What have you changed your mind about?
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?
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?
I was a big 'offend everyone' dweeb, with a side serving of "free speech".
I grew up in structure where etiquette and taboo were abused and hated them. Like the chilidish little maximalist I was, I applied that hatred to everything. Slurs were particularly hilarious, I thought people were ridiculous with how they tip toe around them and delighted in their discomfort when I'd just come out and say it. They were just words, why be scared of them?
In my mind, I clearly didn't hold any bigoted views. Particularly with homophobic ones - I'm queer, I've been beaten for it, I've been beaten counter protesting "actual" bigots. I'd ask critics "what have you done?", before calling them a fa-
Well, you get the idea.
At the end, I was also a sort of community figure. An extremely minor one in the grand scheme of things, but I still had attracted a small audience. This included a large number of younger men who were impressionable. The thing is, they attract their own audience too.
I noticed an increasingly amount of what I considered, back then, to be "actual" bigoted stuff being said. Usually from older men trying to sway those younger men. I saw them buzzing around my peers too, encouraging them to say things for them, dropping bait in chats and pulling aside the younger male audience members to try to recruit them, more or less.
I tried a couple of times to call it out, but they'd fall back on "it's just a joke". They'd point to all the bullshit I'd said over the years and the obvious hypocrisy. I'd given up any credibility I had and bred an environment where these people could thrive. It also became clear that plenty of my audience had taken me seriously, and were imitating what they thought I was doing.
It made me reevaluate things. I'd alienated people, good people, by acting in this way. I'd hurt people I never had any intention of hurting with my callous disregard for their feelings. I'd convinced people to be worse in ways I'd fought against, destroying far more progress than I'd ever made.
So I stepped away from the spotlight and stopped. As a side note, working it out of your vocabulary is a truly frustrating progress. I'd trained myself to use slurs to mean the most basic things. Getting sober was more difficult but at least it was quicker. It took literal years of diligence to kill the impulse to call someone who is being annoying a fa-
Anyway.
Afterwards, a surprising number of the people who distanced themselves from me reached out. More than I deserved. I hadn't told anyone I'd had a revelation, or made some grand apology to try and absolve myself of the sin or whatever. It is telling about how bad it was that people took notice just from it's absence. Many of those shared stories of how it'd hurt them.
The one that broke my heart the most was a transwoman who I had stood up for when others tried to push her out. She had been lonely, and I'd given her just enough acceptance for her to get trapped in a toxic community. My bigotry she rationalized away, and it desensitized her just enough to try to fit in with the broader community around me. She internalized the horrific transphobia that was being said. I think it goes without saying what that did to her mental health and the places it lead. I had caused deep harm to not only someone I liked, who had looked up to me, but someone I had tried to help.
It's not just jokes, the intention doesn't change that.
This is a really impressive story. Thank you for sharing it - for me, it seems that you have come quite a long way.
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.
I'm glad my childhood beliefs are that Xmas cards should go out on December 1st and that you never directly refer to money someone gave you in a thank you card, but thank them for the generous gift.
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.
The McDonald's hot coffee incident.
It's a trivial example, but it reflects all sorts of issues in modern society.
I had bought into the McDonald's PR, believing it to be a symptom of an overly litigious society, people blaming all of their issues on others, etc.
But then I actually looked into it, instead of taking it at face value. The face that was created by a very interested party (most notably the defendants in that same lawsuit, but also right-wing pundits pushing a narrative)
When I did, I saw for the first time the claims made by the plaintiff. These were never included in any media coverage. I hadn't considered that the coffee was abnormally hot, and to a significant level (industry average is about 130F, this was around 180F). I had no idea about the 3rd degree burns in 7 seconds. The words "Fused Labia" had never been seen together. The multiple other similar lawsuits. The offers to settle for medical expenses. And so on....
And the worst part (in my mind), that forced me to take a 180 on the issue?
The entire reason for the coffee being that hot was to save money. This had nothing to do with personal responsibility, or a free payday. This was a megacorp selling a known dangerous product, selling pain and suffering, just to put a few extra pennies in their coffers. This had more in common with the lead/cadmium mugs (also McDonald's) and tobacco than anything to do with freedom.
I'm not going to say it radicalized me, but it was definitely an Emperor's New Clothes moment.
This is interesting. What do you mean industry average is 130F? When coffee is filtered the water needs to be just a few degrees below boiling or the infusion doesn't happen properly. In order to serve coffee at 130F they would either make a bigger batch and store it in a thermos, keep it on a hot plate, or alternatively the customer would need to be kept waiting untill the coffee has cooled enough before serving it to them.
I agree that near boiling hot coffee is too hot to drink and even after it has cooled down a bit it's still too hot for anyone to properly get to taste all the aromas of the coffee but personally as I like to take my time with it I want it served hot because if they give me 130F coffee and I cool it down further with some milk I'd basically need to chug it right away or else it'll get cold before I finish it.
130F is (was) the typical serving/holding temperature, rather than brewing. This has climbed substantially over the years since I last looked. It now seems to be 150-175, and the cynic in me suspects this is for the same reason that McDonald's did it (albeit higher) in 1992.
However, it can also be explained by changing consumer tastes. Back then, coffee was coffee. It was often consumed black, or with just a splash of (often room temperature) cream. With the rise of Starbucks and the like, coffee is now frequently used as an ingredient in coffee-flavored milkshakes. If these are to be served hot, either the starting coffee needs to be hotter or it needs to be heated after.
