If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read OPPOSE BOOK WORSHIP by Mao.
If you think this idea of “No investigation, no right to speak,” is to be mocked or that it doesn’t apply to you, think again.
On the Comrade Birb Facebook page, I’m blocking those who refuse to investigate but want to smear their opinion feces in the comments.
If we want a new better world then we need to start being new better people.
Our high schooler who’s co-enrolled in community college just told me that when they write research papers, their sources must be less than 10 years old since so much changes over time, and particularly within the 21st century, progress accelerates at an even faster rate than it has in the past.
So if you’re relying on your own experiences, it is important to remember that those are only your experiences, those are not universal, and in all likelihood if they’re more than a couple of years old, those memories are dated and have at least some inaccuracies in terms of useful information to understand the current problem. While there may be some common elements between your past experiences and those currently under similar conditions, you cannot assume that you already have the solutions to these problems.
An example is a commenter who tried to defend the $2.13 hourly wage made by wait staff in the US by saying when they waited tables, they made over $100 a night in tips on average. While I am happy that that was their experience, further probing revealed that their experiences were had 13 to 14 years ago. It is unreasonable for them to believe that the conditions they experienced are exactly what others doing that work today are experiencing.
So before you allow your own biases, the biases we have been conditioned into by capitalist indoctrination, your emotions, or your ego to decide that you already have the answers to other people’s problems, consider whether you have made a thorough investigation first. If you haven’t, and you still care about the issue, then you should look into it using historical and material dialectics, a specific set of critical thinking tools that will allow you to find the truth on matters.
