What is a belief you’ve done a total 180 on?
I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
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In high school, I was pro-death penalty. As part of a class on politics, I was randomly assigned the anti-death penalty position to research and debate on. I very quickly changed my opinion when I learned about the systemic racism involved. Now I'm an anarchist
That escalated randomly.
Death penalty carceral state - carceral state - state -
stateWhen people stop working towards the structure and begin to exploit it instead...
I used to be anti-death. Now I am in the pro-death camp. This is because if a 2nd American War is concluded, we will be left with many living MAGA in our prisons. Do we really want to house members of ICE in our prisons for life, or allow them to once again walk the streets they terrorized? Members of the Trump Regime willfully given up their humanity in all the ways.
I cannot help but feel that executing them all will allow us to allocate more resources towards the people who matter: children, immigrants, and others who still have their humanity.
I feel that but also recoginize the inherent dark irony.
It is called the tolerance paradox. If you want a truly tolerant society you can't tolerate intolerance.
Yeah. It is problematic: On one paw, it is definitely evil to kill people. On the other, it is also evil to allow rapists, thieves, and murderers to have a high chance of doing so again.
It sucks. 😞
Conveniently they've been building tons of prisons that could be put to use for this
No. Those aren't fit for human habitation in the first place.
Don't worry, when you graduate high school you'll drop the anarchist bit, too.
Because grown ups are capitalists ?
Obviously, it varies, but a thing often happens where as you're exposed to the details of how the world works (in person) you start to realise the generations who came before and made it weren't total idiots.
Thinking it all makes sense isn't where that goes, but "a monopoly on the use of force is probably necessary" or "markets are more airtight than people think" can be.
Speak for yourself. All kinds of groups from conservatives to liberals to fascists to communists (although let's be honest, it's mostly the conservatives and liberals and 'enlightened centrists') love to arrogantly imply that their current worldview is the mature, rational conclusion that any intelligent person should reach in adulthood, and any other is just childish, naive, and poorly conceived. The people who do this aren't speaking to anything concrete about the world, they're just high on their own farts and confident in their ignorance.
And it's the anarchists who catch the bulk of the sneering insults from these types, who will often demonstrate their own ignorance as they dismiss them as naive and uninformed. You did this yourself by extolling the virtues of markets as a defense of capitalism, apparently not knowing that markets are not exclusive to capitalism.
Oh? Which ideology on that list the push for, then? I'm in the picture, I used to agree with OP on a lot and now I agree on less, but can you even guess how?
Nothing is being sold here, I literally just listed a couple anarchist things OP believes. Learning as you get older is a real phenomenon, at least for most people. And, there's no shortage of older people who have more complex, less absolute ideas about any number of things than they did when they were younger.
I used a different word on purpose, because capitalism doesn't really have a consistent definition. According to Hexbear, China isn't capitalist despite having all the associated features, for example.
Alright, I'll have a go at guessing your ideology since you asked. Given your status quo preference ("the generations before us aren't stupid and things are the way they are for a good reason"), you're not a radical so that leaves conservative, liberal, or centrist. Given you've implied that you used to have some anarchist beliefs it's unlikely you went from that to conservative, so most likely you're some flavor of liberal, like a social democrat. You're vaguely sympathetic to some socialist and anarchist ideas but think you're too smart to commit to them because the world is "just more complicated than that." Capitalist realism has pulled you back from becoming a radical as you've gotten older.
Actually, you pretty much nailed it, nice. TBF that makes it kind of a trick question, since it's not neatly in any of the categories.
Do you think the world isn't complicated? Even anarchists usually do. If anything, you see the argument that the world is too complicated to be reduced to numbers and laws.
Nah, it's just that eventually you realize there is more to life that questioning your parents and wearing black.
Edit: Don't worry, you can still circle your As.
oh look, it's someone who doesn't know what anarchism is
I know what anarchism is and I think it a utopian thought experiment.
Like every single political ideology you rube
I mean, other ideologies, support them or hate them, have at least existed in the real world at a mass scale.
So you’re saying human civilization always operated under a hierarchical body politic without decentralized decision making?
Serious ahistorical claim.
By the way “anarchy” in the sense of childish movie plot stuff is not what any adherent of the ideology is about. Anarchy is a spectrum and set of guiding principles (like any political belief system), and one can argue that forms of what I might identify as anarchistic political structures have and do exist in many political systems. Just like socialism exists in neoconservative governments, and fascism in democracy ect…
Anarchism can run a small commune but not modern societies like China or the USA. Let real leftists build movements that actually succeed in reality and not at the scale of like a couple hundred people.
Let me guess, you use Linux?
what gave it away, the website I'm on or the posts I made?
I didn't even look at your post history. It's just that Linux users and defenders of Anarchism as a true system of power have a very narrow Venn diagram.
whatever. I'm not interested in discussing anything with someone this caustic. I didn't say "humanity must become anarchists" I said "you don't know what anarchy is"
And I'm not interested in having a conversation with someone who can't even pick a side of the fence to argue from. I hear the Libertarians are recruiting, maybe they are more your flavor.
You're in wrong neighborhood pal lol
Before using AI for the first time: "Holy shit this is gonna be dope!"
Aftwr using AI: "Yo wtf? This is bullshit."
Itd be fine if it was just useless slop that sat there. But then it gets shoved I to every last possible device, burning up water, and taking up valuable land resources to enrich billionaires, oh and outright stealing the works of others while telling us plebs "it's illegal to do that!" Thats the issues I have. If it was all locally ran, open source, trained in public data only, I'd maybe be OK with it being used for research or data purposes only (nothing to do with art or surveillance) but we will never have that.
Shout out for "tech wont save us" podcast. It kinda crystalised my thoughts around this - tech indeed will not save us.
Did you ever play with the pre-NN chatbots?
I used to joke about eating two animals for every one a vegetarian didn't eat. I've been vegan for over a decade now, pulled a bit of an uno reverse in my early twenties.
Oh great. Now I gotta eat four animals. I’m never gonna finish lunch.
You can switch to crickets, I think that's your best murder per Kg ratio.
Larvae or maggot-based dishes would be my go-to. Or maybe edible mite gulls, which IIRC is a thing. You go too small and at some point you end up with questions about if the critters are so simple they're actually vegetarian, though.
I'm not eating the bugs.
Go to Wendy's and get a 4 for $4 add bacon. bacon cheeseburger, nuggets and fries. That counds as three.
From what animal are fries made?
IIRC some restaurants were flavoring their oil with horse tallow.
That's a fair point.
Yeah we all go through a stage where we haven't mentally matured yet and have this tween-like rebellion reaction to any idea about changing for the better. Some grow out of it at a younger age, some at a normal age, and some not at all. I remember a bunch of examples I've seen happen through the decades;
"You say i shouldn't eat meat, well i say nuh uh! Now I'm gonna eat twice as much!"
"You say i shouldn't smoke cigarettes, well i say nuh uh! Now I'm gonna smoke cigars too!"
"You say i shouldn't be racist, well i say nuh uh! Now I'm gonna be even more outrageously racist!"
It's just a non-thinking reactionary response to the idea that you aren't perfect.
I think it's funny that there have been a bunch of stories about how genZ is smoking again because it's some kind of nihilist counterculture and I'm just like... Yeah I didn't quit smoking because the priest gave me a very stern lecture. I quit because I got tired of hacking up half a lung every morning.
I quit smoking because I actually want to live beyond 55 - I still remember my neighbour-woman smoking a ciggy, while standing outside with her chemo-drip... Absolutely haunting.
How do you get your protein? I've been doing the plants - and eating beans a lot - but this last week I ate some meatballs in my soups and boy - I really crave the meat.
edit - not sure why it quotes irrelevant text in these replies
I eat a lot of tofu, soy curls, and chickpeas,mostly. I haven't had much issue.
Here's sort of a strange question. Not too strange though ;-)
Let's say you had a basic rice and beans meal - garlic .. onions ... root vegetables .. blackbeans and redbeans ... then kale roots and final kale leafs ... salt pepper
What spices do you use? What are your favorites?
For that kind of a meal I usually season simply with salt and pepper, but then make up a dressing or sauce to go over it, something like a pesto or maybe a carrot ginger dressing.
Thanks. I'll try that.
Idk why we've reached the point where anyone saying they're anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren't a bigot. Being religious doesn't make you a bigot and being atheist doesn't mean you aren't one either.
I had a similar 180 though, I used to be an atheist but in the last year or so I pivoted into druidism. Turns out following a religion that focuses on spending time in nature helps to get you out of the house when you're going though a depressive episode.
The main issue is that the cohort of people with megaphones broadcasting their spirituality is virtually entirely comprised of profiteers.
