SOCIAL MEDIA IS POISON

 Call me a hypocrite for posting this online , I really don't give a flying fuck . You won't find me or the band as a collective anywhere else , except for Bandcamp . I will never be involved in any online forums or arguments . If you can't speak directly to me , don't fucking bother anywhere else .

As you already know, there are too many heroes hiding behind their phones and computers just waiting to criticize anyone and everything . Fuck that . Ignore them . All of the petty racists and other lowlife imbeciles who just want to drag others down . Drama gets the views and attention .

Nope . I've got other things to do .

How I escaped the toxic grip of social media

Dr. Damane Zehra

Social Media in Medicine  

April 10, 2025 

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Social media is an incredible tool for staying connected with loved ones and the world. But sometimes, I wonder, are we truly connected? Or is this connection merely an illusion?

I was addicted to social media. I believe this addiction began in 2012, during my first year of medical school. That’s when I asked my father to install an internet connection, claiming it was just for study purposes. It’s a common excuse that many children use when they ask for a cell phone or internet access—saying it’s to stay connected or for studying. The next thing I did was create a Facebook account to stay connected. Our class had a Facebook group to which all our classmates were added. This way, we could share everything in that group—study materials, PDFs of books, PowerPoint presentations of lectures, OSCE materials, and more.

The next thing I did was buy myself a smartphone, which I believe was also in 2012. It was a smartphone from QMobile, worth around 10–12 thousand rupees. QMobile launched the first smartphone in Pakistan in 2009. It was a nice phone, and I used it for about five years. As far as I can remember, I bought it from my savings, although I can’t recall what kind of savings they were.

After Facebook, I started using Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and so on. After completing five years of medical school and sharing notes, I graduated in 2017. My contacts expanded from best friends, classmates, and relatives to include doctors, colleagues, and acquaintances when I began my one-year mandatory internship (house job) in 2017. The social media chaos persisted throughout my residency. Once I began my house job, the number of WhatsApp groups skyrocketed, overwhelming me. These groups began to take a toll on my mental health. I found myself constantly working and checking WhatsApp, which added to the stress of feeling the need to be responsive in both the workplace and educational groups. Everything I did revolved around my phone.

I feel as if I’ve spent one-third of my life on WhatsApp and social media, and I am exhausted. Engaging with these platforms requires so much time, energy, focus, and attention—it truly drains me.

Another downside is the never-ending competition and marketing tactics that permeate these spaces. Everything, from personal matters to professional interactions, feels completely fake. From the moment we wake up, whether it’s watching the sunrise or enjoying our first cup of morning coffee, to the end of the day, every moment seems to be shared on social media. Every vacation, every outfit, everything we buy, our hobbies, our loved ones, our kids, our spouses, and our achievements—it’s all a part of our social media now.

Now, at 32, I find myself feeling exhausted from social media and from this artificial lifestyle that’s left me no time to truly enjoy real life. Why does everyone talk about mindfulness now? We have forgotten to pause, look around, be present in the moment, interact with the real people around us, and explore the beauty of nature and the world around us.

Everything about our appearances on social media is often artificial. The photos are heavily filtered, masking blemishes, tans, and gray hair, and even adding blush to our cheeks. Why do we feel the need to showcase every aspect of our lives, including what we do, buy, or use? Many girls around me proudly display what they eat, the cars they travel in, the jewelry they wear, the bags they’ve recently purchased, the brands of clothing they choose, and the vacations they go on.

I’m not suggesting that self-expression and flaunting are totally wrong. In a world that encourages open expression, it’s valid to showcase yourself in any way you choose. However, it’s important to acknowledge that this can sometimes lead to negative emotions and unhealthy competition among those around us.

People often become preoccupied with what others have or achieve, leading to feelings of inadequacy. Body image issues frequently stem from the portrayals of flawless skin, perfect physiques, and perfect hair seen on social media. Almost every other day, I admit one or two patients for liposuction or breast implant surgery.

My friends have started getting procedures like PRP, microneedling, and lip fillers just to keep up with the competition. The guys around me have even gotten hair transplants. Everyone seems to be spending thousands on skincare, hair products, and makeup. I feel that those who find us attractive will continue to do so despite our physical flaws.

