This article is pending a rewrite to be brought up to newer quality standards.
Dissidents to our current regime find themselves in an unfortunate type of war: a war against themselves. A good portion of those dissidents roaming around today, rather they be trumpsters, communists, monarchists, reactionaries, Luddites, anarchists, libertarians, or some other variant of anti-status quo activist, are on the outs of society intellectually, yet are dependent on it physically (and psychologically). Their body and emotions are at war with their allegiance to their intellectual notions. This tragic state of affairs weakens a dissident over time and acts as one of the great personal plagues of being against the system.
A dissident who is in schizo-allegiance may find himself saying and doing contradictory things due to differing needs: A dissident may praise obstruction and annoyance to our current state of affairs while at the same time being grated by said infuriating and scorn it for that. For example, a communist man may praise a road blockage for slowing down neo-liberal capitalism, but at the same time be worried about getting to work on time due to the very same roadblock. He both loves the inconvenience for its damage to the system while also hating it for its damage to him, a member of the system. The man is in a contradictory state in both his emotion and rational capabilities.
Humiliation
This state of contradiction is very humiliating because it both allows rationalizations of the hated system and enables attacks by loyalists to the system for being a supposed hypocrite. A Luddite who drives a car to go to his industrial engineering job may sincerely believe that agricultural society was better and wishes to transition to it, maybe he even engages with the agricultural lifestyle to some degree, but the second he advocates for such a lifestyle publicly he is laughed off as a loony because of his status as an industrial engineer who directly benefits from industrialization. People may rightfully point out that he will no longer have a place in society due to his own political beliefs and that he is, to some degree, advocating against his own survival. These facts are true, he is to some degree a hypocrite who, if his beliefs were taken into effect, would not be enjoying 2 corn syrup infused meals washed down with contaminated, micro-plastic water each day. He’d be missing out on the countless hours he could dump onto TV media franchises, proprietary video games, and soulless pop music. He would be giving up the utter privilege of living through the an intellectual and aesthetic dark age. Slight, and I mean slight, hyperbole aside, If he ends up retorting the accusations of advocating against himself with statements about genuine unhappiness with society, he may end up being called a whiner with first world problems (because low birthrates, high suicide rate, and low institutional trust are normal statuses of reality that should never, ever be questioned or else you’re just some whiner or something). Because our Luddite engineer is working within the system as what is effectively his own enemy, he is viewed as a contradictory being not worthy of listening to. This can cause him to be pressured out of his own opinions on reality out of nothing but social will.
If this pressure keeps mounting and our engineering friend hits a point where his resolve is empty, our once Luddite may find himself advocating for things he intellectually knows he shouldn’t be: The Luddite may declare that the traffic problems he has on his commute to work are “bullshit” and that “the city should build more roads to allow him to get to work faster”. He may find himself watching the news and getting up in arms about an issue he doesn’t really care about because he believes it’ll fix things. Our Luddite engineer may even find himself advocating for the production of more oil to offset the gas prices because the economy is harsh and it’s effecting his ability to live. These positions are entirely antithetical to his actual intellectual position of Ludditism: he wants to see a reduction of industrialization and death of the system, but has just advocated for the system due to his much justified frustration with his current state of affairs (likely frustration the system itself is creating too!).
This pattern of contradiction and humiliation, if left unchecked, might eventually conclude in a form of mental snap where our man will either live in fragile, intellectually dishonest rationalizations that push him towards uncomfortably complacence (i.e doomerism or the “no ethical consumption under thing-I-dont-like-ism” cope), will succumb to the system and support it (or worse, become a “reformer” who believes that this society can be tweaked and configured to end its large-scale suffering), or he will go all in on his radical plans in a very reckless way, over all hurting himself or his movement’s credibility. None of these options are good, some are worse than others, and all of them in some way compromise the original dissident idea either intellectually or practically.
Avoiding becoming a cuck or going postal
Avoiding ideology death by social pressure is hard. Humans are social creatures and if you’re around normal people, you’re going to get pressured into doing normal things. Even the most reclusive of social rejects can find themselves in circle jerk crowds that push them towards compromising their beliefs due to non-intellectual pressures, because of this, the most important thing is to have a proper intellectual outlet for beliefs. Rather it’s debating an intelligent, open-minded, but stalwart friend on a subject, having a place to synthesize new ideas related to your beliefs, or something else, it doesn’t matter so long as it scratches the brain itch. That’ll keep your intellectual reasons for believing something sharp, so they don’t atrophy into nothingness due to social pressures.
Not totally losing it is much harder. There’s some obvious precautions you can take that most mentally well people naturally take: have trustworthy figures who can operate as foundational support, complain a lot, complain often to people who are willing to listen, don’t get involved with FED-like grooming circles to turn you into the next mass shooter, and having some not-overtly-political hobbies. All that’s great advice, but it’s too generalist to the type of anguish a person who has given up on society may feel when forced into undesirable interaction with it.
The most practical and mentally reassuring thing to do is to have a plan to escape modern society that is actionable. Even if it’s a 10-year plan, it’s better than nothing and serves as a form of productive, hope machine. Things aren’t going to be great, but moving towards something is better than meandering around. The communist should have plans to get into a hippie commune, the Luddite to the Amish or similar communities, and the libertarian to somewhere rural where they can be left alone. All are fine plans that center on getting out of modern society as soon as possible