As for needing to keep it warm on a hot plate, all commercial coffee makers I've ever seen (plus every single home drip machine, which were based on the above) have at least 1 hot plate, sometimes called a heating pad. In fact, the model I see most often has 2- one on the bottom while brewing, and 1 on top for the existing pot. Your home models usually don't have an option to set the temperature, but commercial models do. Or at least they have a setting that's been designed for its use in restaurants.
Side note: Try making cold brew sometime. It's a very different experience, but one that actually works better with cheap coffee.
I replied to another user below but the same reply would apply to this message aswell. I'm not looking for an argument but I just struggle to understand what the desired outcome here would be.
I apologize if it came across as argumentative. Serving coffee that's too hot to drink saves money on refills, since the customer has to wait for it to cool.
As for an ideal world, it's worth keeping in mind that McDonald's (etc) very rarely brews the pot just for you. It's usually been sitting there for a while. Simply adjusting the hot plate temperature resolves it. It's also something that other places have solved. While I don't frequent Starbucks, I hear they have "kids temperature", which is served around 130F. I presume this is another pot kept at a lower temperature, but it could just be ice. But even above that, you don't need skin grafts when you burn yourself on 150F coffee.
There's a safety regulation, but the mcd manual almost said outright to ignore it. And there had been numerous incidents before, and even court cases. They were finally fined something like half a days' profit from the sale of coffee. Only the scale of of mcd makes it seem like more than what the paperwork costs anyway. Personally, I think someone in the C-suite should get jail time for 'gross bodily harm', or whatever.
I'm reading the wikipedia article on this but can't find any mention of safety regulations relating to the temperatures at which hot beverages must be served. It says that "... McDonald's required franchisees to hold coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C) ... coffee they had tested all over the city was served at a temperature at least 20 °F (11 °C) lower than McDonald's coffee."
Only mention of 130F was made by McDonald's quality control manager Christopher Appleton who "... argued that all foods hotter than 130 °F (54 °C) constituted a burn hazard, and that restaurants had more pressing dangers to worry about."
I struggle to understand what the optimal resolution to this would be. You need boiling water to brew coffee. That's a fact which any coffee snob can confirm. While it's not a technical impossibility to serve coffee at lower temperatures, a regulation like this would make it near impossible for coffee shops to serve fresh coffee and this applies to tea aswell.
Yeah, but they didn't serve 'fresh' coffee, the whole point was to make a giant urn of coffee and sell coffee from that all day. I don't know what the boundaries of those rules were, it's entirely possible it's different if you serve it in an open steaming cup, but this was Styrofoam take away cups.
Their customers had had problems before, but they didn't care. I think that's what got them in the end.
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
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.
I think he made a lot of aerospace engineering students depressed.
Bernie Sanders woke me from my Libertarian slumber.
Trigger warnings.
I used to think they are for overly sensitive people, then life happened and now I have my own triggers and would like a trigger warning for certain topics.
Most trigger warnings don't actually work. At least, not the ones where people put a warning in post titles or something
They still are for overly sensitive people.
Nah I think it's pretty clear that reading a post that describes rape in detail could be triggering for someone who is dealing with the trauma of rape.
For me personally it's anything that talks about children in hospital. My son spent his first 10 weeks on a ventilator and almost died many times.
Even typing that out I can hear the machines beeping, smell the hospital and feel the doctors and nurses running around faintly in the back of my mind.
PTSD is nothing to fuck around with.
Aren't you saying the same thing with different wording? You had some trauma, now you are more sensitive.
I heard my father die because his throat cancer was blocking his airways, and the 10 weeks after, everytime someone's breath sounded raspy or non-optimal in some way, I would be reminded of his final moments. Is that a trigger or am I more sensitive to weird breathing noises? Or is that pretty much the same?
I wouldn't call it "overly sensitive". That is implying an insult 100%
I think my sensitivity is totally justified given what I went through.
not trying to insult anyone. To me that is overly sensitive. If you need trigger warnings you are overly sensitive. Its not a bad thing to be overly sensitive. I think if someone feel like they need trigger warnings what they actually need is therapy. Trigger warnings are not possible outside of circle jerking groups, get tough or get therapy until you can deal with your life without getting rekt because someone mentioned rape or whatever is your trauma. Best of luck.
They are for people that have been traumatized one way or another.
If that is not the case for you, I'm genuinely happy for you.
Duh doy! That's the point of them! They let people know who's experiences lead them to be over sensitive to things so they can choose whether or not they avoid media. And that's a good thing! Trigger warnings hurt no one and if you can't spare literally three seconds at the start of something to protect someone else's peace, you're selfish and probably not a good community member.
how, how is it possible for me to know each persons triggers so i can warn them? even this discussion could be a trigger, did u preface ur comments with a warning? Its arrogant and only for spoiled privileged people to ask for trigger warnings. It takes 0 efford to stop talking or listening to what "triggers" you. just because ur entitled ass thinks that you are the center of the world and everyone should care about ur silly sensitivities doesn't mean its going to happen. I swear only rich (relatively to the rest of the world) first world people have these arrogant and entitled demands.
Let me put things in this perspective.