It seems like every other person around me is hitting the gym because they want to achieve the ideal body they’ve seen on Instagram.

If the competition were limited to physical appearance and material possessions, it would have been manageable. However, social media has escalated this situation. People now showcase their perfect spouses, adorable children, and loved ones in a way that can feel overwhelming.

Things are not always as perfect as they appear. Sometimes, I feel a sense of inadequacy when my friends share seemingly flawless family photos with their husbands or children, accompanied by heartfelt captions. Yet, many of these individuals may be struggling internally despite their outward appearances.

Sometimes, when my friend shares a perfect picture of her kids, I can’t help but remember the days she confided in me about how she never wanted children and how they drained her energy. This doesn’t mean she isn’t a good mother; it just means that the image she presents doesn’t capture the whole reality.

Similarly, when I see a mouthwatering picture of food my friend ordered or tried for the first time at a restaurant, I might be salivating over it. However, the truth could be that she hated it so much that she couldn’t take a second bite. The picture she posted is just a momentary snapshot, not an accurate representation of her experience.

When it comes to academic achievements, we often find ourselves comparing our accomplishments to those of our classmates. We observe who receives which fellowship at what institution and how many papers others have published. We might gauge success by looking at who has achieved a certain level of recognition and who seems to be progressing more quickly in their career.

Those who appear to be lagging in this “race of life” may seem slow from our perspective, but they might be more content and fulfilled in their pursuits. However, this comparison can lead even the happiest individuals to feel miserable when they constantly observe the successes of others, especially on social media.

One issue is the constant advertisements on social media. Initially, advertising focused on clothing, bags, footwear, skincare, and makeup, but it has now expanded to include health care businesses as well. Almost every day, a colleague sends me a Facebook or Instagram link to their page, asking me to promote their business, share videos of surgeries they performed, or showcase testimonials from patients who made quick recoveries due to their treatments.

Even holy pilgrimages like Umrah and Hajj are not spared from this trend. Sometimes, I wonder what people are doing on a journey where every moment is an opportunity for worship, yet they seem focused on taking pictures and posting updates on social media.

I regret the years I wasted on social media, living my life through a screen. I just want to live peacefully and not engage in the endless race of social media. I want to age gracefully without becoming artificial. I want to savor my tea while absorbing the beauty around me with my eyes. The people who love me or truly want to keep in touch will find ways to reach me outside of social media. I am tired now—tired beyond what I could ever imagine.

I truly hope I can achieve that. Please wish me luck!

Damane Zehra is a radiation oncology resident in Pakistan.

LISTEN TO THIS

 Listen to this song by local artist PINDN , featuring Murray from The Dayglos on guitar.

PINDN .

Kaw, Kaw, Kanada of red and white

Feed us all fire water to fuel the duels and fights

I try to stay resilient despite

How you’ve tried to set my Great, Great, Great Grandpa’s box of treasures alight

Shut down our ceremonial social functions

In the name of the the lord with guns and swords commit child abductions

Attempt to chop down our tree of life and replace it with dysfunction

National Inter-generational trauma now makes now hard to function

Kaw, Kaw, Kanada for you I paint this blood red picto-graff

To depict you’re sick masochistic destructive aftermath

You claimed you tried to teach our people to be civil but used evil

methods of wretchedness & sadistic wrath

Claimed we were on the wrong path

Son of a preacher man ya make me laugh

With anxious, angered apprehension

Son of a preacher man oh you fail to mention

What was labeled as a school was a haunted house of vile, hostile, high tensions

Controlled with atrocious, assimilative, evil, hypocritical, sinful intentions

-

Kaw, Kaw, Kanada ya go on to separate us from our a̲wi'nagwis with this pavement

& disguisedly make sneaky weasel arrangements

We’re apparently “savages” becomes the common statement

As my elders speak their truth bravely it’s hard to face it

As I continually hear these horror stories let’s face it

Wreck-con-similation does not seem near

upon this stolen land of inter-generational racists

Where bak̓wa̲m people are locked up, missing and murdered missing on a daily basis

