You Always Have Other Options

Publicly speaking, I am a Marxist. I emphasize how important it is to see things from a systems lens rather than an individual, moral one. I will never tell people otherwise when we are talking about society. However, interpersonally, it is okay to understand that some people will keep taking and taking, and it is okay not to tolerate it.

I’m not big on slogans, but I heard this one through the program I am in, and it resonated with me: “You always have other options” (“YAHOO,” which, yes, I know, is cheesy as hell).

My long-standing instinct was to rescue people. That has trumped what they or their actions have done to me. Partly because I thought, “This world has done this to them; it's not their fault,” and partly for other reasons I’m not going into. The last few years, I've been forced to deal with that.

I always have people argue with me when I redirect a critique to systemic issues. I think a lot of it is because they do not separate social critique from interpersonal relationships; in their mind, what is applicable to one is to the other. It is a mistake, but one I am empathetic to. We are conditioned to build identity and community around the content we consume, which means knowing the rules.

But as someone who has released two books, many documentaries, and even more videos about systemic critique, I want to tell you that there is a difference between that and your life. There are people in your life who would take whatever they can from you. Your enthusiasm looks like oil springing forth from the ground, ready to be sucked out and used to power their machinations. There are people who will say “thank you for your effort” specifically to get more effort from you. People who view you as a resource exist, and often, we don’t know what to do with that (especially system-brained people like myself).

The answer is that you don’t have to have them in your life. You don’t have to tolerate it. You don’t have to take it. You never had to. You always have other options.

I wish someone had told that to me long ago because I have been a person who has incorrectly given people the benefit of the doubt. I have given people energy that I never had to. I have not put my own needs forward. In fact, I let someone convince me that it was wrong to do so! That tendency later affected my relationship with someone else in a way I deeply regret.

There will always be another instance where someone applies a systems critique I’ve made interpersonally. That is 100% going to happen. Many of them are resistant to systems critique because they see it as “letting awful people off the hook.” The mistake they make is that they think it means they have to tolerate people in their own lives who take without giving – sources of pain and trauma.

You don’t. There are people in your life who love you unconditionally and will support you. You may not immediately know who it is, but they’re there. Figure out who they are and go to them. There was a long stretch of my life where I believed I could not express the problems I was going through. I felt very isolated because all everyone saw was the rosy version of a situation I put forward for them to see. I did not have to and neither do you.

As a critic of social systems who always points away from individuals when discussing society, none of the main themes of my work apply interpersonally. When I say, “Do not blame X for Y,” I am not saying, “Tolerate garbage in your life.” You should not tolerate crap in your life. In many cases, it may appear like you are stuck with it, but you always have other options.

They might initially hurt, but sometimes, you really do need to think about yourself. Being a Marxist or a communist doesn’t mean sacrificing yourself for a higher moral cause. It means understanding that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.”

Please take care of yourself.

-P