It's not realistic to expect to be able to put trigger warnings for a large population of strangers on the internet. You're right; when putting it in blanket terms like that, it is silly.
However, there are two things where you could be mindful of others. The first are talking about highly prevalent and violent topics in detail: rape, csa, domestic abuse springs to mind. Things where you probably either know of, or have heard of, someone suffering long term as a direct result of the trauma these events inflict.
But if that's still too broad for you, then you should keep your close friends and family into consideration and talk to them if you know one of them has gone through an extremely difficult life event. If nobody in your personal circle has experienced such things, then like the other commenter said: I'm very happy for you and them. If someone has, then even just saying "Hey do you want a heads up if this topic comes up in our group chat?" is enough. Maybe they'll say yes. Maybe they'll say no. But now you know what their wishes are and can act accordingly with respect to that.
Honestly that's all people really want, I think.
i am someone that has had a very traumatic experience when i was 8, i don't like going into details but it was one of the topics u talked about. I understand how it feels because i am feeling it.
I believe that shielding yourself inside a bubble is never a good idea and its analogous to hidding under your blanket when you are scared, if someone got into your home, staying under your blanket might comfort you but ultimately it could get you killed. But in the end it's your life so you are entitled to live it the way you choose as am i.
What grinds my gears about "trigger warnings" is the way it's beeing used lately where everyone has triggers about stupid things even though a lot of them never had any real serious trauma but they like the attention and playing the victim, hopefully you understand where im coming from.
if something actually happened to you and you are just feeling too weak or not ready to deal with those feelings or fears then its understandable and we have all been there one way or another, its still not the right choice in my thinking but temporarily i 100% would do anything you asked until you were ready to move on. But you can't be afraid of words forever that's not something i would ever support.
The issue for me is that for a lot of people getting triggered is not a temporary weakness but a way of life...
I am sure im not getting my point across very well and i apologize for that. From your response i see you are trying to understand and im grateful.
Hey thanks for taking the time and trying to clarify. I don't have much more to add to this conversation I think so that's where my commentary ends but I did want to reach out to say I'm sorry you have been through some pretty terrible stuff--sending a digital hug your way. Hope you have a good rest of your day.
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.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug. I suspect that if you were fed an exclusive diet of their state media, you would have a different opinion of the war.
I have no idea how they would react to a more diverse media landscape. There's obviously a history and culture there that I don't understand.
"[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
Off the top of my head, I used to think that economic growth of a country equals wealth growth for its people and equals good leadership is steering the country policies.
Turns out that good leadership and economics are rather loosely correlated and also a large inertia allows bad leadership to reap what others saw
Leadership and economics are very closely linked, but not in terms of economic growth like GDP. Rather the economic measure of a good leader should be stuff like wages, CPI, wealth gap, unemployment/homelessness statistics, etc.
Yeah, that's the real thing: "the economy" is how well the country is working for rich people and corporations. Look at average wages, actual buying power, etc. What's in the hands of the worker. That's the actual measure of how well a country is doing. Grotesque inequality is a condemnation, regardless of what the stock market is doing.
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.
What is your opinion on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
?
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 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.
I always felt that way about Hershey chocolate! Glad to finally have confirmation that it literally tastes like I just threw up.
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.
I think in growing up I've become less prone to looking at everyone else in the world as an idiot. You know how when you're in your 20s and 30s, you're driving around flipping everyone off because you think everyone around you is an idiot and a know-nothing.
The older I've gotten the more I realize most people, most creatures in fact, are just bopping along trying to survive and get what they can from life. I guess I've gotten less judgmental and more empathetic, seeing most problems as a process problem, and not necessarily the result of a confederacy of idiots out there trying to ruin my life.
I often think that we just happen to live in very large communities that are more or less the same as they've been throughout the history of our entire species. It's made me feel a lot more connected to everyone around me because they don't feel like strangers anymore, they feel like extended family, in a way.
But I still love flipping people off, I just don't mean much by it. Like a gesture that says 'wtf are you doing you idiot'
I used to (love flipping people off) but the older I've gotten the less 'good' it feels. Partly because, as you get older, you develop a really good thick hide that things slide off of more easily - I mean nothing really bothers me the way it used to. That's one benefit of getting older.
I’m in my late 20s and I’m on the same boat. Especially when it comes to politics. People are often much more than their politics. Unless they’re in the extreme horizontals of their beliefs.
That nice barista at the coffee shop? Could be a liberal. The dude at the office who held the elevator for you? Could be conservative. That’s just the way it works
Everyone is coming from their own unique set of experiences. And really, as long as I still get my coffee at the coffee shop, and someone is holding an elevator door for me, what does it really matter in the long run. In less than a century, all of us now will be dead and gone, and no one will recall if were liberal, convervative, happy, sad, mean or nice, or even remember that we were here.
Keeping that in mind I try to help other people when they need it and be more sympathetic - life is struggle for everyone.
Yeah i kinda feel the same way, people like politics but they are not politics. Lifes alot more fun if you just dont care what politcal party people are.
Sounds like your growth is your realization that people aren't intending to harm you. That, yes, they are just people bopping along trying to survive. That their indifference to you isn't malice. A great life lesson.
However, that doesn't mean they aren't also idiots.
Not so much that people aren't intending to harm me but just that they are self-involved and don't intentionally mean harm most of the time. Yes they're still idiots, but to them I am also. We all are, really.
