Validation as a Left-Wing Addiction

Dopamine can be sold in a variety of ways, even forms packaged as aesthetically radical...

[Note: This article is the script for my video Leftist Validation as Dopamine Addiction. As always it can be controversial as the main focus of critique is Twitter usage among Leftists, which is most likely where you will see this article. But I hope that despite criticisms presented you will take what I have to say with consideration.]

What are your motivations for being a communist, or any kind of leftist for that matter? Is it that the capitalist system financially screwed you over and so you want to unite with other workers because our class is materially out of options to live decent lives within this system? Are you financially stable but perhaps are marginalized in some other form, such as requiring national liberation, liberation based on gender and/or sexuality, disabilities, the list goes on.

Or are you in this movement because you want to feel better about yourself?

There tends to be a categorization of leftists (regardless of tendency) as being one of two things: either being a “terminally online leftist,” characterized as someone who does nothing but sit around on social media complaining about the tendency they don’t like, getting into fights with people, and essentially getting nothing done with their time while simultaneously deluding themselves into thinking they are morally superior to others. And then there’s the “organizers,” the people who spend a sizable amount of their free time actually working on the ground to build a united worker’s movement.

But this dichotomy seems strange to me. Because regardless of how “productive” you are with your time (however you are supposed to measure that) there is a common problem that underlies it all, namely, the addictive nature of validation.

Validation, as defined by psychology, is the recognition and acceptance of another person’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors as understandable. Self-validation is the recognition and acceptance of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as understandable.

It is considered to be one of the most important aspects of psychological therapy whether it relates to mental stability and improvement, healthy relationships, and more. Validation tells a person that the actions they are taking have some kind of logical, ethical, or moral sense. Because humans are social creatures, validation is the mechanism we use to judge how effective our actions are in ensuring our health and survival by gauging how willing others are willing to keep your company because of them. We need the approval of others because we evolved to depend on others for survival and reproduce, so when we receive it, our body gives us a shot of dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure.

However, this phenomena rarely goes noticed in daily life because we receive validation and its opposite, rejection, on the daily basis. It is also the case that we’ve reached a technological stage where information both ones we interpret as “positive” and “negative” is being transmitted at the speed of light and at unyielding quantities.

I’m no conservative. As a communist, I don’t see this as a particularly bad thing, technology advancing is a good thing, allowing us to get closer and closer to the levels of production necessary to achieve a post-scarcity society. The problem however lies in the fact that the vast majority of people, leftists included, currently lack the mental awareness to control how this quantity of information affects us on a daily basis.

I’m going to keep things vague because I don’t want to name specific examples because I’m genuinely not here to exacerbate the very problem I’m criticizing. Far too often leftists let a relatively significant piece of data (ex. 240 character tweets) get the best of them and thrown into a blind rage on social media. This uncontrolled rage is validated by their fans, be it 10 people or 10,000 people. The process is rewarded, and so the individual is more likely to engage in that behavior. This continues to happen until it sparks more controversy, more people are added to the drama, and eventually it starts a whole conversation on the left about an issue, often times over something that should be quite low on any principled revolutionary’s priorities. This then stirs hatred and division among our existing cadre, which takes time away from getting our message out there and confuses the masses as entering the left space that’s pre-designed as a battleground isn’t exactly a good first impression.

The consequences for this are even more significant in real life. Promising organizations with so much hard work and resources put into them split apart and the momentum dies because several people were unable to separate the personal and the political.

This is not to say that criticizing people, even doing so publicly, isn’t necessary. Bad takes should be criticized. But with the sheer quantity and lack of control when committing to these line struggles, we are essentially doing the CIA’s work for them.

This is not to shame any particular individual. People are always products of their conditions. I’m also not saying this is even about individual solutions. But that doesn’t mean we can lie down in defeat nor does it mean we can keep pushing forward without addressing this problem. This is going to take a collective effort to uplift both ourselves and each other. If we refuse to acknowledge this problem, promising orgs are going to keep splitting. Agent provocateurs will continue having the time of their lives, and when the situation gets more intense, it’ll be child’s play for fascist paramilitaries to terrorize our communities because we as leaders refuse to get our shit together.

So what can we do? We need to train our dopamine receptors to accept lower levels of dopamine so that we can focus our cognitive energy towards theorizing new solutions for our revolution and towards generating the mental fortitude to enact that will.