Oh Kanada, isn’t clean water a basic - Human right?…

Naw, instead advertise to us fire water instead to fuel the fights

Before you’re red and white fireworks go boom! in the polluted skies at night

We try to try to stay resilient despite

The V.P.D locking us up and knocking us down

When we stand up for our rights

Surprised when we fight back

Against their unjust ecocidal attacks

And the common decency they lack

Thinking we’re ungrateful and should just lay back

Confused at the two words “land back”

Oh Canada these words that I speak are for you

Oh Canada we are done with your blatant abuse

You’re fire water is no longer the drink that I chose

I am not a dumb drunk injun that is born to lose

Oh settlers don’t believe the hype of racist stereo types

Oh settler ya better take the time to read and hear these words that I write

This inter-generational genetic, traumatic memory cannot be wiped

You cannot stay idle when you’re home-environment

Is threatened by the irreversible impacts of a leaky pipe

Oh Cuzzin’ the number only started at two hundred and fifteen


All My Relations, I wish this nightmare was only a dream

-

Oooo Kanada

I will not be another victim

Of your Canadian Club fire water system


I know you won’t take the time to respond or listen

To my requiem I’ve written

for my Grandma Marilyn murdered and to all those missin’


Oh Kanada know

That I miss her so


As long as the grass will grow

And the Nimpkish River flows


You can take the queen upon your 20 dollar bills

And place em in down in your landfills


Placed upon these burial grounds


Oh Kanada

do the sounds of the children's spirits give your bones the chills?


I do not believe you’ll clear the water when the venom spills

Or heal the salmon people that feel it deep within their gills

Oh Kanada


You are still our guests

And we are still your hosts


Oh Canada

You have turned our coast

Into a realm of hungry ghosts


So for them here’s a spirit plate

If ya wanna offer one too please don’t let them wait!


I do not believe these wreck-con-simmilative words ya state

When I bear witness to these corrupted systems that ya still create


As patriots raise their shots in a cheers and toast

To commemorate a history of smallpox spread across the west coast


And to the R.C.M.P that took our reasons to live away

Which they are still actively doing today


How much more will you continue to take?

As your black snake venom spills in our rivers and lakes

Oh, Canada

Oh, Kaw, Kaw Kanada

Oh, Kaw, Kaw Kanada

…. I’m still alive

credits

from Spirits Back, released June 26, 2026
Featuring Murray Acton on guitar and The Nation of Creation (Sammy K. on bass and Sina Valizadeh on drums)

SELFISH NON-MOVEMENT

 It's about time someone with some sense called out the whole "woke movement" for the whiny selfish anti-science that it is . Woke people are actually asleep to objective reality , with their assinine

"trigger warnings" and looking for a "safe space" . Find a safe space in Gaza, motherfuckers . Sorry, saying Gaza might be a trigger.

As Trump fascism, and the system of capitalism-imperialism that spawned it, threaten humanity's future, this truth must be confronted:

“WOKE” IS A DESTRUCTIVE FORCE
in the political, intellectual, artistic and ethical life of society

Updated September 2, 2026

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Identity politics... relativism... standpoint epistemology... “Woke”... call it what you will. All these outlooks deny the possibility of knowing reality as it objectively exists, doing great harm!

“Woke” once meant righteous awareness of racial oppression. It has long since morphed into lunatic and vicious mob mentality. A bloodlust to target and tear into individuals, while cowardly ducking, and often, actively obstructing the needed fight against the system of capitalism-imperialism and its overthrow through an actual revolution!

See Bob Avakian's writings on:
Opposing “Woke” Distractions and Obstructions

Watch: Bob Avakian—Woke is a Joke, a Bad Joke

Woke Lunacy and Trump/MAGA fascism are in a deadly dance, mutually opposing, while fueling the other. Fascism is the far greater danger. But the brittle bravado of “woke” doesn't merely collapse in the face of fascism, it strengthens it.

At a time of unprecedented change—as the “powers that be” clash and as cohering norms of the U.S. are ripping—there is a much greater chance to bring this whole oppressive system down and bring forward truly liberating future. We must seize this chance and rise to this responsibility.

