No better way to spend a 4 day weekend in the summer than drinking a margarita on the porch of some place called “Captain Smelly Balls Nasty Crab Bucket Shack” while listening to a terrible ZZ Tops cover band.
This is like the one good element of American Culture and it should be preserved.
Sorry the winter is getting to me a little.
And please for the love of all that is holy bring back the vibes of mom and pop ski lifts/lodges. I yearn for the atmosphere and art of stoner snowboarders. Now it’s all rich people. Boarding culture used to be incredibly anti capitalist but those stickers on the ski lift have faded and the snow is melting.
Mom and pop is just a sanitized word for the petty bourgeoisie. You may yearn for the day when these ski resorts are more like what they were from your childhood and less corporatized, but even though you have good memories of these places, objectively it was a bad thing to exist even then. Let’s take surfing for example, the moment white people co-opted this indigenous activity they became actual surf nazis, they closed off beaches, they commodified it, and this is what is considered the golden age of surfing, it set the culture of it going forward. Just because it was not corporatized doesn’t mean there wasn’t white supremacy rooted in the aesthetics of it from the beginning. So many activities are like this, pretty much any sport is promoting the capitalist hellscape we are in, and it hurts to hear this, but when true liberation comes from capitalism, there will be no more trashy beach towns or shitty ski resorts or any kind of thing associated with what we consider vacation or recreation because our whole conception of that is classist and rooted in capitalism. Humanity’s future is an ascetic one, people will learn to be happy with simple lives when they are not alienated from their own work. If the material conditions are the same everywhere then there’s no reason for leisurely travel. TLDR communism is when no vacation.
Unironically a bad take along with the “there will be no restaurants under socialism” take. Why the fuck wouldn’t there be? You know those trashy beach towns entire existence is attracting tourism right? Maybe under socialism it’s more like people wanting to show off their lifestyle and culture as it pertains to the sea? People like to see water and sand, that’s not going to change under socialism. Same thing with restaurants. Why wouldn’t they exist? Suddenly people are going to cook every single meal themselves? It’s nice to get a meal made by someone else and there is no shortage of people who love to cook for others.
What do you mean human behavior won’t change under socialism? The complete abolition of private property is going to require and cause a complete behavioral change in ALL of humanity. Much like how the state will wither away into obsolescence and communism will eventually give way into anarchy, one can predict that maybe in the future clothes for example, people might become a lot cooler with nudity. Or the consumption of meat will naturally decrease as moral and environmental factors change, first people will eat imitation meat, but then you got a whole generation that never ate meat who will move away from imitation meat because they never had meat in the first place. The same goes with alcohol and recreational drugs, it will naturally just stop being cool to do when people have their material needs met. There will always be reactionaries trying futilely to turn back time but they always lose. So I assume that humanity is moving towards a more ascetic lifestyle based on just the way the wind is blowing, do you disagree that we are not heading towards that Star Trek utopian ideal of people not needing entertainment as society gets better?
It sounds boring to us because it is, capitalist society has us trapped in a Skinner box constantly chasing the new high instead of self actualizing, it confuses individual desire for individual wellbeing, communism is logically the selfish choice because it’s the collective choice and everything is easier when people work together. To get back on the shitty beach town topic, one day they will fall below the waves due to rising sea levels and what will remain? Nothing, these stupid resorts are not contributing anything to human experience beyond vapid human experiences that in the grand scheme of things don’t mean anything. If people had their priorities straight which is only possible through communism they WILL choose the less tacky activities. Why go to a restaurant when you can go to a cafeteria, why go to a resort when you can go to a health clinic, why go to church when you can go to the library. The beach town represents something antithetical to communism, it represents hedonism in a society that needs to give slaves breaks or else they will rebel and topple the whole system. Vacation is a tool used by the capitalists to placate us and we should move beyond it once the means of production are seized by the workers. During the transition period give the workers the treats they desire, but we must move beyond wanting material possessions eventually, there is nothing to feel about this, it’s just the inevitable conclusion that humanity will eventually move away from wanting things and that move away is good because less consumption and waste from humanity while also being fulfilled, that’s the dream. That and a human gestalt consciousness, that would also be pretty cool.
Nono I get you, I’m well aware of what petty bourgeoisie is. I was hoping I could skirt around that by prefacing mom and pop with “vibes of”. I only miss the atmosphere, not the structure. Under communism this would probably take the form of publicly owned and maintained ski lift and resting lodge populated and primarily utilized by the workers that live near it.
In all honesty it would likely develop and entirely different culture in this world since anti-capitalism would no longer be counter culture. The nostalgia I feel for the 90s and early 2000s snowboarder aesthetic will probably never be truly satisfied but a man can dream.
I strongly disagree with your belief that sports and travel wouldn’t exist under communism. I don’t think people can be truly satisfied just because their material conditions are met. There is so much more to life than basic biological needs and social needs. People have desires (not needs) beyond that. No amount of connection to my work, leisure time for hobbies, or interpersonal connection will ever lessen my desire to see the beauty that nature can offer. I currently live in an incredibly flat and barren place, it is genuinely the one of the ugliest places I think I could find to live in. But honestly, even if it wasn’t, even if I lived in the snowy mountains and mossy evergreen forests of Washington, I think I’d still want to experience somewhere else if I could. Basically what I’m getting at in regards to vacation is, generally, humans like seeing and experiencing new things; being stuck in the same place their whole lives can drain them. Humans have a basic need for beauty, we genuinely become depressed when our surroundings are too unappealing.
As for sports I think don’t think they’d be nearly as big of a deal but they would absolutely still exist. Sports have been proven to exist for many thousands of years pre capitalism and pre feudalism. It’s a form of basic play that can bring a community together in the case of team sports. Extreme sports like snowboarding however, are primarily individualistic activities and would probably see a decline but I don’t think they’d disappear entirely. When you were a kid did you ever pick up a skateboard and try to learn tricks? Would you say that you did that because you were alienated from work and because your material conditions were unmet? I think it’s more that people enjoy learning new skills and like the adrenaline. So sure, snowboarding might not be nearly as big as it is now but I refuse to believe it would die out entirely especially since it has already been established and the infrastructure for it already exists.
What are your thoughts @johnmccainstumor@hexbear.net
You just reminded me of the time my senior year of high school when I rode a ski lift with some middle-aged ski bum and he encouraged me (and I think he was serious, I don’t think this was a joke) to get my parents to just give me the money they were going to spend on my college so that I too could become a ski bum. That guy was funny. You meet such weirdos on ski lifts