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.
What books did you read?
What are you looking for exactly? Which kind of book?
You wrote this:
Which books?
Principally the bible(old and new testament) and the quoran.
I am into philosophy and economy too.
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'm proud of you for taking that step! It seems like few people stop to actually question their beliefs and grow from learning something new.
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.
Eating animals. I used to be the Making-fun-of-vegans, I-will-never-be-vegan type of person until I realised that 1) I don't have to eat animals to be healthy and 2) if there is no need to do it, killing animals for taste pleasure is fucking evil.
So you're a hypocrite?
Free speech... not absolutism per se, but I certainly had more faith in it than I do now.
The basic idea, that you should argue sensibly against points instead of censoring them, shutting them down or drowning them out, remains a good one. Censoring happens all the time, often for pretty shit reasons. The problem is that if your stance is "censorship is never acceptable", you assume people are reasonable, rational, informed about the subject matter and how civil discussions work, and not specifically looking to start shit.
When that's not the case, which is the vast majority of the time, the whole idea just doesn't work. It's too damn romantic and ignores some unfortunate facts about the human mind. People aren't rational by default. Not even about utter trivialities, let alone things that involve sense of self, values or strong feelings - all of which tend to bleed over into unrelated topics.
A lot of the idealists seem to have no understanding of how mere speech can actually damage individuals, groups and society as a whole. A lot of what's left just want to be able to say literally anything without repercussions, or as a "magic answer" instant knee-jerk defense to any criticism.
I think the issue is where to draw the line, and the fact that any power you give to the government can rarely be taken back. I'm worried that it will start with good intentions but quickly used by either political party to harm the other.
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.
Capitalism and markets
Anticapitalist views became compelling to me from the analogy between the state's governance and the governance of the firm. The contrast between the (officially) democratic nature of the state and the complete autocracy of private companies worried me. I was initially a market abolitionist when I become an anti-capitalist, but I found no sound explanation for how such an economy would work.
Now I am a pro-market anti-capitalist, an unusual position on the left
That makes plenty of sense. Capitalism with multiple small companies competing in the market to produce consumer friendly goods and services is something that can really work if it's well-regulated. Publically traded companies should also be legally relieved of the fiduciary duty to provide constantly growing stock value for shareholders.The government needs to keep tight controls on bribery in any form and harsh punishments given to anyone who tries to commit the kind of white collar crimes you see everywhere (e.g. wage theft, intentional environmental damage, market manipulation, etc.).
No amount of top-down planning from a centralized government could produce the same results as a free market. That said, some things just simply need to be socialized like medicine or energy to prevent financial hardship for the average citizen.
Market socialist fist bump! 👊
I used to think that adoption was basically “buying a kid” and was very cut-and-dry.
Now I know that adoption is really about merging another family into your life to do what’s best for the kiddo. It’s an ongoing journey that will change the lives of everyone involved.
I consider people who adopt to be basically heros. I can hardly think of a more selfless act than to give home to a child without one. That is an absolutely glorious thing for someone to do.
Unless they're a family vlogger. Screw those people.
Ultimately, the adoptee might still be in a "better position" in terms of food and shelter, but they lose privacy and anonymity, and are often treated like shit off camera (sometimes on)
What the hell are you talking about? What does adoption have to do with vlogging?
Some YouTubers will go and adopt a child and then vlog about their lives with said kid for views. It’s sad.
I have heard of families who adopt to get government assistance checks, and the kids are mostly just ignored/the adopters do the bare minimum. I hope that's not that usual.
I don't know about this. My cousin is trying to adopt and it's not only a lot of work to get approved it's also extremely expensive. Like in the 5 digit range
I used to think that there was hope for humanity. Now, in my late 50s, I'm realising we're fucked.
We've always been fucked by the mega rich that own and control everything but, with more and more people trying to survive here every day, things are getting exponentially worse.
There is no indication at all that any of these rich fucks have any appreciation of the fact that we can't grow indefinitely and we seem doomed to hit peak population (around the year 2100?) in Mad Max, rather than Star Trek, style.
I'm glad I won't be here to see it, but sad that my grandchildren probably will.
And I was really looking forward to Star Trek too...
When I was religious, young and stupid I thought if I had a kid and they would come out as gay, that would be the biggest catastrophe for me, even worse than them dying in a accident.
Now I think it would sometimes be inconvenient for them because of society, but they would even be able to have kids of their own and otherwise also have a fairly normal life. So not really as big of a deal as I thought.
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 think that for most, this was a shift from "mildly opposed" to "mildly supportive, and if you're going to do it, do it now".
At least my pro/con list hasn't changed, just the odds. I still think we're more likely to be dragged into war somewhere far away than being attacked ourselves, and that the US is an unreliable ally. But those are acceptable risks compared to the chance of having the whole NATO having our back if there were to be war on our ground.
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:
https://lemmy.world/comment/7726308
For a long time I thought the whole pronoun /name /being outta the closet thing didn't personally matter to me to make the effort to attempt to change it.
Yeah I figured out I was trans at age 21 in the quite distant past but like my partner had sex characteristic preferences that meant that as long as I prioritized him in my long term goals I wasn't physically changing. I figured you know boo hoo I was ugly and people didn't really get me most of the time but you know... Big deal? I was stable enough. I wasn't under particular hardship because aside from some vague presentation pressure from time to time everyone just basically accepted I was quirky and liked me enough without putting much emphasis on my gender anyway... I ended up trying gender neutral pronouns basically as a lark, a way of proving to myself that I was fine.