Out of love for humanity and the planet, out of a profound respect for truth and science, and out of revolutionary determination for the emancipation of all of humanity, we will defend and debate the following, in the public square and in public discourse:

***

1 Woke Lunacy: Insisting there is no objective reality; each person “owns” their “truth”

Part 1

May 18, 2026

Woke Lunacy denies an objective reality, while at the same time brutishly dictating which parts of reality people of different “identities” are allowed to speak or act on. If objective reality were just a “white European” or “masculinist” construct (as Wokesters often claim), try crossing the interstate at rush hour without getting hit by the reality of speeding cars.

Truth is not a composite of “narratives.” Truth is what corresponds to objective reality. This can be determined through scientific, evidence-based methods. Direct lived experiences can contribute to this process, but science, and the scientific method, is decisive for determining what is true—and acting on that basis to radically change the world.

2  Woke Lunacy: An obliterating obsession with changing words—and an ugly erasure of women

Woke Lunacy does not differentiate between malicious, neutral, or benign intent. Ritual humiliations of well-meaning people for using “wrong” words are the petty power plays of schoolyard bullies. Word changing is no substitute for WORLD changing.

Take the erasure of woman, which reached its fanatical height right as the Supreme Court was overturning women's fundamental right to abortion. Wokesters attacked anyone who used the word “woman” as “transphobic.” They insisted, instead, on dehumanizing phrases like “people with uteruses” and “chest feeders.” No! Attacks on trans people must be fought, but the fight over abortion has always been a fight over women's liberation or enslavement. Muddying this, as the Woke Establishment did, demobilized resistance and strengthened the Christian fascist crusade against both women and trans people!

3  Woke Lunacy: “Me, Me, Me”—cocooned in an American Empire that savages the world

The one privilege Wokesters rarely call out is American privilege. Many want all they can get of that privilege.

The woke mob posts their accusations of “privilege” and “colonization” from phones brought to them by the blood and tears of child slaves in Congo who mine the cobalt these phones require. Those whose horizons don't extend beyond “inclusion” and “equality” within the most blood-soaked empire in history embody these bitterly ironic lyrics from Bob Dylan: “We looted and we plundered on distant shores. Why is my share not equal to yours?”

4  Woke Lunacy: Hiding from reality with “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and “trauma culture”

Everyone needs to confront the barbaric history of slavery and ongoing white supremacy, as well as other forms of oppression.Exposing this is not “trauma porn.”

Acting as if oppressed people are fragile beings who will fall apart at a “triggering” phenomenon is a hallmark of condescending saviors. Trauma from this system is real, but needs to fuel fighting the source of oppression and injustice.

The best things to happen in college are intellectual challenges, debate and critical thinking, learning about the world… standing up for a great cause even at the risk of one’s safety, and radically changing the world with revolutionary joy.

5  Woke Lunacy: Firestorms of woke-mob “cancel culture” to tear down individuals

Instead of exposing and transforming oppressive institutions, woke culture unleashes cruel witch hunts to destroy the reputations, careers, and lives of individuals. Revenge is not justice. Woke Lunacy reduces people to a single mistake, or even a mere accusation, rather than evaluating the arc of their lives. Imagine if this criterion were applied to all of you!

Woke Lunacy mirrors the Red Queen of Alice in Wonderland, “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.” Rule of law, presumption of innocence, and evidence out the window. With regard to rampant sexual assault, we need an atmosphere where women can come forward, be taken seriously, and where there is due process, all as part of getting to a radically different world – not the blanket and damaging standard of “Believe All Women.”

6  Woke Lunacy: Accusations of “appropriation” censoring artistic expression

Identity hustlers have turned censoring art into an art form of its own. Cancelling authors, blacklisting fiction, covering murals, censoring art because the creator is of the “wrong” identity—or because it's not “their” story to tell. Woke Lunacy treats the diverse fluorescence of cultures and struggles of our planet as property to be owned and commodified, miserly guarded against “appropriation.” If art and fiction were restricted to direct experience alone, would there be any left?

