A very clever friend suggested this question and I thought it was great:
Do you feel like your life experiences have crystalized and focused what you believed when you were younger? Basically, same beliefs, just better understood. Or have you radically changed as a person over time? My own addendum is if you feel like explaining why, I'm always curious to know!
@RickiTarr I was a teenager in the late 1960s, early 1970s in the Shetland Islands, Scotland. Feminism was a big issue, and it was exciting to be young in a time when women were moving towards equality with men. Sadly, my life experience with that has been seeing three steps forward and two steps back; latterly it feels like two steps forward and three steps back with the rise of "Christian" patriarchal misogyny, and attacks on LGBTQIA+ people who want to live free from prejudice.
@RickiTarr As a left-leaning teen, I was told I would become more conservative with age and experience.
I'm in my mid-40s now, and having seen what the political right is responsible for locally, nationally and globally, I have moved further left on every significant issue.
@ianhecht@RickiTarr Ditto except I''m a bit older than you. I've read some studies recently suggesting that this rightward movement is dying out generally - in part because back in the day quite a few people would actually get to the top of their jjobs and benefit from the system, and now that's largely not available unless you started off rich.
@ianhecht@RickiTarr I was told the same thing. I was a centrist growing up. Now I'm part of the radical left. Housing, education, internet, and healthcare for all.
@RickiTarr I am an evolutionary process. My beliefs have changed over time because of life experiences, books I have read and friends I've had and from looking at life from different angles. I knew someone that always said, "It's people that matter, not things." That has stuck with me. Especially since, I know the future me will be the caretaker for my husband.
@RickiTarr Yeah. Hopefully it's a slow transition. My husband has Alzheimer's. He's on medication and is doing well, except for his short term memory, although sometimes he's able to pull the memory back. It's a struggle. I let him work things out as long as he doesn't get frustrated. I think it's good for his brain.
@RickiTarr
I grew up in a conservative household, going to church every week. I basically thought what I was told to think. When I got out, I realized I was so wrong about so much. Since then it's been a lifetime of reversing course. Like that meme says, I didn't get more conservative as I got older, I got more progressive. And I'm dealing with the guilt of being a blind follower when I was young
@RickiTarr@MikeImBack
Same here. I'm embarrassed by the things I used to think, say and do. It makes me wonder how I'll feel about my present-day self twenty years from now, if I live that long.
@MikeImBack@CppGuy I try to remember that ideas and the words we use have changed and they weren't necessarily trying to be backward, but omg yes, especially sexist, anti trans, fatphobic stuff, and it's every old show even like Will and Grace
I have better vocabulary and understanding to go with my beliefs now, but at bottom my values never truly changed.
The most significant change, really, is just that I used to be someone who would've settled for social democracy. Now I realize I was always an anarcho-communist at heart, and have lost my faith that any hierarchical state can avoid being inherently corrupt. Even the governments I used to think served as good examples of how to do better, are still racist and exploit the global south, and their positive traits are being eroded. I always knew capitalism was wrong. I no longer believe regulations can make it behave tolerably.
@violetmadder@RickiTarr What about normal socialism? The USSR, Cuba, and what China is working towards? Is that a legitimate middle stage towards full communism?
The USSR was walled off from the world by sanctions but it was able to provide the same guarantees and benefits as the social democracies but without exploiting the third world.
All of those are still just state capitalism, with all the inherent corruption and hierarchy that entails. Different window dressing, but fundamentally the same under the hood.
The means have to be the ends-- no vanguard, no bullying middlemen. You can't get to decentralized autonomous organization by imposing centralized power to force everybody into it. You keep on organizing cooperatively outside of coercive frameworks until it catches on and spreads and the unsustainable self-destructive systems become obsolete.
@violetmadder@RickiTarr
I like that you've put thought into this. I'm personally undecided as to whether it's necessary for workers to capture a state and its coercive mechanisms to prevent backsliding into capitalism.
What is decentralised autonomous organisation? Does it mean that rather than having people organised in really big groups (like states), everything is done more locally? Like lots of smaller interconnected groups?
Yes! There's a lot of literature on the details of theory and the different approaches.
It's a tricky tricky balance. Very tempting to use force, particularly as the increasing urgency of the climate crisis accelerates. Trouble is, the status quo will do everything in its power to push things towards violence-- they call us violent, because like all abusers it's important for them to believe we deserve what they intend to do to us whenever we don't submit. They will do everything they can to prevent peaceful changes that undermine their power, in a game of chicken where whoever swings the "first" punch gets the moral high ground-- although of course the oppressor has had a monopoly on force this entire time and its actions don't "count" as violence even though it's been punching down for generations. They try not to kill us so they don't get in trouble-- instead, protesters are tortured and maimed and locked up and disappeared and worse.
Thing is as soon as we cave and start swinging back, then all of a sudden we get a lot of new friends that have just been dying to take out some frustration on any permissible target, and people driven by malice grow in power and influence at our sides. People who are good at breaking things, don't tend to be the same people who are good at building things. And then they don't want to give up their power. And concessions are made that preserve the cycle of violence, and history slowly marches towards its next repeat.
