And I don’t mean things you previously had no strong opinion about.
What is a belief you used to hold that you no longer do, and what/who made you change your mind about it?
Being antivax.
I grew up in an antivax house and I never questioned it, especially since me and my family used to be healthier than most people around us.
There would be vaccine days in school and we would have to go and refuse them. only when the corona hit and suddenly there was all this discussion about the importance of vaccines and I started to actually research it, given I was still young at the time so I don’t blame myself for not doubting it up until that point.
To this day I’m still wary of vaccines and I do have this deep feeling that I don’t want to be vaccinated but I do get my vaccines after researching them and proving to myself that the data makes sense.
I also can’t ignore the fact that there is a conflict of interest for these companies to release these vaccines and them maybe not being as safe as possible but I try to follow the data especially from independent research that isn’t related to the company that made the vaccine.
It’s really crazy how childhood beliefs can hold you so strongly even when you logically get through them and realize they are wrong.
Good for you, it does take a lot to overcome some beliefs on our own and without help from those around us. There can be a lot of social pressure involved and other factors.
I used to identify as Libertarianian. Resented taxes, overreaching, infiltrating my life, all about independence, don’t want to be interfered with.
Then I became homeless. Realized how the social services, ssi, Medicare are important. Sure there are lazy people, but also those who genuinely need help, who want to get back on their feet. Care a lot more now about wanting to live in a society that actually cares about the people in it.
I was raised Mormon, am now atheist. Regret every conversation I had in high school about gay marriage. And evolution.
High five my friend. Also got out. Clear and strong memories of advocating Prop 8 in CA
For me one of the most recent things I’ve changed my mind about was my stance on (Finland) joining NATO. I used to oppose the idea because I was uninformed and thought that if a member state somewhere far away gets attacked that means I’m almost guranteed to be sent there fighting. I also didn’t think an actual hot conflict was a realistic threat in the civilized western world or atleast that the possibility of something like that was extremely small. Suffice to say I was proven wrong.
I share your view as a swede. most people in the country do, i think
Yeah I don’t have the exact numbers of the top of my head and I’m too lazy to look them up but I believe the polls here went from somewhere about 35% to 75% wanting to join. A massive own goal for Putin.
Yes same for me. In generall my opinion on a strong military changed. The past years we had peace and war was very far away, so why would we bother spending on that stuff. But now with that madman in Europe and trump questioning NATO I think it is more important that ever. European forces need to be strong enough to defend against attacers, without reling on uncle Sam.
haha exact opposite for me
Why don’t you share your experience then and elaborate on what made you go from being for NATO to being against it?
I assume you saw it, but others might not. I replied to a similar question here:
Elon Musk.
Sure, I thought, the guy’s probably an ass hole considering the amount of exwives he has. A rich cunt billionaire. But Steve Jobs wasn’t a nice guy either, but without his… Uh… “special” nature certain aspects of computers would’ve been decades behind.
But then I started listening to engineers, ones who could see through the hype that Elon Musk seems to create for everything he does, because they understood the numbers behind everything he claims and promises.
And I realised, Elon is full of shit. He’s not doing anything that manufacturers didn’t already know how to do, and he’s selling it like he invented it.
This realisation came well before he bought twitter. When he did buy Twitter and started using it as his own… Plaything, I realised he’s actually an immature idiot.
Back in 2015 I was in high school and we had to do a senior project which was a 15 page paper and then a 10 minute presentation too graduate. I did mine on Elon Musk and was fully onboard the Musk train for a while after that. I remember being kinda bummed realizing that this dude who I had thought was gonna revolutionize the wolrd was just a snake oil salesman. I still have a video of me practicing for my presentation which I just stumbled upon on an old harddrive a few months ago.
Bernie Sanders woke me from my Libertarian slumber.
I mostly don’t talk about it, but it’s Russia. Before the war starts, I sympathised with the russian people and disliked the hate against them. And I don’t mean Russia = Putin. This guy was always a bad guy, I mean russians.
Since the war started, I always believed the people of Russia would be against this war and get furious about it and would burn the political elites down. But nothing happens, a lot of people over there even support the war. And this really destroyed my opinion about them.
“[Susan Sontag] was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.” https://inthesetimes.com/article/susan-sontag-and-arthur-miller
Was a hardcore Libertarian till I finally read theory and realized how much Propaganda i had soaked up to think that Socialism was bad and unfettered Capitalism was good. Cringe so hard thinking about it now that I am a full blown Socialist.
Social liberalism is better than what we have atm, in the States, however it sounds like a half measure that could easily be rolled back with Conservative Propaganda against that status quo. I would prefer Gay Space Communism like Star Trek.
The Star Trek universe isn’t resource constrained.
Tea Earl Grey.
Gold watch Rolex.
I was (or at least I thought I was) Libertarian when I was younger. I liked the idea of being left alone to do what I wanted as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else. I still feel that way, but I’m a Liberal now, so first and foremost I want to ensure that everyone has an equal start and that everyone is taken care of.
Libertarianism is used by the privileged to rationalize their position in society. Having gone through the same progression myself, the realization that not everyone starts on a level playing field destroys the whole philosophy.
Used to be atheist when I was young, after I read religious books I changed my perspective about it and now I am agnostic.