7  Woke Lunacy: Insisting on “BIPOC leadership”—when there is no such thing!

Who is “BIPOC leadership,” pray tell? AOC? Kamala Harris? Candace Owens? Clarence Thomas? When children in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan were afraid to look at a clear blue sky because of Obama’s drones raining down bombs and terror, do you think they gave a fuck that he was the first Black president?

Leaders should be evaluated not based on “identity,” but on whether they are correctly identifying the source of the problem, pointing the pathways to getting humanity free, and bringing forward others who can do the same.

***

In the words of Bob Avakian, revolutionary leader and author of the New Communism:

Instead of “staying in your lane,” and “going for self,” while this system is moving to even more decisively crush any hope for a world worth living in, people need to be looking at the bigger picture, focusing on the greater interests of humanity and the possibility for a far better world—and acting to make this a reality....

Instead of snarking and sniping at each other, and being divided by “identities,” people should be working to unite everyone, from every part of society, who can be united in the fight against oppression and injustice, with the goal of putting an end to this system that is the source of this oppression and injustice.

FUCK THIS AI SHIT

 As people become increasingly detached from each other , and the poor become even more disenfranchised due to all pervasive technology and the relentless pursuit of profits at the cost of humanity , young people are taught that this is desirable and also inevitable . I find this to be completely repugnant and anti-human . There is of course another side to this, such as the children who work in cobalt mines so we can have all of this tech bullshit .

During this summer, I could see how this world has left me behind , and I am not even remotely saddened by that . Driverless cars, robots delivering food, businesses that won't accept cash....I'm out .

Stanford, UC Berkeley, the High-tech Frenzy on the Campuses 

How [NOT] to Rule the World

By Barry Thornton

August 17, 2026

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In the book “How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University,” Theo Baker tells the intense story of his freshman year at Stanford. He calls out the impact of high-tech capital and how it is changing the moral, intellectual, and cultural life of the university. Baker vividly portrays Stanford’s integration into the high-tech capitalist behemoth, Silicon Valley, and how this has shaped a stultifying and terrible culture of avariciousness (greed), extreme individualism and cutthroat competition among the students, and on the campus in general. Stanford is the extreme example, but parallel ugly changes are going on at other campuses—including nearby UC Berkeley. 

Stanford is located right inside Silicon Valley, and Stanford’s computer science department is well-known for producing students who become high-tech billionaires. Since roughly the start of the twenty first century, over 70 new buildings funded by high-tech capitalists have been built at Stanford—the names on the new buildings include Zuckerberg, Hewlett, Packard, Gates, Yang, etc. John Hennessy, who was president of Stanford when most of these buildings were built, has been called “the godfather of Silicon Valley.”

This is hardly the first time that universities in the U.S. have been dominated, ruled and penetrated by big capital or reactionary ruling classes. In a fundamental sense, universities have to fundamentally serve the ruling class of the system they are part of (as do all major institutions, culture, etc.). Over the decades since World War II, the U.S. touted its university system—with purported freedom of scientific and scholarly inquiry—as an important part of the superiority of its “democratic” system, even as this was tattered and threadbare. This “freedom” was always freedom within a certain framework, and when more fundamental interests of the system demanded, it has had to go. This was true in the McCarthy era when professors were fired for their beliefs, and now, with Trump, when science, truth, and everything the universities are supposed to be about is under attack. 

Baker’s book reveals how extreme the capitalist penetration of Stanford is getting today, how far things are from even previous liberal capitalist ideals of what a university should be, and how much this has shaped the life of students on the campus. Baker paints a picture of the scene at Stanford: venture capitalists and their recruiters hang out in campus cafés and “pluck” who they see as the most promising new computer science students, luring them with supposedly secret knowledge of how Silicon Valley works, with parties on yachts, expensive liquor, piles of money—and with the promise of an inside track to getting a billion dollar start up. 

