Further Investigation and Struggle with Students—Learning About the Contradictions in Their Thinking

by Annie Day | October 14, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Applying the approach in the article from Sunsara Taylor, Learning About and Struggling with Students over What and How They Are Thinking, I went out with a younger revolutionary and spent a couple hours on the campus of a prestigious university. We’re building for a major screening on campus of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—Nothing Less! and are building this in a different kind of way. Along with aiming to have a lot more direct engagement with Bob Avakian in this breakthrough film, we want to learn more deeply the thinking of the students. As Sunsara emphasizes, both what they are thinking but also how. We have to learn this deeply and really aim to transform it—through struggle, comparing and contrasting what’s true, and how one arrives at the truth. Not mainly one-on-one (though that can be very important), but in mass ways—aiming to impact the whole terrain and change the whole atmosphere, bringing forward people who are working to build the movement for revolution themselves in different ways in that process.

We were only able to talk with a handful of students in the time we had, but we learned a great deal.

A few students—even those who seemed to be a bit more engaged in bigger questions in the world—didn’t want to talk, were having a “chill lunch” and didn’t want to be made to think more deeply. Others took a longer time with us and were surprised themselves about where the discussions went. Mainly what stood out to us were the contradictions in people’s own thinking as well as how much is just under the surface that you would’ve otherwise never understood or drawn forward.

A couple more universal themes: even as some of the students we spoke with had a lot to say about their concerns, including about the broader society, none of them said they talk about these things with their friends. One student, a Latino Baptist who reads the Bible every day (more on him below), said he and his friends will often talk about deeper philosophical discussions related to their faith, but they never talk about world events. Everyone else said they talk about “dumb shit” or what’s happening with different friends and school. One student who is very active with Amnesty International stood out as different—much more aware of the situation of the lives of people around the world.

Also, people don’t spontaneously draw out the logic of their own thinking, the contradictions within that and the contradictions between their thinking and reality. In a couple of the lengthier discussions, it was a heavy thing to walk this through with people. We did this mainly through asking questions—and really learning not just what they think, but why they think it and what methods they used to come to those conclusions. At different points, we would pose their thinking—including the contradictions in that thinking—up against the real world. And on two occasions, this really forced people to think about things they had never considered while we learned about all this more ourselves.

What Determines Objective Reality, and Is There Such a Thing?

The other running theme in our discussions was the question of whether or not objective reality exists. Every single student we spoke with conflated people’s opinions or preferences with an understanding that objective reality exists outside of human consciousness. It was only after we walked this through briefly, and explained the difference that a number of students would agree that objective reality does exist and that humans can come to understand it. But even those who did agree had an aversion to declaring this emphatically and certainly wouldn’t argue for that. There were a couple others that insisted that reality is just a collection of personal narratives, views and opinions.

The student who works with Amnesty is a senior philosophy major. He had thought the most about this and felt up against a contradiction. He felt he had to separate out “these philosophical questions of reality and truth” and how it gets determined from what he feels compelled to do with Amnesty International, which he kept emphasizing was fact-based and non-partisan. He said that philosophically, he agreed objective truths existed but only in terms of things that were hard sciences i.e., science and math. Even as at the same time, he was acting on things he knew to be true and felt compelled to change through the work of Amnesty. He was conflicted about all this.

In terms of communism, he said he liked it as an idea but because “it argues for a total solution and universal truths, this can only lead to harm.” Even talking about this seemed to make him uncomfortable and he physically leaned back and grimaced at the idea. He argued that “different people think all kinds of different things and you would be forced to tamp down all that individualism if you tried to make people see things in terms of what you’re asserting to be true.” There was a lot to unpack here. First, what did he think of the difference between individualism and individuality, something which BA has emphasized in different ways? Individualism being the focus on yourself above all else and individuality being your individual characteristics, personality, interests, individual expression, etc. He said that actually there is an important difference and appreciated the distinction, saying that we actually need less individualism but shouldn’t tamp down the individuality. Second, we asked him about how he understood Marx and Engels’ (who he said he’d read and appreciated) distinction between scientific and utopian socialism—i.e., a socialism whose basis lies in the way in which human society has developed or “a good idea” that you’re aiming to impose on the world? He said he hadn’t thought about it that way—though he was familiar with Engels’ piece about this (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific where Engels critiques utopian socialism and upholds and argues for scientific socialism). He said he wasn’t sure what he thought except that you would still have to force people to go along with something that they may not want to go along with.

He had to get to class so we weren’t able to continue the discussion but gave him a flier and he gave us a way to be in touch.