Until we figure out ways to move real change without violence. Weapons better than weapons. That's the only kind of change that will bring peace that can HOLD.
It may very well be that we'll fail again. All hell could break loose-- water wars, civil wars, mayhem-- but as climate change gets worse that's what's coming anyway. Maybe in sheer self-defense we'll have to skip over the steps we'd really prefer to take and swing some punches and maybe most of us die and most of our efforts get co-opted by gangs and warlords and everybody (except a few rich jerks in bunkers) dies and we start the next cycle from a new stone age on a planet that's unrecognizable. But we'll keep trying.
Or we might get it right, somehow. And preserve some functional, sustainable solarpunk civilization that puts the brakes on all the death and destruction.
We have to talk about alternate ways to do things, to organise our lives, feed everyone and make sure that everyone has access to healthcare and the essentials (which we are not succeeding at in capitalism).
We have to make how the world works today, and how it could work, common knowledge.
Why I'm tempted to talk about existing socialist experiments is because there is historical precedent of them working albeit imperfectly
It all needs to be discussed-- if half the energy people put into sneering about it and assuming it won't work, instead was spent putting our heads together and getting better at cooperating because the more we do it AT ALL about anything the better off we'll all be.... When people start to actually smell solutions, see touch feel for instance a forest garden, silvopasture, rehabilitated landscapes with flowing rivers that were dead wasteland just 8 years ago-- they'll want more.
With every failure of the current system, there's an opportunity for cooperation to kick in on disaster relief and mutual aid, communities making it work and remembering what real integrity and leadership looks like, among people who actually know and interact with each other, and the patronizing BS we get from morally bankrupt politicians starts to look like the revolting garbage it truly is.
The first thing we have to take from capitalists, is our devotion. Their wealth starts to evaporate when we stop wanting what they have, and find better things to follow than their dangling carrots.
They have the keys to what we need and the power to withhold it from us in the case that we stop buying their bullshit.
Our means of producing and distributing food, in some parts of the world, even the water supply, our energy networks, much of healthcare, education, etc, is still privately owned.
Maybe everyone has to see the situation for what it is rather than believing the propaganda that we are "free".
@RickiTarr Oh, nooo... Definitely completely different today. I was raised by super-conservative parents and I fell right in line. Now they're usually careful not to raise certain topics so they don't have to hear my point of view... 😂
@RickiTarr I’ve been atheist and socialist since I was a teenager, say 14/15. When I got a bit older I moved toward the centre left.
As time has gone on, and I’ve seen how companies, government, the law and the press work from personal experience doing my job, and also from the shit show of the last 13 years of Tory rule, I am probably more left wing now than I have ever been.
There is so much inhumanity and dishonesty that I no longer have any faith in the systems and institutions
I was a member of the federal Progressive Conservatives in the 1980s. But they were moderates then.
They negotiated the 'Acid Rain' treaty to limit sulfur emissions with Reagan. They hosted the conference in Montreal that lead to the Montreal protocol on CFCs. They cut taxes, but when the deficit exploded, they also introduced the GST sales tax
Since those days, they've been taken over by the Reform party, the Canadian version of Trumpers
@staringatclouds@RickiTarr this tracks with my experience as well. My Dad would spout all kinds of nonsense then back it up with confirmation bias. But when someone who needed help was in front of him, none of that mattered. I now have heavy disagreements with him philosophically, but I still feel like I'm following his example in a lot of ways. It's like we have the same goals but I believe we can change the context while he thinks the structure is static and individuals have to change
@RickiTarr the first time i started taking politics semi seriously, at the age of 16, i took a political compass test. i was in the anti-authoritarian left quadrant, as a social democrat. as i started learning more about history and philosophy and society (as well as going through a traumatic queerphobic experience by my parents) my views that i have always held were amplified. i am anarchist and communist now. come to think of it i was always a leftist. i just know much more now.
@RickiTarr
It was chaos to start and it's still chaos. Every time I try to extract a coherent narrative from my experience my whole system blue-screens.
I was born to a fundamentalist and an atheistic eugenicist who got together on the shaky ground that is a mutual hatred for life and humanity in general.
The grandparents who raised me were Christian, but of the kind that mostly took Christian values to mean the Golden Rule and generally doing one's level best not to be an asshole. Great-grandmother was half-Jewish. Dad was thrilled when he caught onto that part & it went as well for me as you'd imagine.
I quote this line more than anyone should because it's where I'm at:
My youngest dragged me to church this morning. I'll go, if pressed. But I'm more a believer in God as a source of a consciousness matrix than clouds and thrones and such. I'm also a bit of a Universalist, but nominally Greek Orthodox at least on paper.
@RickiTarr When we're young, we have fewer things to have views on. It's no surprise that as we get older, there're way more things to have opinions about & there comes a point where our minds can't always cope. I guess it's important to be prepared for some things, even those we've known since we were tiny, could be wrong. If the TV show QI has taught me anything.