Like all such parasites they follow the pattern of establishing out groups for you to despise, simply because it drives engagement better. Same reason all major social media now attempts to shape you into a being of hatred and impulse. It keeps you stressed and activated so you jump at the opportunity when they offer to let you spend money to blow off some of the steam.
Bigotry as a phenomenon has many origins, but wherever it springs from it ultimately doubles as an inherently appealing strategy for those who wish wring dry their community.
At any rate, as we all sit here dying around the same poisoned watering hole, we see these profiteers dressing just like us while actively dumping the poison in. Ashamed, we feel compelled to proclaim, “I am not them! They only wear my clothes!”
Spirituality is an incredibly comfortable and practical “clothing” for many people. You’re absolutely correct in drawing attention to how bad it sucks that the people who embrace that comfort now feel pained to differentiate themselves from the abusers who pervert their fashion
Yeah, I had a world-shaking 180 for spirituality after I read about Zen Buddhism.
I was a really proud atheist and thought all religions were just believing in something supernatural. Until I actually gave an intellectually honest try at understanding them. Most theistic religions I couldn't get on board with but after I read Three Pillars of Zen, something just clicked and I joined my local sangha. Also begun to understand a bit more about religiosity in general after, though I'm still not a fan of Abrahamic religions in particular.
You say you were "intellectually honest" so I'm curious what it was about Zen that appealed to that kind of approach?
The way I was introduce to it framed it specifically as not believing in anything you can't verify in your own direct experience. The book I read ( https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/89766/the-three-pillars-of-zen-by-roshi-philip-kapleau/ ) was actually pretty mercilessly pointing out how much of what I thought to be obviously true was actually just a belief. Meaning what I think is the average westerner experience of the world as explained by science. It didn't offer me a set of ideas to believe in, it offered me a way of disbelieving anything I couldn't know for myself to be true.
Like I said it was pretty world shattering. I realized there is a world BEFORE any thought and that is definitely more real than anything I can think about. I joined the local sangha because things got a little weird for me for a time and my friends kinda thought I was going crazy haha but in my perspective they were the ones alarmingly missing something incredibly important. And I still kinda think they are but it's not my place to try to "convert" them. Since there's no point. You need to have the active desire to actually understand.
But aren't there things that you can objectively know to be true? Wouldn't this just lead to believing whatever you want to believe?
I feel a little timid about trying to answer this because at this point, I know that people can talk about these things intellectually forever and it just won't... click. It's so hard to write about too because if I tried to write in a way that very perfectly reflects my experience, the text becomes weird and cumbersome ( and then when I don't, people try some gotchas like "ahaa but you refer yourself as "I", doesn't that mean you still believe in an individual self", no but writing more precisely gets in the way of the message ).
First, believing whatever I want to believe is definitely a danger and actually you see this a lot in spiritual discourse that leans towards Buddhism, especially via New Age stuff and "McMindfulness". Many people happily discard the mainstream beliefs but then they get hooked on their idea of what is true. But the merciless approach that Zen Buddhism has is that nothing you think about is totally true. It's more like a reflection in a mirror ( Interestingly Plato was also alluding to this in his Allegory of The Cave, so this realization isn't unique to Zen ).
That includes the concept of "objectivity". Objectivity relies on the idea that there is some external third party to human experience. But once I looked, or more like was forced to face it, I realized that there is no such thing. I can exchange ideas with what appear to be other people and have an agreement. Like we can probably both agree that we're looking at a screen now. I anticipate an objection here on the "other people". I don't know if "other people" exist outside of me but I know that I don't have control over anything that appears in my mind. Something that I can call "other people" appears, and they have their likes and dislikes and it can be painful if I'm not respectful of that. This is where compassion teachings come in.
Oh and I'm not anti-science at all. Science is great at revealing patterns in the way things appear. Happy to go get my vaccinations and all that.
Tell me you had a certain experience without telling me you had a certain experience.
Were you taught to not talk in certain terms about how your world "shattered"? Because I was.
I was, yes. I think even if I wasn't I probably wouldn't use those terms anyway since in online discourse it never looks good.
Okay, thank you for explaining.
I admit I don't get it, but maybe I'll consider reading that book. It seems I had a mistaken idea about Buddhism. Or at least Zen Buddhism.
What they describe is similar to the discourse in western philosophy about the mind and the objective reality. There is no way to prove or disprove that the reality exists outside of the mind of the observer, i.e. that solipsism is true or false. But it also follows that solipsism is practically useless. So we must agree that we probably have a shared experience with other people, which we'll call ‘reality’. Then the question is, how close the experience of one observer is to that of other people. This is where stuff like qualia comes in, which posits that it's impossible to qualify immediate perceptual experiences, because each person only refers to what they themselves have experienced. It could easily be that one person's sensory experience and perception of the world is wholly different from that of another person. It seems, though, that in practice we have a shared vocabulary for our perceptions and use that to build our knowledge of the world.
@[email protected] does this sound like an accurate interpretation of your concept?
I had something similar. I grew up catholic and was very devout until I learned some stuff about myself that made me step away for a while. I expected to come back like a year later and join the episcopalians or something, but I wound up an atheist for several years. During that time I was kinda insufferable about it for a while. Then I started exploring pantheism, earth worship, and ancestor devotion because I'd felt I was missing something without religion and lighting candles to talk to my mom helped me cope with how much of my life she doesn't get to be there for. Later an acid trip and some exploration would help me delve deeper and find the goddess I primarily pray to these days. Somewhere later I started using the Wiccan holidays because they're really convenient for solar and seasonal observance and meditation. They also help make it so I don't wonder where the hell the year went.
So yeah, catholic to atheist to pagan. There are many paths up the mountain, find the path that is best for you and makes you better.
There are LGBT friendly churches run by LGBT Christians. Are they conveniently ignoring certain parts of the Bible? Sure but all Christians do that
Most "spiritual" people adhere to one of the big organized religions, and those kinda suck in general and are rarely content to leave nonbelievers in peace.
The biggest organised religion is realism.
If we're free to redefine "religion" as we see fit, I declare breathing a religion.
I think some people can be overly smug about their lack of belief, but I don’t think that means it’s akin to a religion
Realism isn't about lack of belief. Solipsism is about lack of belief. Realism is about an unshakeable faith in the existence of an external world beyond the senses. Soulism is about making the best of the world within one's senses. Out of the three main approaches to reality, the realists have the most belief, and are most easily cut down by Occam's razor. That a world beyond our senses exists is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. It is nothing to base one's life around. It is better to work to improve the malleable world within our senses, than to strive for Plato's world of forms.
The biggest organized religion is breathing
We don't live in a society that persecutes people for not breathing, but we do live in a society that persecutes people for not believing in reality. Genocides have been committed in the name of reality.
A genocide for not believing in reality?
Yep. Aboriginal folks don't tend to teach their kids the white idea of reality. I've heard from some Indigenous people that their culture (keep in mind, there are many Aboriginal cultures) doesn't believe in reality at all.
So the white people took Aboriginal kids away from their families and put them in white institutions and with white parents. Took away their language, their culture, their land, and gave them white patriarchal realism instead. And there was a hell of a lot of abuse. Beatings and rape. They called it "civilising" the children.
It was an attempt to exterminate Aboriginal cultures. I call that genocide.
Let me stop you right there bud. Reality is or isn't. There is no idea about it.
What you're talking about is racism.
How can you not believe in reality? Do they think we live in the Matrix?
The biggest organized religion is breathing
I think we need a secular form of spirituality (be it heathenism, druidism, paganism, etc), so people can still be spiritually fulfilled, while not following some large-ass church that gets corrupted over time, every damn time.
It helps that most people in "the west" are becoming more and more secular (as far as I can tell).
Looking at the entire history of (a) faith-based religion, versus (b) evidence-based science
I have to say:
There's no denying that most of the major religions are rooted in racism, and many still promote hate against certain people.
That being said, "fuck you, you ignorant evil enabling asshat" sure sounds like you are making assumptions and vilifying someone you've never met based on one trait that you do not agree with.
Sorry, bro, but you've become the monster you're trying to fight.
Certain units of the Japanese Army conducted a lot of inhumane scientific experiments on human subjects they racially discriminated against during WWII, and the evidence collected was retained by the USA.
I want to note that none of this was valid science, the results were worthless because they prioritized torture and didn't document their "experiments" and their results properly. Same for medical Nazi "research".
Though it's true that you don't need religion to do evil acts.
Maybe the Japanese Empire didn't, but the Nazis were explicitly Christian.