There was one young woman who felt strongly that objective reality does not exist. She was a freshman, an Asian woman from the Bay Area who first said that our questions were too big and general. She suggested we narrow it down to something more specific because she—and her fellow students—couldn’t speak to something so broad (i.e. what are your biggest concerns about the state of the world, or do you think there’s such a thing as objective reality). When we did start talking about how one, and whether one can, determine what is true, she got pretty stand-offish and said she absolutely didn’t want to talk about it. She said that if she thought there was such a thing as objective reality, she would have to end up killing herself and then said it was way too personal to get into further. We respected that and moved the discussion, but afterwards couldn’t figure out what this might have provoked in her.

The Nonexistence of God and the Nature of Capitalism

Available at Insight Press.

"When I joined the Black Panther Party we had mandatory readings. This book needs to be mandatory reading for everybody, especially young people, and definitely not put away somewhere in a left-wing literature section. This world is upside down-topsy turvy-and lots of people haven't actually studied what that Bible says. Bob Avakian has. He exposes the hypocritical bullshit. He brings it down hard and plain, cold and simple. He goes into history and morality. This book is serious reading."
—Eric G., former Black Panther member

We spent a long time talking with two students from Macau, an island off Hong Kong. They were both majoring in economics and knew each other from back home. They both said they are very concerned about the divisions among people all around the world—divisions between people from different countries, cultures and religions. They said this really keeps people apart and is causing a lot of strife. They said since coming to the U.S. and at their school, they’ve experienced mistreatment because they both have thick accents. One of them said they get dissed or treated like they’re stupid, and said this kind of thing keeps people from even getting to know each other.

We asked them more about how they saw the cause of these divisions worldwide and they emphasized the problems with religion. We then asked if they themselves were religious and they hesitated. One said he didn’t really believe in some kind of big, more powerful force but again, was very hesitant in saying this. We asked his friend what he thought and he said he agreed, he didn’t think there was a god. We told them that what they said was true—there is no god. But also wanted to know how they came to that understanding. The first person who spoke up about this said he went to a Christian school where you had to pray and go to mass every single day, and he remembers listening to them talk on and on about Jesus and thinking that none of this was true, that he couldn’t see any proof for it. The other friend said he came to this understanding because when you look at the world and all the suffering that goes on, what kind of god would allow all this? We asked if they would ever argue for what they were saying to us with others, or do they even talk about this with others and they said “no, it would be too controversial” and “it’s just my opinion anyway.”

I asked them if they thought that what people think determines what is true and they both immediately said yes, and that “what is true for me may not be true for you.” One of them gave an example that he eats a banana for lunch every day and is unsatisfied if he doesn’t have a banana for lunch, but someone else may hate bananas or may be left really hungry if all they eat is a banana for lunch. The young person I was with said there was a difference between personal preference and truth and went on using the example, “this would be like someone saying because I don’t like bananas, it is my truth that you do not eat them for lunch.”

We had them both read BAsics 4:11 (“What people think is part of objective reality, but objective reality is not determined by what people think.”) and they sat in silence for a minute. One then answered in a real sincere way, “that is very deep.” I asked them to say more what they thought and they said they needed to think about it more, and then repeated what the quote was. The other person said he also wanted to think about it more, but that he agreed things are true outside of what we think and had never thought about all this before and said, “You are asking very hard questions.”

We talked some about communism—they said they didn’t think it worked in China, that at first, it really helped the country but now it wasn’t good. They agreed they only really ever heard one side of the story though and themselves weren’t sure what to think. We talked about this briefly, and then asked more about them and what their major was and when they said economics, we asked why they were interested in this. They both said they wanted to go into business to help people. I asked more how they saw that and they talked about being able to help their country thrive, or at least their city. One of them said he was 5-years-old in the Asian economic crisis in 1997, but he remembered seeing all the suffering that came from that, people going hungry, businessmen killing themselves. He wants to do what he can to help avert that kind of crisis, and thinks business is the way to do it.

I asked how he saw that happening, and the other answered that business is about helping people’s lives, helping them to live better. I asked him to think about people all over the world—the sweatshops and mining conditions, the mass unemployment, people living off recycled garbage—when he looks at that, how does it match up to what he just said, that business is about helping people’s lives? They both stopped short and the one who said this looked at us and kind of laughed at himself, “Yeah, well I guess it doesn’t.” I asked what he thought accounted for that then and they both answered that it could work, but people get greedy so take more for themselves.

I stepped back some and spoke for a bit about the actual nature of this system. First, that economics is not just a sphere by itself but a reflection of deeper relations of capitalism. I defined some of these terms and talked about how the problem isn’t greedy people, but the nature of a system that is rooted in the competitive drive for profit through exploitation of people and the planet’s resources. That under capitalism, you’re not really in the business of making this or that product, you’re in the business of making a profit... social need is not a reason things get produced, profit is the only calculation. Also, I introduced the phrase from Marx that the “Moses of capitalism," meaning its guiding force, is “expand or die.” And if you don’t expand at a fast enough rate— through the exploitation of people and the planet, you will get taken over by someone else who does.