The first thing anyone should do in any context, real life or online, is remind ourselves that this isn’t about us. This isn’t about whether “you” or “they” are correct or not. At all. We are all advocates for change, not the sole progenitors of it. I am not a communist nor Marxist-Leninist. I “advocate” Marxism-Leninism as a means to communism, because it’s not about me. My ideologically counterpart is not a Democratic Socialist, an Anarchist, Trotskyist, or Maoist. They “advocate” these things. When criticizing tendencies you don’t like, remind yourself that it really is about the position and not the person holding it. People are shaped by their material conditions. Never forget that if you had the same body and went through the same experiences they did you would have a similar experience to that person. To believe “you” (whatever that means in a materialist sense) would be any different because “you would make better choices” is pure idealism.

I want you to quite literally tell yourself in your head “This person is a vessel for ____, they advocate ____ because their life circumstances led them there.” Even in the worst possible scenarios, such as someone clearly espousing fascist views or sometone having an openly reactionary take such as one that seeks to divide the working class on arbitrary lines, you should still do this exercise before you respond to this person. The reason why is that it allows you to not let your justified hatred of fascism or reactionary politics cloud your judgement. If you truly feel compelled to engage with a person like this out of defense or another reason, doing so in a calm state of mind might disarm their ability to respond back to you. As an unaware person, they probably lack any self control over their validation addiction as well. They may be picking a fight with you purely for the adrenaline rush of a high intensity debate. A calm response might deter them from even engaging with you or even better, may give you a 5% chance of convincing that person. 5% doesn’t seem like a lot, but consider the quantity of debates most people have online. That adds up. And while slim, a 5% chance of convincing someone is a 5% chance you or they won’t be on the wrong side of a gun barrel. Just saying.

Another useful online exercise I want you to try is to tweet a normal tweet. It should be something political or newsworthy. But then as soon as you post it, mute the notifications. Then do something that requires enough focus that you almost forget about the tweet. If able bodied and not out and are just at home, go exercise. If you are on lunch break, talk to your coworkers or if no one is around, read a book or article. Meditate, practice one of your hobbies or skills. Don’t check your notifications, don’t check the analytics, let go of that tweet’s existence from your conscious mind.

This will force you to truly consider why you put your tweets out there in the first place. Why are you posting that tweet for people to see? Follower counts range from 100-20K for most communists, breadtubers can sometimes push higher into 100K or so. Are you doing it to inform people, push the consciousness of the masses forward, counter unproductive stances that impede the movement? Or did you post that tweet because you want to see the number of likes it gets? Does every time your phone vibrates because either a mutual or a random stranger who happens to hold the same belief you do clicks a button for you give you pleasure? Do you feel good when you ratio someone? What does that say about your motivations to be here and hold the ideological stances you have? Take the time to investigate this.

I already know what you’re going to say: “But Pathfinder!! This is a problem relegated to tErMiNaLlY OnLiNe LeFtIstS! I actually organize in real life and we don’t behave this way at all!!”

That’s awesome. Please for the sake of the planet’s survival keep doing what you are doing. But I want to challenge you on this assumption.

I’ve done a lot of IRL organizing in many different groups with radically different positions and attitudes, and there wasn’t a single organization I was a part of, not one, where there wasn’t some kind of shit talking of another group or tendency whether it was “tankies”, “succdem social fascists”, “anarkiddies”, “trots” etc. One person brings it up and then everyone joins in and has a good laugh about how useless other tendencies are and that what WE are doing is correct and moving things forward.

Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t do this either. Your organization may not do this publicly and shit talking is relegated to internal meetups, but it still happens. And it’s the same problem of validation addiction as those “terminally online”. What you do in private when no one is around and no one will find out is a good chance and self reflection of your own character. And these aspects of our selves will pop up when the crisis intensifies. As the capitalists are unable to maintain order around us, will we suddenly muster up the discipline to seize the moment? Or must that discipline be trained for now?

Thank you for the read, comrades!

If you liked this article please share it on social media, give it a like, and let me know what your thoughts are in the comments.

If you can support me financially I desperately need it as I’ve been housing insecure for the past few weeks. A few dollars goes a long way, and if not, retweeting my mutual aid requests will help boost and make it visible.

Cashapp: $PathfinderAmihan

Venmo: @PathfinderAmihan

Once again, thank you, comrades. And Solidarity forever!