Basically every post has included some form of toxic self-hate, minus one or two mentioning exercise. While I do like being able to confront these in the first place, the purported goals and name of this community gives people who are giving the exact wrong advice far too much credibility, and the last thing these people need is a comment with the most upbears regurgitating individualistic self-help concepts at them.

If we’re going to keep this sort of community around, I suggest doing some serious research and basing it off of DBT, and integrating serious critiques of CBT style mental healthcare and improvement.

This is literally the exact reason I made this comm. You can call it “revolutionary_behavior” or “how_to_be_a_better_communist” or “flurgle_bungle”, the name of the thing doesn’t change its character. To be able to do revolutionary behaviour, you must go through the self. There’s no way to interact with the world other than through your own actions. Communities are made up of a lot of individual people, ideally all pulling in one direction. A community where all of those people eat healthy and vegan diets will be better than one where they do not. In the absence of a state-driven or society-driven initiative to propel these changes on a big, structural level rather than the individual level, we don’t really have much choice but to take things into our own hands, at least in much of the imperial core where such large projects are generally anathema. Positive routines and good habits are important to establish, regardless of the framework in which you are doing them. Eating healthily and becoming fit is fairly necessary to be able to outrun cops or, if it comes to it, do a Long March. Your own eyes must read books (or listen to others) to learn information about how to organize a revolution.

It might be self-improvement, but you’re not really doing it for the self, you’re doing it so you can be a better and more effective revolutionary, and when these revolutionaries are combined, they can change the country they’re living in and ultimately the world. Obviously if you don’t believe in vanguards then your mileage may vary.

I don’t want to cede the “self-help” or “self-improvement” ground to the right-wing by uttering the talismanic phrase “Organize your community and unionize” when like, you’re not even approaching a mental or physical state where you could attempt to do that. I want to create a new ground, call it “self-improvement”, and then use communist framings of those ideas that are actually helpful. I am monumentally sceptical of the monolith of self-help bullshit that has been spewed out over the last few decades and think 99% of it is useless garbage invented by CEOs who don’t do any actual work, and grifters who are just trying to sell a product. There is no real salvation through the pathway of “merely become more disciplined and read five books a month titled like 'The 50-1 Method: How To Become A Better Boss.” But like, going on daily walks and shit does actually help me and others, exercise makes me feel better, dressing nicely makes me feel more attractive, etc. We should take what is salvageable and ditch what is not.

I completely support your effort to get DBT in here over CBT, and other such methods that are disconnected from that massive tsunami of grift that is the modern self-improvement community.