I was corpo brainwashed when I was younger by Walmart, my malleable brain bought into the anti union propaganda and I was at a friend’s house and said something anti union and his dad, a proud union member shot me the fuck down which caused me to actually go out and research what unions do and the history and everything and now I’m a progressive.
I’m in HR and am fascinated by the fact many union workers voted for and will likely again vote for Trump, despite it being so fantastically clear it’s against all their economic, legal, medical, safety and employment interests. The UAW is focusing on these voters right now, something like 50%(!) of UAW union members support Trump. Outside of misinformation, racism, xenophobia, or misogyny, I can’t see why they would vote for him or how their interests would align. Religion is an answer but of course, Trump is as religious as he is coherent.
I think the vast majority of unions out there are good, but there are definitely a select few that give the rest a bad reputation.
At one of my previous jobs, our union was one of those that gives others a bad reputation.
It was a seasonal job, we had to pay the union whether we wanted to be in it or not. If we had an out of season work meeting for training, all of the money that we earned would go straight to the union and we might end up with a $2 check (if that).
We tried working with the union reps, but they just seemed so out of touch with our group. They would give themselves a big pat on the back for getting everyone a 2% raise and then raise the monthly dues… We barely made minimum wage so a percentage increase like that meant nothing to us.
10 years later and most employees working there are still just earning minimum wage while similar jobs in other cities nearby are earning twice that (at least).
I used to be what Americans call libertarian. Capitalism and free market ftw. I thought it would lead to a freer society.
At some point I understood that the consequences of capitalism lead away from what is actually my real goal - maximizing the liberty of each individual. If someone is afraid if they can afford food and housing they can’t really be free.
Now I support certain types of socialist policies with the same goal.
I personally split the difference now. I think if the hive mind was completely rational, liberty/ancap must work in principle.
But propaganda, and moreover just how much violence people are raised with even still on average in western households, let alone the insane variance in parenting quality from China to the hyper religious Middle East to the current lead-filled (or micro plastic filled?) brains of Trumpers to the insane gang violence of Mexico and South America to the total rape of the continent of Africa… prohibits there from being any volume of rationality required to make it possible for at least another 200 years.
…except before 200 years we will have needed to solve for all of our global crises anyway to avoid extinction (at least there is a non negligible chance)—and thus some mix of socialism via the state, and the “market” AKA Earth dying, with the occasional bout of rational zeitgeist, is the only way to save Earth and explore the stars.
When Covid hit my wife was super afraid of Long Covid but I thought that shit wouldn’t get it. Now I’ve been living in my bed for two years because I’m too weak for much else. Yeah, changed my mind about that one.
A friend of mine was in a similar situation. He’s by no means an antivaxxer, but he was skeptical about the covid shot due a lot of public misinfo (rushed, mRNA vaccines not having a proven track record, etc), and his stance was in effect “At some point, but right now we don’t know enough about the long term effects”.
Then a friend of his ended up with long covid, and I think it dawned on him that we don’t know the long term effects of the illness itself either.
I’m happy to share that he’s now up to speed on all of his vaccines, covid and 5G included.
i changed my mind about gun ownership sometime in the last two years
i used to think that like, sure i get that it would be nice if nobody in the world had a gun, but the cat was out of the bag. and remember when the covid lockdowns started? there were lines around the block at gun stores. it just seemed crazy to me to be the only person without a gun, like what if shit hits the fan?
i think i changed my mind around uvalde, because like, that event made it pretty clear that guns dont really contribute to the rule of law. all guns did in that scenario was allow cops to kill a child an hour after he murdered 21 other children.
i really had to kind of re-evaluate the pros and cons. sure guns would be great if, in the 0.05% likelihood event that society turns into mad max, i need to murder my neighbor for tomatoes so i can delay getting scurvy for another week. but in the meantime every single time someone has like a fucked up teenager phase or watches an insane amount of youtube incel shit or whatever, we’re making sure that they have immediate access to a means to kill like 100 people before anybody can do anything about it?
it just doesnt make sense to me any more to live my life planning for the worst possible societal outcome in a way that has very obvious and real consequences. itd be like if nobody had invented the seatbelt and the way we prevented car crashes was having giant fucking spikes right at eye level surrounding the car to disincentivize other people from driving into you
I used to say ‘people can learn anything online but they might be too lazy’ which is partially true. Then, when covid hit, I realised my brain did not have the capacity to learn for too long when watching a screen; I had just been lucky with having blended modes that aaccomodated well.
I think that it’s more of a type of content issue rather than the method of learning.
Think online university lecture vs a random dude doing crazy experiments on YouTube
Sure, the lecture covers more content and does it in a more comprehensive way, but you will probably still learn some stuff from the crazy YouTube dude
Yeah, partially. There is amazing content out there (Jenny explaining relational algebra in YouTube shout out!).
But I also discovered that my brain has a limit for how much information I can process in that way. So blended works better for me… But I will never fault anyone for not being able to make online education work for them.
A few years ago deciding I actually didn’t owe my dad my participation in our relationship.
Always made fun of vegans but then I actually looked into nutrition and how we don’t need to eat animals to be healthy. Yeah… So if I only eat them for taste, why the fuck would I want to kill them? Was a pretty big but also instant switch in my head.
I don’t have a problem with veganism. I love eating vegetables, and enjoy plenty of meals without any animal products. What I could do without is the vegan products that imitate animal products. I am so much happier with a vegetable “burger” that embraces the taste of vegetables instead of one that tries to mimic the taste, texture and appearance of beef.