Turns out I was not fine.
I didn't realize how shit I felt on a regular basis nor how much less energy all my social connections would need once I made the changeover. I really didn't realize that such a tiny thing was subtly poisoning every single interaction I had with people. I stopped experiencing stress heartburn and headaches after time spent with friends. I was usually pretty quiet and withdrawn but I actually started being generally more gregarious and active. I stopped feeling invisible and lonely. I went from low key disliking people to actually liking them. It was like someone suddenly replaced my batteries. I never expected something so small to make so big a difference.
I was a cat person, always had a cat or two but never a dog. Dogs were too much trouble, barky needy creatures. My ex wanted a dog, we got a dog. Who got the dog when we spilt? Yep.
I still tend to think I am a cat person with a dog, but since then have always had a dog, Dogs are awesome, I was wrong.
Dogs have owners/friends. Cats have slaves. And I say that as a cat owner that has had dogs before.
In a long run, from childhood to adulthood, I switched to communism hater to being communist myself. When I was a kid, I thought that Communism was a ideology for lazy and totalitarian people, I didn't even knew what it was about.
I also was the kind of person who laughed with edgy/uncensored comedy, now my eyes roll everytime I hear or read any joke that targets socially oppressed groups.
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.
I thought React was ok. It turned out to be terrible. Then I thought vanilla JS would be better. It turned out to be too verbose. Now I want to go back to jQuery.
It's an open secret that every language and framework is actually terrible in at least some ways, the trick is to just settle for something good enough for the job rather than trying to find something perfect. Usually that means whatever the rest of your team can work with.
Traffic enforcement and red light cameras. I used to be very opposed to them, but I've since come to appreciate the absurdity of America's car central culture.
Additionally, traffic stops by police disproportionately effect minorities and lead to escalations and other issues, while taking away enforcement capacity from more important things.
I still don't think the cameras should necessarily be run by private, for profit entities. Nor would I really want cameras that ticket you if you go 1 mph over. But in general I'm much less opposed to the idea than I used to be.
I still hate them. Their goal isn't to increase safety but to increase revenue, or they're placed by incompetent people.
Americas aproach to road design is so backwards and gets many people killed.
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.
Person realises sugar tastes good. More at 11.
Things with fat in them taste way better then things without. Find out more about this new lifehack, tonight at 8
Religion being completely stupid and harmful. 2005-2016 me was 100% certain nothing good ever came out of religion, it was only useful for making corrupt shitheads powerful and keeping easily amazed idiots in line.
Took me a while to realize how religion can help integrate the community with its local/historical culture, something that's easier to notice with minority religions. It is, after all, an instrument of power. Like any such instrument, it attracts people who should never have any sort of power, but that's a wholly different discussion.
The impact of the death of community in modern society (at least in America) can not be understated. I wish we had comparable institutions to churches that could provide community without the religion.
We do, but it doesn't mean that churches aren't helpful. Community centres, schools, parks, and libraries can all fill that hole too. But for some people religion is a good way of finding community too.
I used to be a nationalist (not a nazi though), then an ancap. Now I am a socialist and have been so for about ten years now.
Weapons as a human right.
I was on the fence about it before. But then I was homeless, got attacked by a stranger and beaten pretty badly, was saved by some other strangers because the guy showed no signs of stopping.
After that I went to buy some pepper spray to carry with me, and was notified it required a license. Being a homeless man I couldn’t get licenses for things.
I realized that it’s a problem if weapons are treated like something you need to earn privilege to own, because the underprivileged then won’t have them.
That’s why I realized it’s important we treat weapons as a human right, not as a privilege to be earned if you’re nice.
Pepper spray, sure.
But not other weapons. If you need those to feel safe walking around, you live in a shithole.
Well, when I couldn't get pepper spray I got a knife instead. And let be tell you, a knife is a whole different ballgame in terms of self defense. It requires a whole psychological setup to be effective, because it only works as a deterrent.
I was homeless (thanks to 2008). My mom got attacked by a nutcase over fresh water. A metal pipe that was lying about seemed to work just fine.
See, having weapons as a human right just creates escalation. Nobody died that day. People got hurt, sure, but nobody died. Now imagine the same situation, my mom getting attacked over fresh water, but everyone involved was armed with weapons.
Yeah, that would've been a bloodbath.
I like your post. I agree in every way, I have never thought of weapons as being a basic human right. And I'm especially against weapons of death (guns and AR rifles, etc) being considered someone's basic right.
The truth is, people do not buy these things to defend themselves. Oh they tell themselves that's what their doing, but then they turn around and use them to kill schoolkids or shoot at people on freeways because someone at McDonald's got their order wrong (this has happened several times here in Utah).
The truth is, humans are temperamental creatures prone to seeing other people not as human beings, but as problems. They can turn something quite otherwise harmless inanimate objects like baseball bats or crowbars or almost anything into a weapon, and they often do.
So a people who use anything at reach to hurt others should never be given access to weapons designed to kill. That is just a total recipe for constant disaster, which is what is happening every day in our country.