Eh, publicly Christian 100%, but there were plenty of anti-Christian views from Goebbels, and then there's the Occultism in Nazism as well.
That being said, Positive Christianity was 100% a tool to manipulate the people into doing the State's will, trying to eject Catholicism from Germany.
Not really. They were certainly white supremacists and hated Jews, but Christianity didn't really play a big role in their ideology. They spent a lot more time supressing local churches than going on about how christian they are, and many of them were very interested in pagan religions.
This is revisionist bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_Nazi_Germany#Accommodation_to_Nazism
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-role-of-clergy-and-church-leaders
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state
the us thought they were getting a deal from the japanese when they conducting biological experiments on chinese people, but they were getting all fluff results
evidence based science conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Let's infect black people with syphilis and see what happens! They aren't really people, so are like monkeys so if they die from untreated diseases it's not a big deal!
scientific practice both past and present is often rife with racism.
but don't let the facts of the world get in the way of your worship of science as a religion.
Guaranteed that was run by Christian White Racists
Arguing for faith is literally saying "I will believe anything on no evidence, and I think the following..."
Sorry, I stopped listening when you told me you don't know how to think as an adult
right, anyone who says anything that disproves you is wrong and bad.
clearly throwing tantrums and calling people names is a thing only very mature adults too. toddlers don't do that... ever
I used to be anti-nuclear energy until I learned a bunch of science and engineering behind it. Turns out things are less scary when you know more about them.
Edit: I also learned that it's okay, and usually preferable, to not have a strong opinion about things that you don't know about.
I used to believe the centrist idea that America needs a strong Republican Party and a strong Democratic Party.
The GOP actively calls all democrats and liberals enemies, demons, terrorists, etcetera while giving the billionaires all on our public wealth, tax breaks and subsidies.
America does not need the GOP at all.
One issue with this is both are right of center.
And exist in a system that can only support two parties, which means that the most effective strategy is not to convince voters that your pictures are superior but to convince them not to vote for the other party. Cue a race to the bottom.
You're basically down to 0 strong parties. And really 2 is a minimum, since if there's more, the other parties can just go around any one or two that are being dumb.
The GOP put itself on the fascist downward spiral when the Federalist society took over.
The Democrats started their slow decline when they put Truman as FDR’s VP. Pushing out the left wing part of the party that gave it massive electoral power for a generation.
Google, Reddit, etc. are good. Now I know the horrors and they are obviously our worst enemies.
That we don't need school and it's useless. I used to not like going to school when I was younger. Now I love it and look forward to almost every day, especially now that this is my last year in high school.
I used to be excited and optimistic about new technologies. Now I'm just jaded.
I wasn't a supporter of euthanasia until I worked in a residential aged care facility.
At one point I really, truly believed that the internet and social media would be a turning point in human interconnectivity and cultural understanding. The ability to just... talk to someone on the other side of the planet, at will? When we know that exposure to other beliefs and cultures is superb at punching holes in hatred and misunderstanding? Surely this would lead to great things!
Yeah, that was a miss.
Exposure to other is still a fantastic way to grow understanding. But the internet and social media were not a highway to it, and as the "wild west" era of the internet faded and we instead got corporate-governed, algorithm-driven siloization of views, my views on the value of social media changed sharply.
I agree. Though, I think it was less a case of a misguided or overly optimistic view, and more a case of unfettered capitalism driving the Internet into an ideological cesspool. Everything on the internet tends to get a lot shittier once people start making money off of it.
Yes and no. I think I was overly optimistic that people would make use of the possibilities of social media. I have thoughts on why I was mistaken, but ultimately I failed to recognize that a lot of people like their views affirmed and will seek out circles which do so.
At the same time, you're 100% right: Companies saw an opportunity to drive engagement and reap huge profits with the teeeeensy little side effects of further siloizing viewpoints, distorting reality, and elevating the most extreme positions. It turbocharged everything awful and repeatedly turned sites into cancerous shitholes.
I think all the inter-instance drama on Lemmy shows pretty well that people don't need money to enter filter bubbles. I don't think you can even see this comment lol
For some reason, you made me think of 4chan and how it's always been a cesspool, no capitalism needed. Little did we know how most corporate social media would devolve into "4chan, but with ad-friendly moderation"
You weren't wrong on that. You just didn't realize that most people really suck, and sucky people being able to connect easily results in gestures widely.
I remember when scrolling through Facebook, all I saw was updates on my friends and family and pages I chose to follow. Now my feed is full of random posts from pages I didn't ask to see posts from but the algorithm decided I should.
Israel.
I thought it was complicated but they had a right to the land because of the holocaust, that countries around them should learn to get along with Israel
Now I know founding Israel was a mistake. Explicitly saying it's a Jewish state will inevitably lead to other groups being suppressed, i.e. Apartheid if not outright genocide. And they are not hated in the region because Muslims and Jews cannot get along, but because Israel was built entirely on stolen land, and they are still in the process of stealing more and genocide those who stand in their way
I grew up with this type of Toilet.
Seated toilets were harder to shit in and I didn't like them at first, but bidet is a formidable upgrade to hand so I like seated toilets more now.
Oh also I used to be a Matt Walsh fan in highschool and now I hate sexists and overall fascism supporters including my old self with disgust.
Get a little foot stool 10 or 15 cm tall to put your feet on while you shit. Recreates the squat position and unkinks your colon.
Was skeptical when my wife bought one of these. She was right. It's actually quite useful and comfortable.
‘Oh, Squatty Potty’
Ok do you squat to poop? You're not just pooping standing up right?
Yeah that’s a squat pot.
Question for you: I used one of these in Istanbul airport. In a residential building that doesn't have a meter or more between the floors, is the bathroom only on the ground floor? If I installed one of these on the upper floor in my house, the bowl would stick out of the ceiling of the room below.
Often there is a raised / false floor on the toilet area. So your bathroom isn't fully flat.
To my understanding, apartment or office buildings actually have quite a bit of space between floors. Not a meter, but more than enough.
The drain pipe of the shitter can be embedded in the floor in some cases, even with seated toilets.
I don't understand how older or clumsy people use these without falling in their own shit on occasion. I feel like even for a relatively athletic person, the probability of an incident surely approaches one given enough time.
whaat? We have the hand held bum gun like those available in most squat toilets. I've never used a bidet but... I just doing get how that could be superior.
I used to assume police were generally trustworthy and I could believe their version of any given event. Now I believe nothing they say without supporting video evidence.
Conservatism. Used to be a conservative around being 18-20. Then I left it after I saw what giving 2/3rd of the seats to Orbán did in my country. Now I'm not only an anti-fascist, but I also actively oppose conservatism.
When we thought fascism would never come back, we had to learn fascism was just conservatism at its logical extremes.
Homophobia was the norm where I grew up in the '80s and '90s. Took me until the late '90s to start questioning that, and probably a year or two more to become completely cleansed of it.
That Trumpers can be reasoned with and redeemed.
I held this belief until Jan 6th, but I've only felt more validated that Trump supporters are fundamentally irredeemable monsters who should be treated like hostile terrorists rather than fellow citizens.
I used to believe in a woman's right to choose. Then I got married, and having my wife always pick what we do had gotten us into some really boring shit. I would like to choose from time to time.
So eh, what did that entail? You have the right to choose, therefore you must choose?
I have the right to vote, while still having the option to not vote at all, if I so want. Forcing people to vote would just be tyranny.
could be worse. you could choose and she could enjoy it and then hate you for being right. I had an ex who broke up with me for this very reason.
That's a bullet dodged, if you ask me.
Used to make fun of small cars and "ricers". Now I have like 3 of them and hate large vehicles.
... why do you have 3 of them?
I have more than 3 but people get mad here if I talk about that. I enjoy fixing up stuff and driving different ones.
The irony there being you now have more car than just a single large vehicle. Although you won't be driving more than one at once.
1 person who buys a new car (especially anything large) is wasting far far more than I am with my 15 year old cars. I don't believe in throwaway culture. Plus I hate new cars so there's that.
I'll also add that I'm not a menace on the road like Karen road raging in her 8000 lb suv
When you put it like that, I can actually get behind that. New cars are absurd with all their electronics and non-fixability.
I mean I know I am justifying my hobby. I'm probably just as wasteful as the next person.
To be fair half the cars are the so's, they have a problem with saving unloved cars too ha
That a dictatorship led by a "good, strong leader" would be enough to fix any country. Held that belief from ages 16-22. With time, I understood that it would devolve into a bad strong leader anyway, especially because any one single person cannot realistically do everything at such a large scale, nor can they ensure that everyone down the chain of command is "good". Paranoia would seep in, more and more resources would be spent hunting "the bad ones", innocents would be wrongfully accused either by honest mistake or by malicious enemies.