Baker points to one (former) student reaching the peak of the frenzied high-tech gold rush:

When the talented artificial intelligence researcher Ilya Sutskever1 started Safe Superintelligence, he launched with nine employees, a two-hundred-word placeholder statement, and zero articulation of a product, much less any revenue. The company was valued at $32 billion. Higher than the national bank of Canada, the cosmetics giant Estee Lauder, and even the third-largest auto manufacturer in the world, Hyundai, which produces more than four million cars a year. SSI, meanwhile, has produced nothing.

They Think They Are Going to Be “Masters of the Universe”—but They Are in Training to be “Capital Personified”

Children labor in the Congo cobalt mines, July 29, 2014.    Photo: PD

The name of Baker’s book comes from a CEO venture capitalist known as Justin who recruits a very select number of students for an uncredited and not publicly announced “class,” named “How to Rule the World.” The members of the class call themselves “Rulers.” This is just one of a number of such groups at Stanford.

Baker writes of the training in ruthless capitalist social relations involved in the “Rulers”: “‘The overriding theme of the class is to exceed the limits of your conceivable ambition,’ a Ruler named Billy told me. Justin would bring in a different topic each time, always coming back to the same core point: ‘For a select group of people—those with increased agency—a great amount of value can be extracted from the people around you.’” (p. 132)

Another student told Baker that “Justin taught her tactics—how to humor people, when to be self-deprecating, and so on. ‘There are things people do in conversation,’ Janet learned, ‘that seem super harmless and almost accidental, but they’re not. They’re actually pretty intentional, for getting somewhere, for framing a conversation a certain way, for getting them to make you feel really close to them.’ Justin had ‘thought through all those things—honestly kind of like a sociopath.’” (p. 133)

There is a kind of vicious irony involved in all of this. These students are buying into a whole mentality of use or be used, fuck or be fucked, “like a sociopath,” and they expect this will lead them to be masters of the universe. But the reality is what Marx captured in a few sentences: "As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital." 

They are being trained to think that their genius will determine reality. But in a fundamental sense they are nothing but instruments of a larger process which rests at bottom NOT on individual genius, but on global networks of exploitation. In fact, it is the collective wage slavery of thousands and millions over the globe that produces the billions that these students are chasing. It is the suffering of child laborers in cobalt and coltan mines2 in the Congo and neighboring countries which are a key foundation of the high-tech colossus. 

Lenin wrote about how capital compels people to act with the “stinginess of a miser.” This is the training that is going on in these classes, training to act with the stinginess of a miser in relation to society and other people—and even at times to themselves. And then there is the basic fact that, as John Hennessy told Baker, hundreds of computer science students at Stanford think they will become billionaires, but probably only one will.

Theo Baker writes about this from the perspective of someone who started to enter into this world, and to his credit decided it was not for him. Baker shows how the spirit and ethos of the “Rulers” extended beyond just the secret groups of elite computer science students. In one class, there was a week focused on ethics, and students were asked to raise their hands “if you care about ethics and stuff like this.” Baker writes, “I put mine up and looked around. Not a single other arm was in the air. People didn’t even care enough to pretend ethics mattered to them.” Baker notes: “As recently as 2008 the history department graduated more seniors than the computer science department. Now there are sixteen times as many graduates in CS (Computer Science) as in history—341 to just 21 in 2025.” 

“We’ve lost the sense of shame and the sense of purpose”

Apple outsourced production to places like this Foxconn factory in China, 2010.     Photo: AP

Baker writes about Steve Blank, a long time Stanford professor of computer science who leads a group called Lean LaunchPad, which is a public, famous group that works with students and high-tech capitalists and trains the students to develop startups. Blank comments on how there has been somewhat of an ethical change in recent years at Stanford. Blank’s orientation more proceeds from an earlier Silicon Valley ethos that advances in technology should serve society in some way. Blank told Baker: “‘We’ve lost the moral compass for what we invest into,’ he told me. ‘we’ve lost the sense of shame and the sense of purpose.’”

Steve Blank makes the observation that there is a viciousness and brutal amorality increasingly nakedly dominating a place like Stanford, Silicon Valley (and American society). This is true and important. But this ugliness is an extension of what has come before. 