Democracy and collaboration in general. I love the idea of working together with people for the greater good and the idea that if we just all have a say in things, that will make things better over time, but it feels like the last few decades have shot down both these notions. We've got our own democratic system here in the US that's getting attacked by foreign actors who are jamming up the system with misinformation, noise, and propaganda. We've got Congress members who appear to be on the take from foreign governments and don't seem to have any sort of agenda apart from gumming up the works and bringing government to a halt. I don't think a dictatorship or fascism is the solution, but holy crap do we need to sweep away the people who are obviously working in bad faith to undermine our democracy. Even just relying on people to vote in their own best interests or the best interests of the country in general is really not a reliable way to get rid of bad actors in the system.
With regards to collaboration (in business or personal settings), I've rarely seen anything come from it. In school, "collaboration" meant working on group projects where 99% of the group did nothing and 1 or 2 people drove the project forward. Much the same happens in business work groups. Trying to get friends or random strangers on the internet to collaborate on writing or gaming projects has just been an exercise in futility for years, as it usually ends up being 1 or 2 people driving things forward, and no real commitment or output from anybody else (people flake out regularly). I just stopped trying to work with other people on anything unless somebody else pulls me into something and shows some amount of progress on their end, otherwise I just feel frustrated when it seems like I'm the only one even trying to do anything. Any of my "biggest achievements" in life have been things I worked on on my own or was the primary driver behind it.
I think the main problem with democracy is that it combines several things that should not be combined, specifically the who, the what and the how.
In the current democratic system you can vote for a person or party (the who), you can choose these people based on their claims of what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. This allows for all kinds of fuckery. For example: the people you voted for may not actually implement the measures they claimed they would or the proposed method of achieving a goal may not actually have that effect (intentionally or out of ignorance). Some party could claim they want to improve the economy (what) by lowering the taxes on the richt (how), while their actual goal is simply to lower taxes for the rich knowing full well it won’t help the economy whatsoever.
What I would like to see is what I’d call a ‘democratic technocracy’. People get to vote only on the ‘what’, i.e. the goals they want to achieve, and their relative priority. The ‘who’ are the people most qualified to achieve these goals, and the how should be determine through a thorough scientific process. These people should then regularly be evaluated based on their performance in achieving these goals and replaced it they don’t.
I used to think conservatives just had a different view than my own and weren't evil just because we disagreed.
Yes. They. Are.
The more I saw what was seething under the surface, the less I believed that the modern right was worth a damn. And eventually Trump made all that evil that was hiding feel comfortable coming out into the open. The racism, stupidity and utter disdain for rules, common decency and human life in the modern right is sickening. I refuse to acknowledge an ideology that supports the ghoulish things the modern right does as being valid and deserving of a place at the debate table.
Disagreeing on zoning regulations in cities is valid. Locking brown kids in cages, separating them from their parents and shrugging whenever another dozen school kids get filled with so many bullet holes that we can only identify them through DNA tests while threatening their parents with being deported by ICE is evil.
And the conservative mentality that people "dont want to work anymore" is hilariously divorced from reality. There's a chemical company in my area that hasn't bothered to update their wanted ad on job sites for years. The starting wage theyre advertising at the low end of the pay scale is a dollar and a half below minimum wage. They require a BS in chemistry. They cant figure out why no one wants to work for them. That sort of stupidity is EVERYWHERE but its those damned greedy workers that are the problem apparently. You cant fucking survive on what companies are willing to pay and the degree of laziness in management is astounding.
And theres this pervasive mentality on the right where people would love nothing more than to cut wages of people that work in jobs that they dont respect like food service to supposedly lower prices rather than advocate for their own wages to be increased. Thats evil too. Theres a lot of evil shit going on on the right even if you ignore what happened with roe v wade being overturned (yeah theyre attacking women that had miscarriages now) As if there werent enough reasons for me to despise the modern right as it was.
That the most important thing is technical know-how.
You'll have to deal with a lot of difficult people in life. There is a huge difference if you get them to put your task on top of their todo list or on there bottom of the pile on their desk.
Anarchism and Satanism; when I was a kid, it was just something edgy weirdos would talk about for attention, but as a grownup I am seeing the validity of the thinking behind these ideologies - without identifying as one - but I now see them in a more open and accepting light.
"cooking with love/ heart" means watching that damn pot get hot and when it says
constantly stir, you damn well constantly stir.half-assing steps doesn't quite make it in terms of taste and texture.
in my kiddie head, it used to mean singing Disney princess song to the pot while randomly yeeting ingredients in.
mad respect to cooks and chefs now.
THINK. I used to think "if something is true, then it's ok to say it." Turns out, there are more filters you should apply before you choose to say something. There are TONS of things that are true, and you could say, but they are still terrible things to say.
Also, following THINK will save you from saying some things that you think are true at the time but are actually false.
The living dead.
I used to consider myself a Libertarian 20 years ago. Living in a capitalist hellscape had changed my mind.
It's not strong enough that I shame anyone for having the opposite stance as me, but my mind has been all over the place regarding the current war going on. Some aspects have been consistent, but I wouldn't put it past even my current stance to not be permanent. The whole ordeal sounds like something you'd read off of r/hypotheticalsituation, and greatly intermixing with the problem is the fact people tend to take things at face value.
Which war?