Nowadays, I really enjoy the idea of "Do not take for yourself any power that you would loathe your worst enemy to have" and I wish it could be applied to all levels of politics.
Eating meat. I used to vaguely mock vegans when I was in college (UK, so 16-18 years old). I used to say shit like "don't you just miss bacon though" and "the animals already dead, you might as well eat it now or it goes to waste". I've since done a 180 and I'm close to 10 years of veganism. Best decision I ever made for both my health and mental wellbeing.
I used to believe capitalism could work if it was just done right.
This is an unpopular opinion around here but greed and the desire for power are the real problems and they exist in any economic system.
Capitalism wouldn't be that bad if wealth was distributed equitably - heavy wealth taxes et cetera supporting socialised human policies like education, healthcare, UBI, et cetera.
Greed only exists as a concept if private property exists
Isn't private property a necessity for society to function? Even in a communist society where everything is distributed equally, once resources are distributed, those resources become private property.
Or am I misunderstanding the concept of private property?
In Communism "property" gets split by function:
There is "personal property" - your clothes, toothbrush, phone, bike, house, car, etc.
"Private property" means any asset that produces something that can be used to extract profit. Think of factories, warehouses, rentals, mines, ships, servers, patents, etc.
"Common property" are things like community gardens, a public fishery (like a lake).
"Public/Social property" are usually state-owned, like public roads, the railway, the power grid (usually), etc.
"State property" also state-owned, but not publicly accessible, like the office buildings where government officials work.
My problem with these definitions is that my personal computer is also my private computer. I can use it to make money, but it's also deeply personal. Then again, Marx could not have anticipated this issue.
Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.
This is something I've wondered about too. Maybe it should only apply to things that would be too expensive for a single person to own? If everyone can have their own, then it's personal property, even if you can make money from it.
Read up on the difference between personal property and private property
Thanks, I already got a good explanation from NostraDavid.
So.. socialism, but worse.
This is the particularly unpopular part: Capitalism is not completely without virtue.
For example, capitalism will find the most efficient means of production.
The "happiest" nations in the world are capitalist with sococialised health and education.
That is untrue. Capitalism will find the most profitable means of production. Profit is all that matters. Capitalism will happily abandon efficiency, safety, environmental protection, and happiness in general, all in the pursuit of more profit.
If you don’t believe me, truly ask yourself whether you think Comcast is the most efficient ISP possible.
Sure but efficiency is synonymous with profitability in a competitive market.
Commence downvotes dweebs.
Efficiency is a functionally meaningless term under capitalism. Efficiency of what? Efficiency of email and phone spam? Widespread advertisement campaigns? Efficiency in sabotaging your competitors or collaborating to fix prices? Efficiency in redesigning products to manipulate your consumers and planned obsolescence? Efficiency in environmental destruction? Efficiency in finding loopholes in the legal system and regulations? In lobbying the government to receive special treatment? There are many ways to compete in a competitive market.
Society needs direction. Production when necessary, at the level that it is needed, keeping in mind ecological constraints. Capitalism is incapable of that.
Oh wow, I better not downvote because I don't want to be a dweeb!
This is some really naive shit
And that just so happens to be the human beings that do all the fucking work
IMO, the problem with Capitalism is that it inherited the structural baggage of previous economic systems, which themselves were transitional forms of what came before them. It is all a collection of improvised bandaids from the beginning of civilization to now.
If we are to have an economic superior to the 'isms we had before, we would have to deliberately engineer it from a clean-sheet design. No prior institutions, no previous currencies, and so forth. Game theory, questions of what we actually want from the system, and so forth would all have to be considered.
It would suck installing a wholly novel economic engine into society, because it will have major teething issues...but it is clear that what we got now, cannot let most people survive nor thrive through the troubles to come.
To port over a semantic argument from elsewhere on Lemmy:
You know the phrase "own the means of production?" A phrase I've been taught to associate with communism is "the workers shall own the means of production."
Well, 'the workers' means 'the people', and 'the people' means 'the public', and anything owned by 'the public' is actually owned by 'the government' and 'the government' is controlled by 'the elites.' Which is why any communist nation falls immediately to despotism, the instant you actually form your communist government the elites are in 100% control.
I've argued with someone on here before on the difference between a free market economy and capitalism. I was taught in a free market economy, private individuals own the means of production. An individual has his tools, he works, and trades goods or services to others at prices set by the laws of supply and demand. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production, a capitalist is a wealthy individual who invests that wealth - or capital - in ventures with an aim to make a profit. The boss owns the tools and pays workers a wage. The American system has sloshed around between those two extremes since the industrial revolution, periods like the early 20th century trusts and robber barons and...now, where large corporations headed by a very few very wealthy individuals own basically everything, and periods like the 50's and 90's when smaller startups in exciting new fields were springing up. The former are the closest we come to the elites owning the means of production, and it tends to be a terrible time to be alive for the average citizen, the latter are the closest I think humanity has come to "the people" meaning individuals at large actually owning the means of production.
Neither system "lifted millions out of poverty." Neither capitalism or communism has the means or motive to do that. Industrialization did that. Turns out, improving the reliability and quality of food, water, tools and medicine increases the population's standard of living.
Ah, ok. So socialism isn’t socialism because you’ve defined it out of existence. Got it. But capitalism is socialism, since you defined it that way. Well cool, if capitalism is socialism, call me a capitalist. It’s not though. There’s a reason capitalism devolves into fascism. Seize the means of production.
"communism" devolves faster, is basically my thesis statement. I say, as an owner of a lot of power tools.
Yeah, you’re definitely right about that. I’ve never advocated communism, specifically for that reason.
Has there ever been a country without a government that did well in the long run?
I'm pretty sure that's an awful idea.
I still believe that, but we also have to accept that it never actually will.
It could work in a vacuum with a perfectly spherical populace, for instance.
It absolutely can work, so long as it isn't allowed to run the show: harnessed, constrained, controlled capitalism, with no concentration-of-wealth-archy machiavellianism, can work.
But to do that, then you have to make the pay-ladder be proportionate to difficulty-to-replace, & not a means of "legal" embezzling, you have to make accounting unbreakable ( blockchain, ALL entries getting into an Algorand-type blockchain that all businesses in the economy & the gov't all have servers participating in ), you have to make Human Capital Investment ( NOT consumable-human-resources: wrong model/paradigm! ) work properly, etc, etc, etc.
A Japanese keiretsu is an example of a semi-autonomous-economy which proves that capitalism can work ( capitalism works within the keiretsu ), & Toyota is a vertical-keiretsu ( profit-efficient ) & Panasonic, Sony, etc, are horizontal-keiretsu ( marketsaturation efficient ).
Another problem is that market-speculators, like those "candlesticks market-timing" people, enforce market-volatility, as a means of harvesting money from others, & that is an antipattern.
Worker-owned-business is the bedrock of it, too..
which unions & political-ideologues hate..
Put ownership, accountability, responsibility, & authority, all unitary!
Anyways, there are ways of making it work, but I think it's just too .. "Japanese" ( in terms of how thorough the management-paradigm has to be, to even understand the system ) .. for any Western-mind to think of it properly.
No matter: soon a not-for-profit will begin demonstrating how this all works, later this year, I think..
( :
_ /\ _
Yeah because Japanese companies like Toyota, Sony and Panasonic don't exploit their employees.
math is hard, annoying, useless
then found shaders, procedural art, freya holmer.
so math is hard, annoying, beautiful. well not exactly 180 then.
Used to be an apple fanboy, use reddit, use Instagram; now I use linux, grapheneos, Lemmy, and, self host
That people are smart.
Most people are abject morons who still believe in Iron Age mythology.
Israel was justified in their (initial) retaliation for October 7.
Gone so far in the other direction that I now firmly believe Israel should be wiped off the fucking map. Decades of propaganda convinced me they weren't violent colonizers.
Fuck Israel. From the river to the sea.
The US
AI. Back in the olden days when I first played The Talos Principle, I was convinved that AI would be cool and offer us fascinating insights into the mysteries of consciousness. I never expected... this
That Dems were a leftist party and cared about helping people.
Then I finished high school and started actually paying attention.
The American dream.
Born in a south American country, I've grown bombarded by USA propaganda. Later on, by studying word history through different points of view, I've realized the evil USA imperialist practices are and the damage it has imposed to all the "underdeveloped" countries. "Not all USA is bad, but it's always USA doing bad things".
I used to believe that owning a car was necessary.
Depends on where you live, sadly.
Yeah. I live in one of those places were everyone else thinks it's necessary to own a car.