On the one hand, they could see in reality what I was saying—that things in our society only get produced for profit, or companies that get taken over by other companies, the competitive drive within the functioning of the economics (as they defined it)... but one of them said, “yes, but if I am a good person and don’t get greedy, then I can pay my workers well and won’t be exploiting them.” We talked about what exploitation actually means and how capitalism is defined by the exploitation of labor, that is where profit comes from—the gap between what people are paid to live and the profit gained through their labor in full. Even if you attempt to be “fair,” you are part of this larger system with these underlying dynamics which are causing tremendous suffering and mass immiseration around the world.

They had never heard this kind of analysis and weren’t sure what to think. I suggested they dig into Marx as well as Avakian and we encouraged them to come to the screening of BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less! that was going to be on their campus soon. They thanked us and said we’d given them a lot to think about and had to go grab lunch before their next class.

When we left, my friend and I both commented that these are students who would probably have never stopped at a Revolution Books table but were thinking deeply—even if to themselves—about a number of things. And we talked about why we can’t just go out “looking for the advanced” in a linear and mechanical way, but really plant a pole impacting the whole atmosphere, building up organization in that context. This can shape the whole terrain—drawing forward a lot of debate and contestation and reaching and impacting these kinds of youth, transforming their thinking within this whole bigger process of the strategy for revolution.

What Is Our Moral Responsibility?

We went up to a young Latino linguistics major (second or third year) sitting by himself at a table eating lunch. He was open to talking and was quite friendly. He is from a poor suburb of LA (made up of impoverished or working class immigrants and Chicanos) but lives and works on campus during the school year.

In answer to our first question—what are your big concerns about the world, your life, etc.—he said, apologetically, that he really doesn’t think about or pay attention to the world, he is very focused on school and he only really pays attention to what’s happening at school. He reads the campus newspaper every day, he lives and works on that campus, is focused on his classes, his whole world is that school. I asked, for example, how did he feel when the verdict around Trayvon Martin came down and he scrunched his face: “To be honest, I really wasn’t paying attention. I mean, I heard about it, but I didn’t really feel any type of way.” I asked if he thought it was a correct verdict and then explained the basics about the case. He was hesitant to voice his opinion but finally said that no, he didn’t think it was correct, it didn’t seem right that Zimmerman got out of his car, but then added, “but that’s just my opinion and I know there are other people who have different opinions.”

We talked for a while about the difference between facts and opinions and he said he did think there was objective truth and that a lot of people were wrong in what they understood about that, but that you should validate people’s opinions no matter what. We asked why and what he meant by that. He said that if you acted like you were sure you were right or argued really strongly for something and seemed like you were adamant about not changing your mind, you came off ignorant and would turn off anyone you were trying to talk to. We talked some about what scientific certitude is and how you have to stand on what you know to be true and fight for it, even as you understand that you don’t know everything and that you may be proven wrong. But that doesn’t mean you don’t fight—even adamantly— for what you do know, and for what has been proven. He said he didn’t mean validate like in agree with, but validate like, “ok, I see you think this and I hear you but here’s why that is wrong.” We agreed that you shouldn’t be arrogant, but you shouldn’t have fake humility either, if you know something to be true, something that has been scientifically proven, and something that really matters, you have a responsibility to fight for it.

This brought us back to the Trayvon Martin case and he said that while he felt bad saying this, it just didn’t really affect him, it wasn’t happening to him or his family so he doesn’t think it was right but didn’t feel compelled to really take notice. He said that even though he did think it was messed up, he didn’t really know that much about it so if he somehow had gone to any of the protests that happened, and someone asked him why he was there, he couldn’t say anything more than, “it was kind of messed up.”

I asked him if Trayvon Martin was shot in front of him just because of the color of his skin, would he do something to stop it. He said he thinks he would. So, I asked, what is the difference? I described what this murder and acquittal means—that this basically reinforced in the legal system a situation where a Black youth can be murdered because some white person feels threatened (whether they are or not in reality does not matter) and that is not considered a crime but self-defense. So that is what that means, and while it may not be happening physically and literally in front of you, how is that any different?

He thought about this and with some seriousness, said, “it’s not, it’s really messed up.” Meaning both the situation and his response to it. He seemed so apologetic about his response so I asked why he thinks it’s right to pay more attention to the world and to act on the situation even though he doesn’t? He said he thinks you’re a bad citizen and a bad human to only pay attention to yourself and he knows there are bad things going on that he should be paying attention to, that it’s wrong to only be thinking about yourself and the people you know. But he doesn’t because he is so busy all the time—over the summer, he had a two-hour commute to and from school, he works at school, is trying to do well in his classes, etc. He just doesn’t feel he has space in his mind to pay attention to all this.