Israel/Palestine
Yeah well no disagreement there. That conflict is a hot mess and there's a ton to blame both parties for. Anyone whose rooting for one side or the another but can't find anything to critizise on their own side for have no idea what they're talking about.
Nothing I will always be right
It's Trump!
The ussr and china were evil and nato were the good guys fighting for freedom.
Boy was I wrong on that one. What changed my mind were the tankies on hexbear who consistently were the most knowledgable on a topic and kept being correct with (what I thought at the time) the most obviously incorrect takes.
I'd be curious to hear your justification for the attack on Ukraine then or the treatment of Uighurs in China.
That comes after very in-depth reading. What got me that far to even trust their judgement that this kind of research would be worth my time was the fact that they were consistently right about takes on the USSR that seemed ludicrous. Just that they seemed to really know their stuff about USSR history especially the Stalin era. So I started reading
Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds
a rather short book about anticommunism in the west. I already had very left views but what stuck with me was that I required a revolution to be "perfect", the outcome sure and everyone had to be happy, an unrealistic standard considering the kind of fundamental change I envisioned. Or in Parenti's words:
Once I had conceded my previous "anti-tankie" views and thought of the USSR not as a failed revolution that started of well-intentioned but was led astray by power hungry dictators, but as a successful revolution that had to endure a constant onslaught, physical as well as political, I was "through the looking glass" so to speak.
Then the genocide in Gaza happened and I kind of looked at the countries we were allied with, who were consistently some of the worst offenders of human rights. The whole supporting violent dictatorships in former colonies wasn't news to me, but when put into perspective I had a "Damn we really are the baddies aren't we" moment.
I realise that this doesn't answer your question on Ukraine and the Uighurs but that's because I don't have the time right now to get into a debate on that, and the original question was on what changed my mind about it which was less the actual research I then put into, but the heavy-lifting on even questioning the western narrative was done before that.
To answer your question in a nutshell however: The reason the situation in Ukraine deteriorated this far, to the point that the ethnic russians in Ukraine had to even put up "self-defense" forces was meddling of western capitalist forces. The article that I keep referencing on that is ( CW for pictures of dead bodies and gruesome descriptions of fascist violence):
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/29/what-the-u-s-government-and-the-new-york-times-have-quietly-agreed-not-to-tell-you-about-ukraine/
The open fascism in the paramilitary groups that later got put under the umbrella of the Ukrainian army was an open question mark for me, this article gives a very detailed answer to that. The details in that report post 2014 are corroborated in the UN reports as well:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents-listing?field_geolocation_target_id%5B1136%5D=1136&field_content_category_target_id%5B180%5D=180&field_content_category_target_id%5B182%5D=182&field_entity_target_id%5B1349%5D=1349&field_entity_target_id%5B1350%5D=1350&sort_bef_combine=field_published_date_value_DESC
As for the so-called "genocide" of Uighurs in China, the "evidence" is very very circumstantial especially considering the scale alleged. Millions of people are alleged to be held in internment at some point, a scale that should be visible from space. I mean manhattan has a population of 1.7 million, where are all these people interned?? As an example of one of the oddities about the whole allegations. The only countries that seem to care are outspoken anti-communist countries, with the whole muslim world not considering the crackdown on religious extremism in Xinjiang a genocide. All the articles I kept getting linked were "oh how terrible the situation there is, what an evil evil government" with no one seemingly caring about the actual people. It's all just treated as an abstract talking point. And the only references boiling down to two reports by Adrian Zenz
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02634937.2018.1507997
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02634937.2021.1946483
a person with some questionable viewpoints
https://books.google.de/books?id=lRtSQB3HHJcC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
All the stuff around it seems to be pushed by Washington based anti-communist thinktanks trying to establish an "east turkestan". The whole movement is heavily US-financed. See here for more info:
https://hexbear.net/post/2361
That's what changed my mind about it all anyway, but like I said I probably will not be able to go into more depth about this, as I have spent too much time on this already.
I appreciate the effort put into this response. Thanks.
Ukraine... Russia isn't socialist anymore you know? Gorbachev ended that back in 1991 with the help of his western allies, against the wishes of the population, over 90% of which voted for the USSR to remain.
Still, this current war started in 2014 with the CIA-backed fascist coup and the subsequent killing of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, like in Donbas and Crimea, for resisting the coup gov.
This was the results of the 2010 elections for example.
Eastern Ukrainians don't support the current gov, and even welcomed the Russian army as liberators in 2022.
And as for China, the US and its allies are the only ones accusing them of mishandling the ETIM in Xinjiang. Muslim countries and the Global South approve of China's policies.
35+ mostly muslim UN states have approved of how China handled this after sending delegates and diplomats to Xinjiang:
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation approve of China's treatment of its Muslim population.
Unlike other countries, China has mostly responded to ETIM's attacks by building vocational training centers and integrating the region better into the rest of China's economy, that is to say they are tackling the material reasons for why someone would have to resort to violence in the first place. And it has been successful, hence the Global South countries approving of it.
You can visit Xinjiang and see it for yourself btw since covid restrictions are gone now, and there's alot of yt videos doing just that.
First of all - you're not the person my question was directed at.