Idk depends where you're at. In the US some regions you're basically not a participating part of society without one particularly out west. On the East coast there are several cities where having a car becomes more of a liability than anything. Public transit is good enough with some caveats.
Having had a car in the bay area I literally would not have survived without it. I've since moved east and had my car break down a few weeks ago. Honestly not as bad as I thought it would be. Definitely had to cut some things out of my schedule that were on the opposite side of the city and get used to the occasional crackhead/tweaker but I'm honestly saving more money than expected. The convince of a car only really shows up with dating and cutting 10-30 minutes from most of my travel.
All that to say I mostly agree with you.
i had roommates in a city where you don't need a car who would drive their car to work rather than walk a KM. If you asked them why it was 'it's too far to walk'.
Used to think that if you put in the work at your job, showing loyalty and dedication, that the company would take care of you. That's how it worked for my parents...working for the same place starting as a college intern through retirement, or changing jobs when they felt like it when they wanted to move elsewhere.
It sounds naive now after years in the real world being taken advantage of, getting passed by, and getting laid off because of a company's whims...but when I showed up in the job market with a degree and good grades from college it was quite a shock.
China bad America less bad.
I think China is no worse than america now. I don't put effort into buying american products anymore and will happily buy Chinese goods.
That science and programming are hard.
They are not. It’s just a bunch of rules much like learning a spoken language.
So many of them. So, so many.
Maybe the only one I’ve kept perfectly intact is my belief that the golden rule is prime.
I was raised a young earth creationist, picketed abortion clinics when I was elementary school aged but don’t worry I was home schooled from kindergarten through high school. Was basically a republican/libertarian until about 2015 when my spiritual leaders, including and especially my parents, began to compromise all of their values.
More recently, probably even until 2020, I viewed myself as an aspiring centrist.
Now I’m an agnostic atheist who is seeing how far left the political spectrum goes, and I still think centrism is a nice idea, in a totally different world than the one we live in, with a totally different meaning to “center”.
Here is the thing I should disclose though, because I suspect it applies to a lot of things.
I was raised steeped in a level of bigotry that was all-encompassing but cloaked in Christian love.
I have intellectually separated myself from that bigotry, but I believe I still have instinctive/subconscious/unidentified bigotries to work through.
I am trying to be very conscious of that as I make my way in the world, trying to love my neighbor as myself, and trying to continuously expand the definition of “neighbor”.
Edit: I also cut my parents out of my life entirely around the time DOGE sent their “fork in the road” email.
When I was young and stupid I was more conservative, and I was pro gun. Then I became very anti gun. Now, as the world gets shittier and more dangerous, I am drifting more towards pro gun.
It's a funny thing. It's made me realize that being a pacifist or being anti gun is, in a way, almost a privileged position to take. It's easy to say "I'm anti violence" when your existence isn't being threatened, it's a lot harder to stomach as the threats get more real.
When you have the gun, you're the one bringing a gun to the party.
For clarity, when you say "anti-gun", what is that position? Like, "average people should not have them, period"?
Not trying to knock on you - it's that there's so many positions which get lumped under "pro-" or "anti-", it helps to actually understand where someone is coming from.
"Average people should not have them and I don't want one either."
My opinions on that have shifted.
Same. ICE invaded my neighborhood and I promptly got my permit to carry and now I bought my first gun and am practicing at the range and carrying regularly
Not OP, but my position has always been the constitutional position of "a well regulated militia". Like imo you shouldn't be able to have guns in your home, but it would be fine if there was a single gun locker on literally every block where you could store an entire personally-owned arsenal, as long as the locker met strict security rules and the gun users met strict and recurring training requirements.
I took a really similar arc as you did, and now carry on a regular basis. I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head: it's easy to be anti gun when there isn't an imminent threat.
Pacifism is sometimes privilege and sometimes moral ideology taken to its noblest extreme. You have some who are safe no matter what and decry violence, but you also have folks like the victims of the Gnadenhutten massacre, who didn't fight back because they were pacifists. You also have nonviolent people who do so strategically.
Your existence was being threatened but now that you have a gun you're safe? Sounds like creative writing to me. What was the threat? How did you counter that threat with a gun? Was their a big confrontation? Did you have to put a motherfucker down?
Damn, a lot of people wouldn't have learned a reasonable lesson from that interaction ...
This is a topic I've gotten disagreement on from my fellow lefties for a long time, and I'm glad they're finally starting to understand. I've always believed in strong gun control laws, but not a ban.
The issue with strong gun control laws is that they would definitely be leveraged by authoritarian governments against the interests of the common people. I'm not really a fan of complete gun ownership freedom, but even in the not-quite-as-overtly-fascist past of US politics, it's been conspicuous how often state gun laws were tightened when minorities started arming themselves, while the 'white men shooting up schools'-issue is pretty much being ignored.
But you can't start your scenario from after there's already a fully situated authoritarian government in place. If you're starting from there then there's no actual law about anything at all anyway, guns or otherwise.
And secondly, you're arguing as if strong gun control laws means a gun ban, which aren't at all the same thing.
Fair enough. I guess it depends on how authoritarian and anti-progressive you think most western governments were before they started to tune into the Trump bs; it's a completely different conversation if you think that we need a revolution before enacting strong gun control laws.
It's really easy to declare someone who belongs to a political movement or politicized minority as 'not fit for gun ownership', the further away from the current political center the easier.
Strong gun laws doesn't mean a test of political views for gun ownership. Strong gun laws means things like for example to have access to a gun a person must not have a recent conviction of initiating physical violence. Calling these things "strong gun laws" is really a purposely misleading term, because what we're actually talking about is truly dirt-basic levels of obviously warranted restrictions.
But imo if you meet these extremely reasonable precaution requirements then after that you should be able to own basically any type of weapon you want short of WMDs. As long as you can meet increasingly tighter training and ownership restrictions then imo you should even be able to own the top of lethality weapons like a tank, rpg, or jet fighter
Which is pretty easy to get if you attend protests and the government intents to effectively ban leftist activists from having legal access to guns. Wrongfully charging protesters with resisting arrest is already commonplace in many EU countries, and "the protesters started it" is standard fare when people ask why the police attacked a peaceful protest. If activists started arming themselves, they would definitely use these, especially if they took them to protests (though that would be illegal anyway in my country).
So what you're saying is, we basically can't have strong gun laws until our political systems are deeply changed in one way or another?
When I was a freshman in college I thought "Surely nobody would want to inherit genetic diseases, and why wouldn't we want to to try and make people just naturally live longer, healthier lives?" but then I did even the tiniest bit of research on how eugenics actually worked and I completely abandoned that line of thinking.
Well, I was raised a super political conservative, Mormon. Now I'm an Atheist Liberal. Does that count?
The Bicycle. My God I how hated to ride a bike. So freaking uncomfortable to sit on, hurts my lady parts and sweaty and you have to pedal so hard to make it move, I always would rather walk. Just walk like we are made to do.
I rode an electric bike at a 'rodeo' the city sponsored to promote their e-bike raffle and oh wow what fun, so comfortable the seat, so easy to pedal and it moves right along. I did not win a voucher but spent the money on one and I love it, it's my daily commuter vehicle, and I let people ride it and so many have the same transformation.
That's great! I used to think electric bikes were cheating. Then I also bought one. I still remember going for the test ride. The bike I picked had a torque sensor so it would adjust the electric assist based on how hard you pushed (some bike don't match force, they just turn the motor on and off when the pedals rotate). I was riding along on the road near the bike shop and the assist was so smooth I thought I was under my own power until I looked down and saw I was riding at 27mph! Last summer I rode 24 miles to the city center once or twice a week. I don't think I would have done that on a traditional bike. My fitness has benefitted significantly even with the bike doing some of the work.
You are not alone. https://riderguide.com/blog/riding-an-electric-bike-gives-more-exercise/
Cool, thanks for the link. I'm gonna store this one away for the next person to joke about me being a cheater. :-)
A bicycle with gears should not be hard to pedal. You should be able to downshift to a point where it is not hard to pedal.
I'm just suggesting that the bicycles you tried may just not have been suitable for someone who is not already a strong bike rider.
Who knows? I can only say that they universally sucked. I pedal away on this cruiser E-bike though, it is a ridiculously pleasant ride, and fun. I use it daily, and not to be virtuous in any way. Because it's easier than taking the car in some ways, and not as slow as walking. Great big basket holds 2 big grocery bags.
I once thought the Democratic Party in the US was liberal. Now I realize they're slightly right of center (with some exceptions), and there really isn't a truly liberal (or leftist) party of any note.
The political spectrum is subjective. In the US the Dems are centre left.