I said I wanted to pose a historic analogy and see what he thought. I can imagine a German student in 1937 (four years into Hitler’s rule and two years before WW2) describing the same kind of situation—busy with his life and his studies. While in the background, dissidents, gay people, Jews and others were being rounded up, beaten, harassed, murdered and criminalized. But let’s say that student is so consumed with his day-to-day existence that he is just paying it no mind. So here we are in today’s situation, and I described very briefly the slow genocide of mass incarceration and how this could turn into a fast one. So that’s the situation we’re in now, and Trayvon’s murder was a part of that, the criminalization of a whole generation of Black and Latino youth. All this is going on, and he’s a good- hearted person who is letting all this go on in the background. What did he think of this?

His face sort of froze and he said, “That’s true, that’s the right analogy.” We all stayed quiet a minute, letting this sink in. I asked what he thought about that then, and he said he didn’t know, that he had to think more.

I asked then about whether any of these are things he talks about with his friends and he said they didn’t. They just talked about school, friends, work, family. This is when he said they do sometimes talk about faith. We asked him whether he was religious and he said he was very religious, a Baptist. He said he tries to go to church every week (though it’s far away so he makes it less during the school year). I asked if he has read the Bible (you’d be surprised how few religious people really have) and he said he does, he reads it every day, it’s the truth. I asked him if he thought the whole thing was the truth and he said he did. So you think it’s the right thing to do for parents to kill their children for being disobedient? Or for women to be stoned for not being a virgin before marriage? He said that no, that was the Old Testament— the law of Moses—now we have the age of Grace, Jesus changed all that with the New Testament. Drawing on BA in Away With All Gods, I asked him first was he then willing to do away with the Old Testament? No, he answered, there is a whole lot there. Second, I asked what god did Jesus uphold and what Bible did he preach? The god of the Old Testament and the substance of the Old Testament. So is that what he would uphold today? The killing of disobedient children and the stoning of women who aren’t virgins? He said that he wouldn’t but that you had to look at these things in historical context. But this begs the question: these things are either the true word of god or they were written by people and are being interpreted by people, in which case, it’s not the word of god. Plus, if Jesus upheld everything from the Old Testament you can’t separate out the god he was arguing people believe in and the god in the Old Testament (bloodthirsty, arbitrary and vengeful).

After I posed this, he stayed quiet. After a minute of silence, I asked what he was thinking. He said he was trying to think of a Bible verse to explain this. I told him this was the wrong method. That if you want to argue something is true, you don’t look for internal proof within it, you have to look at the objective world and look for proof there. I talked about the difference between a closed system and something that corresponds to reality.

I referenced something BA says in the new film, REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! That there is no god and no evidence for god. But that there is a great deal of evidence for the ways in which people have invented gods, and that he should ask himself who benefits from people thinking there are gods that are making all this happen for a reason, and that the poor and impoverished will be rewarded in some nonexistent future realm.

He was dumbstruck, but also clearly moved by all this. He looked at his watch and said he had to go, but that we could walk with him to his next class. Unfortunately, we had to go meet up with a couple other revolutionaries so we had to say goodbye. We emphasized that there really is a different way the world could be but that we had to fight—in the real world—to bring that into being, we need to make a revolution and he should get with the movement for revolution right now. We also encouraged him to go to revcom.us and to get into this more—don’t let these questions and this unsettledness in his thinking get buried. He thanked us seriously for the discussion and we parted ways.

What Communism Actually Is

We did have a few other briefer discussions. We talked with a table of four freshmen who were all just getting to know each other, it was a multinational group—from around the Bay Area and one woman from around Boston. They spent part of the time giggling with each other and part of the time saying what they thought. They seemed a bit put off by the whole thing and somewhat suspect that we actually wanted to know what they thought, thinking this was some kind of marketing ploy. One woman whose family is from India said she thinks a lot about the unequal distribution of wealth in the world. They all said they thought communism is a good idea but doesn’t work. When asked to define communism, they said it was a society where people are made to share, or where everything gets equalized in a flat way. I said that this was wrong—and defined communism as a society where people live in common for the common good, from each according to their ability and to each according to their need... a society not marked by antagonistic social divisions and oppressive class relations... I didn’t want to spend a lot of time with this, but did say it should strike them as odd that here’s this idea they know they’re not supposed to like but they don’t even really know what it is. I also thought it was interesting that a couple of the students seemed more like they wanted to talk, were more thoughtful and perhaps would’ve if they’d been on their own, but the tenor of the group ran counter to that.

We wished we had more time as we felt we only scratched the surface. Part of what was so important in all this is that too often we settle with layering what we’re doing on top of what people are already thinking—without getting more deeply into not just what they are thinking, but as Sunsara emphasized in her article, how they are thinking. This kind of deeper investigation enabled us to get more deeply into it with people—learning what are some of the contradictions in people’s thinking and in their modes of thinking... This really is essential to the kind of revolution we need to be building towards.

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