Well good news, you don’t need to buy them :] and these products just existing shouldn’t be a problem to you, right?
Their existence actually does inconvenience me. They have taken space at the grocery store that used to be used for things I purchased, and some restaurants that used to have pretty good veggie burgers changed to impossible/beyond which I prefer less and also disagrees with my stomach.
That may be but those restaurants used to be 1 in a 1000 and now every other restaurant has vegetarian/vegan dishes on the menu. The offerings in restaurants and supermarkets are just objectively better for vegans than they were 10-20 years ago.
I can definitely eat at more restaurants, but I don’t really want to when all they do is slap a fake meat burger on the menu and call it a day
I so miss feed veggie and/or bean burgers! Being served fake beef, or soya mince or something is awful. obviously some people prefer them, and they’re fully. entitled to their opinion, but beyond personal taste, I have had more success moving meat eaters to good food that happens to be vegan than I have convincing them weird substitutes are worth eating. Humous and falafel - yes please! Fake kebab meat with fake cheese sauce - 🤮
For the most part, you are right, and I’ll acknowledge that how I worded that it sounded more complain-y than I really meant to. If anything I was trying to say that I thought it seems silly that things like that exist, and not that I have a big problem with it.
That said, I don’t buy those products, but they still work their way into my life. If you have a vegan in your circle of friends or go out with one you’ll eventually find yourself at a vegan pizza place, or being offered vegan “bacon” with breakfast.
I changed my mind about arguing with vegans on the internet. enjoy your vegetables.
I was pretty adamant that Biden should stay in the race.
I figured that if he left the Dems would eat themselves in a giant squabble over who’d replace him.
Never thought they’d fall in line behind Harris.
Nice to be proven wrong.
that’s not changing your mind that’s, like you said, just being proven wrong.
… but to be fair that isn’t enough for many people these days.
There being totally different personalities that just don’t mix was something new to me when I started university in a different part of the country. Totally changing my social circle and meeting entirely new people was an eye opener. Growing up I thought that with a little conversation everybody could come to a single conclusion that would benefit everyone and work together. But now I know that there just are different people that want different things and there is no way to please everyone. And some even actively work against others just because they don’t like them without a valid reason.
One of the best things I’ve read in a long time. Thank you
In 2020 I got Left-washed by political podcasts and went from a Dem to a Leftist. The awful behavior from those on the Right also pushed me further Left.
I’m not heading “right” by any stretch of the imagination. In fact if anything I’m more militantly anti-corporate than ever. But while I once thought of “globalism” as “the future”, the COVID pandemic and the following supply chain crisis really veered me away from it.
A modicum of self-sufficiency is critical.
I grew up in a religious household that eventually became infatuated with what essentially amounts to doomsday cultism after the 2008 financial collapse.
The religion encouraged a lack of critical thinking development, and I easily bought into the scheme. We became fairly extreme preppers, stockpiling food, planning to move somewhere even more remote that wouldn’t be a nukeable target while also not being downwind of fallout from a neighboring target. We purchased plans on how to build various styles of underground bunker on a budget, and guides on how to rear animals and farm for subsistence.
At some point I came across a video of Christopher Hitchens debating a Pastor. I almost didn’t watch it, as I was afraid that to even entertain the ideas of someone trying to tempt you away from the faith would be dangerous, a way for Satan to worm his way into my mind and prevent my soul from being saved during the end times that were right around the corner.
But I was curious too, very curious. So I watched it. And I couldn’t come up with a single logical argument of how he was wrong.
That was the first glorious crack in the mental armor I’d put up against doubt of any kind. I would think about it frequently, which led me to want to find evidence that would prove him wrong, so I watched a different debate with a different pastor, then another, each one widening the gap, until one day I had to admit to myself that it was bullshit, from top to bottom.
That opened the floodgates. What else have I not questioned? All this prepping, for what? All the mistrust in others, the seclusion, the countless hours of research on how to (impractically) survive as independently as possible… it was all pointless, or worse, actively mentally harmful.
Amazingly, when I slowly presented all these findings to my family, they saw reason. I think they were all as worn out from the constant terror we guzzled down from crackpots too, and if anything were relieved that it could come to an end.
From that point on, I made an effort to give myself a proper education, to finally trust in the scientific process, and to not be so intellectually lazy that I could be tricked into something like that ever again.
So the last time I really changed my mind in a major way was about a decade ago.
Veganism. I went vegetarian and stayed there for a long time, and I assumed taking the extra step to being vegan would be too difficult relative to what I thought at the time was a marginal benefit. A couple years back, I watched the documentary Dominion (NSFL) and realized pretty quickly that I’d been mistaken. Of course it was more than just Dominion, but it’s such an acutely traumatizing kick in the teeth that it was definitely the last straw.
Questioned religion from a very young age. Went hard into the “New Atheism” movement as a teen. Figured physicalism was a necessary consequence of atheism.
In March, I binged several episodes of Walden Pod.
Now I’m open to the idea of a soul and an afterlife. (Not convinced, but open.)
I’m still an atheist, just not a physicalist. It seems childish to me now, in the same way that religion seemed childish all along.
I’ve had many things I’ve changed my mind about this year, but they’ve all been related to past and ongoing wars. Currently there are six of these going on and it’s easy to think you won’t lose yourself in the immersion when just reading about them, let alone participating in them.