They might not be left enough for you and that's fine.
First of all, no. But second of all, your spelling of "centre" makes me think you're not from the US. Maybe you don't know more about our political parties than we do.
Depends on if you're looking at a specific issue or overall. If you're looking at some specific issues like say trans rights then the dems are center-left, but in the overall total tally the dems are center-right, and the repubs are far-right
It depends on the lens you're using to look at the situation:
Would you argue that the Dems are not Progressive Liberals?
They are leftist depending on the definition. Classic left-wing was simply anti-monarch, pro-republic. In that regard the Dems are left wing. Are they Communists/Socialist though? lmao, absolutely not. They are WAY too focussed on social issues, in general.
As a European the Dems strike me as very pro capitalist neoliberals but definitely not as liberals. They get along with anyone if it's good for the economy. Freedom isn't something they actually value that much.
ew, neoliberals
Checks and balances in the US government would stop a president from doing anything truly egregious. Unfortunately that belief has been proven very very incorrect
(There was always the regular corruption and killing that the US was doing, but that was the "regular" accepted type of horribleness built into our system. But i truly thought the checks and balances would prevent the occurrence of extremely out of the ordinary radically new nakedly illegal tyrant style horrors.)
Western politicians have become increasingly mask-off. I remember back in the early 00s, national politicians in my country stepped down because they used frequent flyer miles from flights for official purposes for private purposes. Nowadays, they get exposed for blatant corruption, power misuse and even serial rape and just carry on.
that people as a whole are inherently good
nope. nope nope nope. people are inherently selfish
half the population of the world seemingly needs to believe in fairy tales and a magic book to give them a moral code. people will, time and time again, do things for their own convenience or desires at a greater direct and immediate expense to somebody else, i.e. knocking somebody over to spill $10 out of their pockets and only steal $2 and run away.
fuck people. people will get respect when they earn respect. everybody else gets basic decency and nothing more, until they prove they're not an asshole. and the moment they prove that they are an asshole, they get treated like one.
What do you mean by being spiritual? I'm an idealist so I think consciousness/subjective perception is the fundamental substrate of reality, and matter/the physical world is just an illusion, but I wouldn't consider myself spiritual...
That's actually the basis for Mahayana, which then transformed into multiple kinds of Buddhism. I'd consider it a pretty spiritual stance, if not only because it means that you've spent time thinking about what is "reality" and our role within it.
Not at all to imply that this is your case, but there's a difference between having an intellectual understanding of idealism and actually having the lived experience of it.
And most people need to do some kind of practices to get there, which are typically found in spiritual contexts (meditation etc.). But there definitely are people who just kinda drop into it.
Though... yes. It's a philosophical stance but it kinda gets tossed under the umbrella of spirituality. Maybe that's actually a problem come to think of it. Since spirituality is easier to dismiss as "woo" (as in, everything that goes against the almighty scientism is woo...)
Though you do say:
What do you mean? Because as an idealist, I was specifically taught to see the difference between a subjective perception and general consciousness. It's very possible this is just semantics of course.
Cool, do you think the belief in physical reality can be harmful?
I think you have to operate in the framework of the sensory world when acting within the sensory world, and like using science and stuff to work out what's likely to happen if you do certain things as opposed to other things. But that's not the same as saying that you believe the physical world is real
I think we should use science to manipulate our senses for good, regardless of alignment with reality. But the realists say we should only use science to get closer to reality. I think they're stifling scientific progress.
I used to think, every good meal needs meat. Now I'm convinced, you don't need meat in a meal at all.
Forks with ice cream. Seemed stupid, tried it out, converted.
How does that work with the melted part?
Can't say it's a problem I encounter, but I might opt for one of them double wall bowls that you can freeze to prevent the melting altogether.
I already have bowls. And spoons.
Right, well I wasn't trying to convince you to switch only answering the question. Enjoy what you have as it please you.
To be fair, "buy more equipment" is not a great answer.
That's how you interpreted my comment? Perhaps it was my use of 'you' whereas I may have written 'a person'? It was meant more as a royal you than a specific you.
I didn't suggest anyone 'buy more equipment'. I answered that I would use a funny bowl.
Good luck on your future endeavors.
If the ice cream is very hard, then the tines of the fork break it apart more easily, than the dull edge of a spoon.
Some people melt their ice cream in the microwave before eating it, though.
Everytime I tell someone I microwave my ice cream, they think I eat hot fully melted ice cream rather than just softening it lol
New concept for me. I've just left it out on the counter before for someone that prefers it softened.
Do you find the softening consistent all throughout? Might give this a go next time a softer serve is needed.
I’ll usually put a pint in for 10 seconds or so. It softens the ice cream pretty uniformly, just a bit more on the edges than the center.
"I'm making ice cream soup!"
My dad used to put ice cream in a mug, and then place it on the metal plate of the biggest burner in the stove to melt it a little. This worked about a hundred times before the mug exploded in a lot of tiny pieces.
I used to hate furries back in highschool, mainly because I didn't understand it and all my peers hated them too. At some point I made the connection that just because people don't understand lgbtq people (something i do understand) doesn't mean they have to hate them, and I took that to heart.
I still don't quite understand it all, but I've become way more accepting. Live your life and be who you want, it's not my place to judge.
I learned about furries on a random off-topic thread on a forum I used to go to in the late 90s. I was still pretty young, but maaaan was I confused about the whole “furry” thing. So many people seemed to hate them! But the art was kinda cute.
Flash forward 30 years and I’m usually wearing furry shit when I go out, even to the office. My partner and I go to furry cons now. We’re not into suits or anything, but the people are weird and awesome and super accepting and overall very fun and cute. And fuck me, do they party hard. Anime nerds and furries party second hardest, only under rave kids.
I was raised in a somewhat homophobic household. One of my friend groups throughout high school was pretty densely LGBT, and so I grew. Exposure was all it really took.
I used to hate when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired. The episodes felt like they lasted forever, and I had no interest in anything that was going on. I finally finished watching it about a year ago, and it is one of my favorite shows to date.
I used to be a conservative who shot guns weekly and reloaded ammo. I was deep into the group for years.
The last 6 years I've been democratic, gone to protests and do my best to educate others about the dangers of being on the right.
Problem is, on social media, everyone assumes your lying or a bot, so I can't help convert anyone over to the brighter side.
Hanlon’s razor
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”
Evil does exist, and it wears the mask of imbecility
idolizing celebs, prof athletes, actors, singers...etc.
I turned 13 and learned what they basically do and how much they earn compared to doctors and teachers.
Politics. We have always been a conservative family (to relate: "conservative" here is the equivalent of the US Democrats, not Republicans!). My grandfather was a party cofounder and lived next door to our countries first chancellor after the war.
But the sheer disregard for the law by the (conservative) chancellor who was in office when I grew up turned me to the political left.
That comunism was wrong
I used to make fun of vegans. Now I am one of them x)
Abortion - till i was about 14 i had thought it should be illegal, but then i grew up a little bit more and realized the topic wasn't like it was being presented at all. The truth is that in many cases an abortion is the best outcome for all parties involved, including the fetus, the person who's pregnant, and all of the rest of us in the world.
And when you start thinking about how to build a system in charge of differentiating which pregnancies should be aborted vs which should be carried to term it immediately becomes clear that if anyone besides the pregnant woman gets to decide then it becomes a literal waking nightmare of horror movie scenarios.
In any non-juvenile view it's obvious that abortion has to be legal, easily available, and entirely up to the pregnant woman to decide on
Having children: I was completely against it for most of my adult life, then dated someone who wanted children while I still didn't and realised what compromise meant. Now I've got a kid with another person and the person who changed my mind is almost set against having kids.
Recreational drugs: I thought they were stupid and should be banned harder until my friends started smoking weed, etc. I eventually became a stoner for a while, but have since figured that the issue is more around disordered drug use which is more socially circumstantial than individual.
My opinions on the death penalty would turn liberal philosophers in their graves enough to power a town.
Jeez, so many things. The most influential 180 for me has been from being what others have called a "super Christian" to an atheist. This caused a few 180s for me: young earth creationist->evolution is a fact and the cornerstone of biology/big bang cosmology is probably the most correct Sex outside of marriage is bad->sluts are cool as fuck, actually Marriage is hierarchical->loving someone is a partnership and marriage is tax break for it The Bible is a revolutionary infallible divine guide->the Bible is an interesting, remarkably well-preserved text, a wildly inconsistent mythology, and with a weirdly cobbled mess of regressive morality even for it's time Gay bad->ARM EVERYONE WHO IS LGBTQ
My political journey has been pretty wild, too. From a self-described "ultra-conservative" to Christian liberal to Christian "anti-patriot"(an aggressive political apathy because Jesus) to full communist(anarcho-syndicalist...ish) to Christian Socialism to Market Socialist to DemSoc to Libertarian Socialist to a kinda Cosmopolitan Anarchist/Socialist.
