That escalated randomly.

Because grown ups are capitalists ?

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.

Jeffrey Sachs is a cool smart and good guy. He gets how things work and wants things to go well for people.

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.

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.)

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.

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

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.

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.

I used to believe capitalism could work if it was just done right.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Did you do psychedelics, by chance?

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.

"Average people should not have them and I don't want one either."

My opinions on that have shifted.

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.

... why do you have 3 of them?

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. )

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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.

You can switch to crickets, I think that's your best murder per Kg ratio.

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 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.

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.

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..

  ( :

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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

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.

I used to believe that the percentage of Americans who are horrible people wasn't different than any other group.

Damn, a lot of people wouldn't have learned a reasonable lesson from that interaction ...

One issue with this is both are right of center.

Did you have a paranormal experience?

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...

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 already have bowls. And spoons.

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.

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.

• I used to be very religious, now I am an atheist.
• I used to be a fiscal conservative, now I am a proponent of UBI and other democratic socialist ideas.
• I use to think that you needed to eat a lot of protein with every meal, now I follow a whole food plant based diet
• I use to be (arguably) a nymphomaniac...sex addict for sure...and now I am super chill and treat sex as a means towards emotional closeness rather than an Olympic competition.

Right, well I wasn't trying to convince you to switch only answering the question. Enjoy what you have as it please you.

Iran has been supplying Russia with drones since the beginning of the war. I'm sure they are elated. The Israeli and American governments are a bunch of twats, but that doesn't mean the Iranian government aren't. Sometimes you get a war where every side is a cunt and you just have to sit back and watch them destroy each other. I just hope the Iranian people can seize the opportunity and overthrow the government, and that it goes better than last time.

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.

To be fair, "buy more equipment" is not a great answer.

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.