Secondly - you're just firehosing me with information that I couldn't fact-check in any reasonable amount of time nor figure out all the things you're omiting. You also state as fact things that you or nobody else could possibly know to the degree of cerainty you present it as such as "this current war started in 2014 with the CIA-backed fascist coup"
However, even if I grant you that everything you stated above is factually correct it still leaves unanswered what the main point of my question was; how do you justify this? Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine for example. If west is evil and east is good then how does a murderous campaing like this fit into the equation? How is it moral to invade a sovereign nation, attack their civilian population, target critical infrastucture in the middle of winter, send your own people there to die in meatwave attacks after two days of training and bomb cities into rubble. Cities where their alledged supporters are living in? Not even China is endorsing this and the whole "evil" west has united in support of the underdog being bullied by the second most powerful nation in the world. I can't possibly imagine how someone can look at this carnage and think Russia is good.
I'm not really justifying the invasion. Its aims of suppressing the far-right in western Ukraine seems to have kinda backfired from this after all, with the Ukraine gov using this as an excuse to suppress the left.
Point is, what else could've they done? They've already tried to join NATO multiple times from even before the USSR's dissolution and have been denied (since it exists to suppress socialism, and particularly Russia, just look up what their first secretary Ismay has said about NATO's purpose, globally, not give them a say) and they already had the Minsk agreements which the US sidelined through the coup. Not doing something about it would lead to the continued killing of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and NATO getting even closer to Russia since the post-2014 US puppet gov doesn't abide by the Minsk agreements.
This post is open to everyone you know? OP can still respond to you if they feel like it. Wouldn't blame them for not doing so though cuz it can get pretty tiring to continuously debunk western propaganda with how prevalent it is in english-speaking spaces.
Sure, but he said "...(what I thought at the time) the most obviously incorrect takes." so I was curious on hearing what made him specifically change his mind as he used to have exactly the opposite views. My question wasn't so much about how tankies justify this but how he does it considering he's someone who used to be on "my side"
Poe's law strikes again. "What changed my mind were the tankies on hexbear who consistently were the most knowledgable on a topic" is just so on the nose that it might just be what some people actually think.
Right? I'm sitting here like "this has to be satire... right? But it's just absurd enough not to be..."
It isn't 😄
I bet you don't talk to many Finnish people... Or east Europeans.
By the way; Tiananmen Square says hi.
I bet you dont read many history books.
Reading is my speciality.
Alright, lets start you off with readsettlers.org then
Keep the recommendations coming; I'll know exactly what to avoid reading.
Academic history is the only thing that matters, besides asking the people who actually live there.
What academic history have you read?
A good deal of Oxford published materials. For you I'd recommend starting with a junior history encyclopedia. :)
Perfect response. Just 😗👌.
LGBTQ+ rights.
I was a strong supporter, but the media presence of some "influencers" and subsequent discussions and even proposed laws went way out of hand and into untreated mental health territory.
So now I just ignore any and all mentions about it, to preserve my own sanity. Live and let live, I hope everyone can have the life they want, but I just don't want to hear about it anymore.
Edit: Typos
If you want to update your post it sounds like you may be more fed up with LGBTQ+ advocacy rather than rights.
Suggesting LGBTQ+ rights are actually mental health issues makes me think this is rage bait, but in case you're sincere which laws do you think were an overreach? And how do influencers factor into it? It definitely seems like a bit of a leap to stop supporting rights for a group simply because you dislike some members of that group.
They usually claim the Canadian law that supposedly "protects pronouns".
Which is a right-wing propaganda whistle, perpetrated by people like Peterson.
The law does not actually say that, though. It is an anti-bullying law. It only gives the ability to sue someone based on being called something you do not want to be called. It does not mean you will automatically win.
If someone kept calling you "asshole", even after telling them off. You have some grounds to sue them. But a judge will still look at the claim to see if it is reasonable.
No judge will fine someone for calling someone by the wrong pronoun once.
That's such a horrible law
That's an opinion. Everyone in entitled to one.
But let me shed some light, the LGBTQ community that is outspoken needs to be to get to those "in the back of the room".
In my opinion, they are doing just what suffregets, african americans and other marginalized people have done within the media scope of their time.
In time, their rights and privileges should be part of the mainstream so you won't (shouldn't) even think about it, it's just another niche of humanity that binds us all together.
I, personally, don't want to hear about someone's lord and savior, but I live in a society that some people do.
Their intentions are generally good but there are individuals that take it way too far and there's often no good way to challenge these ideas without coming across as a transphobe or whatnot.
I'm one of those people who was depressed in their teens because I was absolutely certain I was born into the wrong body and wanted to be a woman. Well that passed and turns out I'm just (mostly) gay instead. God forbid someone had started pushing me into transitioning then. I would have went along with it and that would have been a terrible mistake.
You don't just hop on a table and transition on a whim. It's a very long and complex process that requires many professionals to sign off.
I know and that's how it should be. Not everyone agrees with that however and it's those fringe people I take issue with. I was a stupid kid and I don't want adults to just take my word for it when when I want to make radical life changing decisions.
I think the general argument is that it can be too difficult and painful a process. Almost like it's intentionally trying to stop people seeking help with it.
I haven't seen anyone I'd take seriously saying it should be doable on a whim.
I have seen plenty of right wing groups claiming these people are everywhere though.
How do you know you would have went along with it? And then what? You would have likely realized it wasn't right and stopped. You don't think children are just having surgeries or something as the first step in their transition, right?
And you also don't think that someone is out there just "transitioning" kids right?