Another 180 for me that has strangely stayed independent of my religious and political views(mostly) is my views on feminism. I guess more specifically my views on what feminism is. I've always been a feminist deep down, but I had some pretty warped views on what feminism is, especially in my conservative days. The two things that always bothered me as a Christian about Christianity were slavery in the Bible and the treatment of women. The thing is, I really bought into the whole "feminism is when men bad and women rule world" bs for an embarrassingly long time. I may be a straight cis man, but even as a kid I thought the systemic unfair treatment of women was a real problem that urgently needed fixing, but feminism is just a pendulum swing to the other side. lol. Not only have I come to a better understanding of feminism with the goal of establishing equal rights for women, I've come to understand the role feminism plays for men's liberation as well. Bell Hooks has really opened my eyes to the simplicity of feminism really being about our collective liberation from patriarchy. I truly appreciate feminism because I finally joined the movement in order to fight for the rights of others and instead of turning their nose at a perceived enemy, I was taught to fight for myself as well. I think it speaks volumes when a movement seeks to empower everyone that joins, despite the gargantuan disparity in the level of oppression they experience. I'm not a sideline cheerleader, I'm a fucking comrade. So I guess: feminism bad-> FUCK THE PATRIARCHY
Did you do psychedelics, by chance?
Until i was 24 I fell into a camp of thought called transmedicalism. Which is shitty because I am cis and didn't support a friend because of it. By the time I learned what a jackass I was being he died. Don't think my absence in his life was the nail in the coffin at all but there were way too many of us who ignored him when he was almost alone.
I don't think just doing a 180 on my opinion there was enough
A less shitty turnaround was my atheist heelturn. I only think it's worth mentioning because I wasn't awakening from Christian I was awakening from loose agnostic spiritualism. Thought I should be tolerant of people's idiosyncrasies because finding personal meaning is a deep need that we rarely ever get (Fucking ironic considering the transmedicalism, right). 2016 and the following events were my little clue-in to the possibility that people aren't using belief as a way of building meaning, they're using it to justify their worse impulses full stop. I never really respected enlightened reddit athiest brainlets but if there's one thing to take away it's that you don't hate belief in the supernatural enough.
That a revolution might work out well.
I used to think starting over fresh sounded like a great idea, and the only question was if it actually justifies spilling any blood. Now, having learned a lot more about human nature, and having seen a bunch of politics as it's actually practiced, the French and Russian revolutions turned out exactly like they always had to.
For reference, the French one sucked all the way through and then failed, with the silver lining that it planted ideas which became useful and important generations later. The USSR is too recent to objectively comment on in that way, but it's not impossible it will end up seen in the same light.
Damn near most of them. I was raised by stereotypical mildly narcissistic boomers who were mildly racist and very conservative. I've only gotten more leftist as I've gotten older.
I'd say that the biggest one was that people's situation is largely their fault. It's not. It's somewhat their fault but a TON more than is obvious is actually the context and environment in which they live. Like in a card game, some cards are dealt to you and you choose to play them. You don't pick the cards you get.
Even then, the choices we make are not independent of the context. I was raised with the idea that we're 100% free will. I'd say it's 20% at most. If I had free will, I'd never lose my temper. I'd never have a break down. I'd never do dumb stuff because it seemed like a good idea at the time. (thinking to myself, why did I do that?!)
I used to eat mostly plants. Ended up with NAFLD, had to change my diet entirely.
The only thing I've gone 180 on is my hatred of Bob Dylan. Couldn't stand hearing his voice growing up when my parent's played him. Then I learned to like cover versions of his songs. After a watching a complete unknown I became a Dylan fan.
I was pro death penalty as a teenager, then anti death penalty as a young adult. The last few years have shown me that some people are so awful and so insulated from consequences that maybe killing them is the best outcome for society. I still have a lot of reservations about the state being able to kill, but I believe there are quite a few instances where individuals killing others are justified. Is it vigilantism? Yes. Has the US justice system been rigged to the point that vigilantism is the only way that the worst of the worst see justice? Also yes.
Not all Republicans are bad.
Wrong triple Trumpers are demons pure and simple.
Capitalism is ok with regulation.
Wrong the system is inherently flawed and feeds into humanities worst impulses.
That I was a straight Christian.
Freeing myself from those chackles are probably the biggest pivots in my life.
used to be reddit atheist (extremely cringe). now im much more agnostic and acknowledge that it's pretty impossible to be completely sure about these things.
'social justice'.
Used to care about it, but then I realized over time that it's mostly bullies and wannabe bullies. And that most people who claim they are for social justice, aren't. They are just for screaming and belittling other people who are different than them.'
I realize social justice is something you do, not something you say. And the people doing the saying are very rarely doing anything to help the people they 'advocate' for so much as they are using them as a soapbox to grandstand about how they are 'good' and anyone who isn't as 'concerned' as they are is 'bad'.
Sounds like your beef is less with actual "social justice" and more with bad actors co-opting the movement for their frivolous, performative virtue signalling
I can definitely see this, and I do not doubt there are a LOT of people that fit your description perfectly.
Of course action is better than words, but words are better than silence. Silence is acceptance.
Narcissistic personality types gravitate toward this type of thing. Found that out the difficult way.
Wanna see a good example of the hypocrisy of "social justice warriors", go learn about the Kimba the White Lion controversy, which seems to have died down. Youtuber YourMovieSucks did a great video debunking the idea that The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion. The two franchises only have some very superficial things in common. The "Kimba crowd" were constantly pushing this rumour that Kimba the White Lion was this great anime that was robbed of potential success because big bad Disney stole its ideas. Disney always trampling on the poor oppressed animators from other countries. (I acknowledge Disney has done evil things, just not this specific thing). You would think all these champions spreading the word about Kimba the White Lion would have actually watched the show they were so passionately defending from big bad Disney. Turns out most of them couldn't be bothered watching Kimba because it's a mediocre show, and it turns out Kimba has some racist shit in it that they shouldn't be defending. And Kimba and the Lion King actually have very little in common that is unique. And a lot of the comparisons come from a Kimba movie that came out three years after The Lion King and probably ripped off some of the visuals in The Lion King to capitalize on The Lion King's success.
that's lemmy in a nutshell
even when they can do something purely through online expression like fix an inaccessible post, they'll often still not do it: they'll argue over it, offer nonexcuses (eg, their shitty lemmy app lacks basic features available from the website to edit posts & provide text alternatives), not fix their post, keep posting inaccessible content. these are the same people blasting each other about leftist causes, which sometimes ironically include accessibility.
they're social justice imposters
that I was straight
Idk what to write here, i haven't done so much "180s" but i have shifted a lot of beliefs pretty significantly.
Actually i think the things i'm proudest of are understanding that in the modern western society, a lot of categories are often used to describe things (such as "democrat", "republican") but when you really think about it, these concepts are kinda meaningless. they're empty significands, i.e. they make you adhere to a group-think even though there's not much of a content in these concepts.
the truly important concepts are entirely different ones, such as the four elements in the aristotelian worldview.
think about it: if you visit a random village in india that has been disconnected from modern civilization for centuries; these people do not think in terms of "democrat" or "republican"; because neither of these things are natural. they do not appear in nature. why do we classify our natural world with them?
I had the opposite of you: I went from believing in mysticism and magic to being a materialist. All it took was talking to a friend and exploring our views.
Another one is believing in linear causality. I used to have hard stances on all kinds of subjects, but then I learned about Cynefin and functional contextualism. Now I am pragmatic.
I thought America were the good guys…
Basically all conspiracy theories, got into deep rabbit hole during Myspace days. It was weird watching all people during the pandemic gobble all that shit like it is breakfast
That the American Dream exists or ever really existed.
First of all, I liked America as a kid, that opinion changed fast. I was very fundamentalist Cristian conservative, but this strongly went against my values of compassion at some point, and I was the type to constantly question things. So at first I just lost faith due to how there was no evidence for Cristianity being based on anything real, since I would be putting my own and other's wellbeing for a belief in what is anectodal evidence, I told myself that I had proof, I would believe it, I got tricked, and started to believe in it again, then did a 180 AGAIN.
I would see trans people as degenerate freaks, but by some point, I knew this was irrational, and then a friend revealed they were trans, and I didn't show even a hint of the disgust, even though I was weirded out, I just went with the online trans support script on how I'm supposed to act, but I had like zero experience (or personality). So they kind of faded out of my life, sadly. Either way, they instantly Wolololo'd me just by existing. I no longer think ill of trans people, but ngl, thinking about their very happy expression as they stretch some latex shit they found, still weirds me out (not trans related).