Now I believe atheism it’s like a religion also
All these comments about people going from religion to atheism getting up votes, and you answer the same question but get down voted for not being atheist enough. Kinda reinforces your point.
I don’t think it’s far fetched to call non-religion a type of belief but to compare them further than that is missing the point of atheism.
At some point I realized atheist people are just non-religious fanatics, just as obsessed as religious fanatics but sometimes they are worst, trying to convince everyone around them.
In my humble POV both sides are very toxic people.
So your issue is with shitty people not atheism or religion.
Saying that atheism is a religion makes as much sense as saying that theism is a religion. Neither of them are religions, they’re precursors to religion. I consider myself an atheist, but simply stating that I lack a belief that there is a God doesn’t itself become a fundamental part of my personality. Sure, there are people out there who get obsessed with the philosophical and social aspects of atheism, and they let it consume their whole personality, but I wouldn’t call fishing a religion just because somebody has an aberrant proclivity for it.
While I have never been a coffee person, I always rolled my eyes when someone ordered a decaf soya latte or something similar. “Come on, if you can’t drink coffee then just don’t”.
…Then my friends got me to ditch dairy for oat (both for environmental reasons and the creaminess), then I had to accept the fact that I like it more sweet, then I tried salted caramel syrup, then I found out that two shots is like a hand grenade followed by two hours of misery, and I started drinking one shot caramel oat mochas. And then at my place I saw throngs of young moms who couldn’t have caffeine.
Now you can’t disgust me with your coffee order. If you like it with one and three quarters shot, macadamia milk, semi decaf, with mustard and marshmallow syrup then good for you. Also, let me try it.
EDIT: Coffee snobs: take it lightly. We are all different, and it’s good. Some like the taste of coffee, some don’t and they drink it out of sheer necessity, and if they must stay alert then at least they can make it taste better (for them). I’m sure there are some bean snobs out there who frown to the thought of putting spices on beans.
I used to hate chocolate as a kid and teenager. Turns out I hated Americanized chocolate like Hershey’s.
Butyric acid, same compound is found in vomit. That’s why it tastes like that.
When I was in my late teens up to around 20 I still believed in God and religion. Looking back, largely to please my Mum.
My views changed because my brother was so dismissive about religion so I started to question it myself properly for the first time. I’d taken it for granted after being indoctrinated into Catholicism my whole life.
Once I started questioning and actually thinking about religion (rather than just accepting it as the dull background to my life) I moved fairly rapidly to become an atheist. I’ve never once doubted or regretted that change. I feel like it was a turning point in my life when I actually started looking around me and questioning everything, and developing as my own person.
I grew up believing, never really thought about it. Then, in my teens, I started thinking for myself and the cracks started appearing, and I was a pretty staunch atheist for some time. Very big on pure logic and rationality.
Later on, I started thinking for myself again, and started recontextualizing a lot of the descriptions of “God” that were common across beliefs, rather than sectarian fundamentalist pulpit bluster. I was reading Spinoza and I thought of what the burning bush said to Moses, “I am that ‘I am’”, and something just clicked.
I definitely haven’t gone back to my childhood faith, but atheism is certainly something I changed my mind about. A cosmic consciousness just makes too much sense, rationality speaking, when you try to consider what consciousness is, how it originates. Either it’s purely emergent from complex organized matter, in which case the even more complex organized universe could obviously have it’s own larger emergent consciousness, or it’s a universal force that merely concentrates in complex organized matter. Any other explanation is far too arbitrary to survive Occam’s razor.
Many, many things.
I was an extremely pious and devout evangelical Christian, no longer am.
I was pro-life and am now solidly and rather aggressively pro-choice.
I was anti-LGBTQ, turns out I’m very queer myself.
I used to be very into guns and was one of the crazy 2A folks, now I’m much more reserved with regards to firearms.
I used to say ‘let’s glass (insert Middle East bogey man country of the day)’, but now see the nuances of the situation which are almost always that the US did something pretty damn shitty to kick the hornets nest.
There are a thousand social issues, pop culture lies, health and wellness myths, and so many more things that I’ve evolved on over the past 10 years that it’s mind boggling. I’m absolutely nothing like the person I was when I turned 30 ten years ago.
I’m another Libertarian to Socialist convert. Also ultra-conservative religious to nonreligious.
I started reading up on the origins of beliefs I held. I learned that Hayek (author of The Road to Serfdom, a father of Austrian economics) thought that his ideal laissez faire economics could only be sustained with universal social safety nets like UBI and healthcare for all. Smith (author of The Wealth of Nations, father of American capitalism) basically replaced royal bloodlines with wealth birthright, using class separation of ownership (and heavy emphasis on slavery) instead of historic feudalism. His system was basically the same, just replacing the tiny ruling class. And I discovered Marx wasn’t some evil terrorist trying to destroy the world.
For religion, it was all the internal inconsistencies. The problem with fundamentalism is that it’s self-destructive. Everyone fights over smaller and smaller interpretation differences, searching for The Truth, ignoring that you can literally back up any conclusion by justifying it backwards with the text. And everybody in a conservative religion has a lot of immovable conclusions they will defend to the exclusion of all evidence or all people.