You have to ask the question here, when was Silicon Valley such a wonderland? Was that the case when in 2014 Apple Computer was making billions off of the labor of workers in China, especially women, who slaved and lived under conditions so terrible that many workers committed suicide by jumping off the workers’ dormitory roof? Apple responded not by changing conditions but by putting up nets to block or catch the suicide attempts. Or decades before that when Silicon Valley companies were deeply involved in producing tools for imperialist war, repression and mass surveillance (as many continue to do right now)?

UC Berkeley: Chasing the Gold Rush, Changing the Culture

Mario Savio, Sproul Hall Sit-in Address October 1, 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley.    Photo: Chronicle/Duke Downey

Courtesy of The Bob Avakian Institute.

While Stanford is in many ways the extreme case of the current gold rush lunacy in the universities, this is going on at other major universities as well. A very important case in point is UC Berkeley. Berkeley is very different in some ways than Stanford—much larger, a public university, and well, “Berkeley”—historic home of the Free Speech Movement and powerful struggles against war, for ethnic studies, against apartheid in South Africa, etc. It is still the case that students come to UC Berkeley looking for something rebellious and outside the norm, looking for the legacy of Mario Savio, the leader of the Free Speech Movement in the early 1960s.3

But high level administrators and those with real power at UC Berkeley had a different idea. They looked at the insane high-tech gold rush that was going on at Stanford… and set out energetically to make that happen at Berkeley. The current Chancellor of UC Berkeley, Richard Lyons, was a key player. In a 6 year old interview Lyons who was then UC Berkeley’s first chief “innovation and entrepreneurship officer“ pointed out what he considered a problem. He complained that many students do “not see themselves as entrepreneurs, as founders, as venture capitalists and so forth.” 

So to address this “problem,” and to tackle the closely related “problem” that many students come to Cal because of its legacy of movements for free speech, anti-war, and “third world liberation,” Lyon and others founded new programs on entrepreneurship, consciously trying to steer reluctant students in the direction of becoming capitalist pigs. No more of this “down with corporate greed” atmosphere. It was time for “greed is good.”

A whole series of things were done at Cal to change the framework, to set up institutions which would foster “entrepreneurialism,” enable business start ups, link up venture capitalists with students. At one point, if a professor who had a lab at UC Berkeley used that lab to do work for his own private company, this was considered an ethical problem, and made getting tenure harder. The rules were changed, not just at UC Berkeley but throughout the entire University of California system (including UCLA, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, etc.) and now it is considered a good thing for professors to use UC labs and resources for their own enrichment, and doing this is now considered a big positive in getting tenure and promotions.4

You now see opinion pieces in the student newspaper lamenting the fact that so many student organizations have been formed to promote crypto, business consulting, and artificial intelligence, and that they are now dominating campus life. And, paralleling the secret “classes” to train would-be entrepreneurs at Stanford, some of these student clubs at Cal are harder to get into and require a more rigorous application process than getting hired at a Fortune 500 company. 

Universities Serving a Grotesque Capitalist Parasitism

The wretched atmosphere on these campuses shows something important about American capitalism-imperialism today. This is a system where enormous profits are made by capitalists inside the U.S. from production which largely takes place outside of the U.S. under extreme conditions of exploitation. What is concentrated in the U.S. is not manufacturing, but the “high end” of administration and development of cutting edge technology along with what are called the FIRE sectors—finance, insurance, real estate.5 The universities are being shaped to serve this grotesque capitalist parasitism. 

This transformation to a more nakedly ruthless, extremely individualistic, dog-eat-dog environment and ethos is bad enough in itself, but it has also been part of the basis for the universities to cave into and/or support Trump MAGA fascism. 

High-tech Nightmare? Or An Emancipated Humanity?

While the internet was initially developed by the U.S. military, the Silicon Valley  culture grew in part from people who had a kind of idealism that the technology itself, without changing the underlying system, could free people from the barriers that set people apart and against each other on the planet, and could link together humanity. That was never going to happen, because it is not possible for any corporation to escape the competitive exploitative functioning of capitalism-imperialism. Today this system has brought us to the place where the high-tech titans are increasingly lining up with Trump and more thoroughly turning the technology over to fascist mass surveillance and imperialist war.

