without the expectation of greatness. you deserve fulfilment outside of the confines of your political projects. you deserve the only life you will ever have.

if you have not already, you must build your foundation to help. find fulfilling, meaningful work for yourself, do it to the best of your ability, and do it in and for a shared community. i believe that to be the ideal goal of a modern life. this is a rebellious act in a system that seeks to steal the fulfilment of work from you, alienate you from the true potential you have for that work, and invade the connectors of community with social media, dating apps and frictionless entertainment. this must be the source of your emotional satisfaction, to recapture your own energy and funnel it toward your own self-actualisation.

once you have done this, you can offer catharsis to your opposition in exchange for concessions. the enemy is tired and spiritually deadened too, and you must offer them something in exchange for power if you wish to avoid direct violence. by engaging in discatharsis strategically, you can pragmatically offer your opposition emotional satisfaction at the expense of their political projects.

to overcome progressive antipragmatism it is necessary to engage in strategic discatharsis

Footnotes