@RickiTarr I was raised a judgemental jerk of a fundamentalist Christian in the 70s, when punching down was a societal norm. But my parents also put stock in integrity and honest work. Somehow (really, I met and married a girl who showed me other ways to behave) I grew out of the mean-spirited parts, but hung onto the golden rule and the importance of integrity.
The realization that most people don't think like I do, nor should they, hit me like a freaking brick when I was about 30. Kindness and empathy have been core to my beliefs ever since.
I shifted from centrist Republican to Centrist Democrat in the 90s, and have become more left-leaning as time goes by. Recognizing the mess we're leaving for the next generations has played a huge part of that.
@RickiTarr Quick answer, I don’t think much has crystallized. I continue to grow, and learn, and refine my outlook on things. A good example is my view on religious belief–I took on my current views only in the last year or so.
When I was very young, I took Bible stories as a given. Lots of good stuff in the Old Testament, and who doesn’t like Christmas?
Almost as soon as I started questioning authority (~7 or 8 years old?), I asked my father about religion. I can’t remember the question, but the answer was “Well, you know how there’s all these different religions? They can’t be all right…?” Boom! Instant atheist!
When Hitchens, Dawkins, et al, were in their heyday, I was the “Religion? Hmph, how can an intelligent person believe those fairy tales?” sort. I didn’t get obnoxious with people, I kept my harshest criticisms to myself, unless asked.
My current philosophy is that we’re all deluded, atheist and theist alike. We’re on a spectrum that ranges from perceiving “reality”* just in simple terms of raw input (appearance, weight, smell, etc.); to imagining structure (atoms, fields) not directly observable, but available through reproducible experiments; to imagining the existence of supernatural influences and intentions that are not universally agreed on, and not supported by reproducible observations. *(scare quotes on “reality” because no matter how you look at it, it’s subjective)
Wherever you are on that spectrum, your perceptions produce a model that, if Donald Hoffman et al are right, is optimized for food and reproduction, and has very little semblance to what’s really “out there.” Some physicists are suggesting that even time and space are human perceptions, and are not real.
What I think matters is how you use your model of reality to live your life, and how it influences your treatment of others. I’m not using “matters” in any grand sense, just in the sense that I don’t want you harming people you disagree with.
So, I’ve become personally comfortable with someone having religious beliefs, and don’t need to convince them otherwise. We’re all fantasizing to one extent or another.
@RickiTarr I think maybe I've gained additional beliefs about stuff I didn't know about as a kid but the core stuff is pretty much the same. I'm still religious in the sense I still believe all the usual Catholic things like transubstantiation and the bodily assumption of Mary in to heaven and still have the "lol no" reaction when some man shows up once a year attempting to get us into banning abortion
@RickiTarr
As a child I was as my father was, a Republican, thru high school. At college I met new ideas and people, and the war in Vietnam Nam (seen from afar, not as a participant) and in today’s words I was radicalized. It stuck. From my mother, an adept, I learned passive aggression. That I’ve kept, for better or worse. I’ve mellowed some as I age, but anger at injustice roils still, beneath the surface. Atheist since 12, when I saw the horrors religion wrought. Inconsistently inconsistent.
I was born into a culture from which I rebelled intuitively at a very young age without understanding the culture or why I was rebelling against it.
I spent a lifetime trying to figure that out. Along the way I rebelled against more horrible cultural values that I was immersed in and, shamefully, some of which I adopted until I came face to face with my ugly self.
This journey to break free continues. I am eternally thankful to others for shining their light.
@RickiTarr I don't think my core beliefs have really changed. My understanding of how they fit into the context of the world, some of the peripheral beliefs and their implications, and how they interact with my own psychology and unconscious biases has changed drastically.
@RickiTarr
My life experiences have caused me to question and change (and sometimes change back again) so many of my beliefs that I think at this point, any opinion that I share with my younger self could be considered largely coincidental.
@RickiTarr My values are very similar to when I was younger - but my understanding of the world in which we live - and ability to separate what is real from rhetoric has improved a long, long way, as I read and think about what I learn - and don't take any of it at face value.
I often reflect how horrified my dad would be at the political extremes and downright nastiness infecting politics in 🇺🇸, 🇬🇧, 🇦🇺 and elsewhere.
@RickiTarr I think there are parts of me that have been here as long as I have been, and parts of the system that are still here even after the fronters they were associated with were gone in some cases. I've got some mannerisms like young Feather, but young Feather would really hate me I think. Might hate older Feather too though. But even when I'm just counting me and even if I'm just counting my time here I have changed quite a lot. I've had a lot of my ideals tested and had my pride battered, so while I still have the same desires I always have, my vision of what it might be like to realize them is different now and has gone through several stages and a lot less defined in between times.
@RickiTarr Both. Many of my core convictions grew stronger, but at the same time my view of the world was radically altered by years of different experiences. I am a very different person now with very different ideas and perceptions, but the person I am evolved from the person I was, and that foundation has stayed with me.
@RickiTarr It started with Bugs Bunny for me. Then it was Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and Mohammed Ali. Yeah. Skinny half Asian kid here, trying to be like them, hahaha. My god, they were beautiful, quixotic anti-heroes. I can smell my Medicare card coming, but I’ve never gotten over what they represented.
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