Far too many look at that and see nothing in the future but a high-tech nightmare—or worse. But wielding the scientific method of the new communism, and penetrating beneath the surface to the real driving forces of this system, a different possible future comes into view. A future world where the immensely powerful technology of today no longer serves to enslave humanity—because the reality is that it is the social SYSTEM that controls and dictates how humanity will live, and that social system can be overthrown and surpassed. 

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A different world really IS possible. A future socialist society on the road to communism, in which instead of new technology being feared because it will throw masses of people out of work and leave them without a means to live, technological advances (along with other revolutionary transformations to end oppressive relations) could be part of people actually being freed of the need to do burdensome work! A future world where the foundation of the economic and social system no longer compels people to treat each other like sociopaths, but instead makes it possible for people to move beyond oppressive social relations and treat each other like human beings. A future world where university culture in a place like the U.S. is no longer a concentration of parasitic exploitation—because the USA will no longer exist and in the new socialist society that has replaced it, as “We Need And We Demand”6 puts it:

The purpose of the educational system in this new socialist society will be to enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity.

Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism, speaks to this future society many times and in many ways, but here is one crystallization: 

A whole different way of living is possible: a whole different way to organize society, with a radically different economic foundation and political system, emancipating relations among people and an uplifting culture—all of this oriented to meeting the basic needs and fulfilling the highest interests of the masses of people. This is set forth, in both a sweeping and concrete way, in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have written. Summaries of basic points in this Constitution—shining a light on the truly emancipating way we could be living—are laid out in the Declaration WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM. (This Declaration, as well as the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, is available at revcom.us.)

2025: A New Year—Profound New Challenges—And a Profoundly Positive Way Forward in the Face of Very Real Horror.

This is not some fantasy. Capitalism-imperialism, for all its horrors, has laid a basis for a radically different socialist society that itself is a transition to a fully emancipated world, a communist world. This world CAN be brought into being, and this is a rare time when the potential exists for revolution in the U.S.—which would be an enormous historic advance for humanity. (Humanity on the Brink)

We can do immensely better than the dog-eat-dog world Theo Baker exposes. Everyone who is disgusted and repelled by what exists today should dig into the method and work of Bob Avakian, and take up the fight for a different world. The challenge and the choice were captured in BA’s memoir:

If you have had a chance to see the world as it really is, there are profoundly different roads you can take with your life. You can just get into the dog-eat-dog, and most likely get swallowed up by that while trying to get ahead in it. You can put your snout into the trough and try to scarf up as much as you can, while scrambling desperately to get more than others. Or you can try to do something that would change the whole direction of society and the whole way the world is. When you put those things alongside each other, which one has any meaning, which one really contributes to anything worthwhile? Your life is going to be about something—or it’s going to be about nothing. And there is nothing greater your life can be about than contributing whatever you can to the revolutionary transformation of society and the world, to put an end to all systems and relations of oppression and exploitation and all the unnecessary suffering and destruction that goes along with them. I have learned that more and more deeply through all the twists and turns and even the great setbacks, as well as the great achievements, of the communist revolution so far, in what are really still its early stages historically.

From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, A Memoir by Bob Avakian, 2005

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FOOTNOTES:

1. Ilya Sutskever is perhaps best known now as a co-founder of OpenAI. Here is his home page. [back]

2.  Cobalt and coltan are key parts of batteries used in phones and electric cars, and are mixed with other metals to build strong parts for jet engines and other tools that can handle very high heat. At least 80% of the cobalt and 40% of the coltan used for these purposes is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) [back]

3. See Bob Avakian on the experience of the Free Speech Movement (FSM): “FSM Reflections—On Becoming a Revolutionary” from Bob Avakian. [back]

4. Richard Lyons talked about how the entire University of California 10-university system changed to a positive view of “entrepreneurship activity” by professors in his interview with Dan Moguloff. [back]

5. See HUMANITY ON THE BRINK: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness? By Bob Avakian for more on imperialist parasitism. [back]

6. “We Need and We Demand” distills some key aspects of the vision of socialism developed as part of the new communism by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian [back]