I as far as recently, utterly hated furries, and would see them as groomers. Again, having furry friends helped, but I was never 100% comfortable for a long time, until I meet a certain (ironically no longer furry) person. No, I did not do a 180, I was guarded and would sometimes be rude and dismissive. I disliked a game for being furry, but I basically grew into it thanks to OpenMindedness™ that again, developed from some sort of philosophy.
(Note: this is getting to dense to phrase properly, so I will try to make it more TL;DR).
I was asexual for more than one reason, I was questioning why I was like that, but never did anything about it, until ironically a roleplay bot did something inappropriate that I punished it for, but it made me think, and I knew I was cutting myself out of a very human experience for dumb reasons, went very freakish on Reddit and Lemmy NSFW for a while, then due to both constraints, and my well...moral disgust with humans, I did a 180 AGAIN, and I'm now at least behaving like an asexual, my only exception is a friend who I don't directly have an NSFW relation with, but I talk NSFW, and I'm more than willing to hear him out on anything they need (so long as it's not myself).
A few other things: I used to be very bootstraps, which ruined me. I do believe help is important (but no longer have the trust for it). For a long time, I valued forgiving and accepting people, and I put up with a lot. This unfortunately, has come to an end as well, and I am VERY wrathful now, want to smell burnt flesh level of wrathful, cut off friends suddenly level of wrathful, cut myself from things I need to hurt others level of wrathful. It took a long time of what amounts of being tortured, and massive injustice for me to become like that, and it serves a purpose, it is not a character flaw. There are many things I forgot and don't think about here that are an extreme departure of my previous beliefs, and I am nothing like my old self, and my old self would probably want to burn my new self at a stake.
Religion and politics.
Was raised Christian (Protestant; not sure which subchapter, but I've sung Psalms in whole-notes, rhythm, organ or drum and guitar - it didn't matter much), but turned secular/atheist around the time The New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris - the four horsemen, lmao) went around. Part was several youtube videos, part The Selfish Gene audiobook.
Nowadays, I still consider myself atheist, though I call myself heathen after the pre-Christian religion(s?) we used to have in the Netherlands (which is basically Norse mythology, but we call Odin Wodan, and Thor Donar. We also have a few extra figures like Frau Holle, some local legends, etc. I also wear two rings with the Elder Futhark alphabet, and a chain with Thor's Hammer.
I just think Germanic Myths and Legends are just neat.
Regarding politics: I used to regard myself as Liberal, but the more I learn about Liberalism (starting at John Locke, and ending with John Rawls) the less I like it. It feels like it's individualism and egoism to an extreme, and I think it will be damaging to humanity at large in the long term.
What would replace it? I'm not sure yet. I do feel we should probably try to get families living closer to each other, to ensure they can better support each other - nowadays a family can easily live all over just fine, which just means they'll grow apart. Yes, yes, not every family can do that, because some families are assholes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Our capitalistic system is breaking the family tribe apart, and I think that's bad for everyone involved.
Also, forced paternity tests. If men get the burden of fatherhood legally shoved onto them, then they should get legal evidence the child is theirs. I think cuckery (raising another's child without knowing - not the sexual act) is a deeply immoral move, a deep and traitorous move, and if women use the legal framework to force men to pay for support, then they should be OK with us using the exact same framework to support ourselves, right? That would only be fair, right?
that getting into biotech/research field is actually harder than people think and the statistic heavily skewed towards health in job search and is on part with unemployment rate of the next highest rate of stem majors. plus its also HEAVILY gatekeeped so that the amount of scientists already employed dont have to compete with less salaries of fresh graduate pipeline.
I used to believe that the percentage of Americans who are horrible people wasn't different than any other group.
I also underwent a shift from atheism and materialism (in reaction to my Christian upbringing) into a more syncretic form of personal spirituality. I've really taken to heart the idea (which i think I learned from Jodorowsky) that magic is a language which speaks to the unconscious, and so spirituality isn't just comforting woo, but actually can shift beliefs and ideas, impacting behaviors and outcomes. I also think spirituality is vital to community and buidling better societies.
I used to believe that useful idiots were the exception, not the norm.
The biggest ones were I was religious and became atheist, was vegetarian and now eat meat sometimes, and I was a nominalist and am a platonist
Did you have a paranormal experience?
When I was young, used to believe that social-pressure could make everybody behave/conform.
Understanding the existence & approximate-nature of psychopathy, now, & KNOW that that's suicidal naive-delusion.
Hard-walls are required for many, & permanent-segregation is REQUIRED for some individuals.
I wish serial-rapists & serial-molesters were segregated as systematically as serial-killers ( where the lives killed were "in their way" ) & serial-murderers ( where the murder is the point ).
Their prey deserve to NOT be their prey, & social-making-believing/pressure isn't good-enough.
NO amount of social-pressure's going to make people conform, if they just aren't wired that way.
( the left consistently assumes that social-pressure cannot be disobeyed, & that is about to cost the US everything, as total-dictatorship's going to be activated shortly.
It's currently at the point where the Democrats are utterly-powerless to impeach Trump, because the hour they table the beginning of that process, Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, & then it's done, & probably, the Dem electorate are executed. )
_ /\ _
Jeffrey Sachs is a cool smart and good guy. He gets how things work and wants things to go well for people.
I used to say not all men are abusers. Now I say all men are responsible for stopping abuse.
I used to pretty religiously follow the Ukraine instagram account... Then they started making fun of the Iran attacks... Now I'm just left with a bad taste in my mouth...
Slava Ukraine, Free Palestine, and Iran has a right to defend itself.
I don't like that they don't much like each other...
I don't know why an atheist would be seen as less likely to be bigoted than general population. That's certainly not my experience especially with regards to Islam. I'd argue that anti-theism is a kind of bigotry.
Many famous atheists are just public misogynists and Islamophobes riding the Joe Rogan circuit with Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. And let's not forget how many of them were guests at Epstein Island. Richard Dawkins withered under the spotlight of fame like Smegol under the one ring.
There was a time on the Internet when the atheists were the good guys. It was the same time that Elon Musk was cool.
What a werid comment. Seems like you're more angry at a handful of specific people, rather than the default position of there being no god. Seems kind of fallacious to attack the argument that way.
Might want to flip back, because you've been bamboozled.
"In fact, a spokesperson at Henry Ford Health told journalists seeking comment on the study that it “was not published because it did not meet the rigorous scientific standards we demand as a premier medical research institution.”
The organization that actually did the study believed that it was flawed for multiple reasons:
"the study’s main comparisons are tilted. The follow-up time was short and uneven, kids had unequal chances for diagnosis, and the two groups were very different in ways that matter. The methods used did not adequately fix these problems. Because of this, the differences reported in the study do not show that vaccines cause chronic disease."
Jesus, making people anti-science whackos is as easy as a spiffy looking site and video huh.
There are several criticisms I could make to the methodology and other parts of this study (and there are LOTS to make here). But let's for a moment assume it is correct, let's imagine that vaccines really do cause a 250% risk increase to ADHD or asthma. Even if that were true (which it isn't, for example: almost every person diagnosed with ADHD has an undiagnosed parent with it too, leading to the conclusion that it's not that the cases have increased but that diagnosis has.) vaccines would be a GREAT idea. The study doesn't go into details (because it's trying to make the data prove what they want instead of analysing it) but let's look at one single vaccine, and compare this single vaccine with the whole of the accumulated hypothetical dangers of vaccines. Let's talk about the BCG.
BCG is the vaccine that prevents tuberculosis, also known as white death or consumption. Before vaccines TB accounted for 25% of all deaths in Europe, this means that for every 4 people who died, one of them was by TB. Do you think COVID was bad? COVID was only 6% of deaths at it's peak. But hey, maybe you don't believe in COVID, let's compare it to actual numbers, in 2018 (before the pandemic) approximately 8.1 million people died in Europe, of those only 259,000 were TB, if we subtract those we get 7.76 million, scaling that back to pre-vaccine days that takes us to 2.6 million deaths per year related to TB (there's probably some overlap of people's who died of other stuff and would have died of TB in that hypothetical scenario, but still) even being very generous that's an extra 1 million deaths. 1 million preventable deaths per year in exchange for a few extra cases of asthma and ADHD seems like a goods exchange. Also have you stopped to consider that maybe since people don't die of TB they live long enough to have asthma diagnosed?
Is it easy to distance yourself from the dead children caused by these exact beliefs?