44
votes
What was a strong opinion you once had, but has changed since by listening to others?
I think we need to be more open in changing our opinions now a days more then ever, or at the very least, open to listen to others. so what was a strong opinion you once had, but has changed since by listening to others?
My father is a former Marine, current police officer/bomb squad tech, hunter, and VERY Right Wing. He did everything in his power to raise his four sons with the same sort of beliefs and for a long time, I did.
Growing up, I was very pro 2A and steadfastly believed that gun control was an evil tool of the government to rob the citizenry of it's right to self defense both against the common criminal and against the government itself. I parroted many of the same talking points like "If someone wants to kill, they'll find ways to do it. Taking away peoples guns just makes the innocent people defenseless" and "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun". I used to pore over the internet looking for data and stories on incidents where someone used something like a knife or machete or home made bomb to inflict casualties.
Sandy Hook, though....that caused me to re-evaluate my stance.
Tragic as it was......it was the way the NRA and GOP and other pro 2A people that I knew and respected that shocked me. I suppose Sandy Hook might've been the first time I really paid attention to the politics and attitudes surrounding the 2nd Amendment and the way the NRA, GOP, and other Pro 2A supporters, including family and friends that I respected, jumped through every hoop imaginable to continue to unequivocally support it. The most shocking thing was when the conspiracy theories started.....that Sandy Hook never happened, that it was a Liberal lie to make us give up our guns. Or the even worse ones, that Lanza was basically a liberal assassin, acting on orders from the Democrats to try to drum up support for gun control. And then, to even say the words "gun control" turned you into a "libtard" who wanted to take away the guns of law abiding citizens.
I then realized just how delusional many of the Pro 2A crowd were. I started doing more research, looking up the laws in other countries and it became clear to me that the mass shooting problems we have here are mostly unique to the 1st World. Yea mass shootings happen in other countries. We just saw it happen in New Zealand. But none of those countries experience mass shootings to the frequency the US does.
I realized that one could be both Pro 2A and support gun control. And the wording of the 2A supports gun control too. In fact, if one wanted to take the 2A at its word, then the 2A actually creates a reason to restrict gun ownership. "Well regulated militia".....seeing as how the vast majority of gun owners are not in any sort of militia, they fail the first requirement of the 2A. The majority get only cursory training in handling a firearm or know what their fathers and grandfathers taught them, it's arguable that they fail the "well regulated" part too. Especially since the lack of gun laws definitely fails that requirement.
I now consider myself an Independent. I refuse to vote party lines and, instead, try to do my best to educate myself on each candidate. I'll vote Democrat and Republican if an individual candidates policies line up to my beliefs. Unfortunately, since most Republicans steadfastly refuse to even entertain the notion of gun control, most of my votes have gone towards Democratic candidates. It's somewhat a waste of a vote considering I live in Texas but Beto's near upset of Ted Cruz has me hopeful Texas is slowly turning purple
Great comment! I thought you might be interested in learning more about how the 2A groups and the NRA came to be what they are. If so, you might want to check out this excellent episode of radiolab: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wnyc/radiolab-presents-more-perfect/e/51801511
They go over in detail how the NRA went from a gun club to a 2A-rights organization, how the 2A was seen until recently to only deal with militias, and how racism prompted Reagan to enact gun reform in California. That's a fun one to share with 2A people.
Or, you know, don't, as casually accusing someone of being a racist because they support guns rights is probably going to alienate them and make them even less likely to listen to any other viewpoints.
Sharing facts and talking about the history of racism inherent in gun rights isn’t some sort of “gotcha.” The fact that Reagan enacted gun reform is often surprising to 2A folks and can lead to questioning of the party line.
I’ve found it a good segue into talking about common sense reforms.
And for what it’s worth I’m pro-2A, just not whatever you call the fear mongering over the last 20 years.
It's not about whether it's supposed to be a gotcha or not, there's an implication when you talk about the same subject and tie it to racism. It's a thin line to balance and I'd rather not.
Maybe I'm missing something here but you're the only one tying the issue to racism
the well versed in politics would know that the point @Pilgrim is making is tied to racism--but also that it's completely accurate. gun reform was enacted by reagan in california (as the mulford act) pretty much only because of organizations like the black panthers, who would openly carry firearms as a way to deter police--which as it happens kinda scared the shit out of a lot of white people, especially given the ideological leanings of the black panthers and groups like them (the black panthers in particular were, aside from being black nationalists, quite marxist and at times marxist-leninist or maoist).
The flaw in the logic "Most mass shootings happen in 1st world countries" is just false.
Not your fault. It's the fault of data collection.
Mass shooting still happen in 3rd world countries. Look at most of the Middle East and the African continent. LOTS of "Mass shootings". Even in Central and South American.
The problem is, they aren't tracked much. Or when they are recorded, they are recorded not as a "mass shooting", but as drug lord killed, or war lord killed, or rebel group killed...
Or worse, the local/state government is the perpetrator and it's considered a sanctioned action.
I should've worded it better but that wasn't how I meant it. I meant that, relative to the 1st world countries the US considers itself to be, our problem with mass shootings is unique to the US, not that mass shootings only happen in the 1st World
I agree that mass shootings happen far more in the 3rd world than in other places, but I think a key parameter here should be that the incident occurs in an otherwise peaceful setting. That way we compare like for like incidents, rather than have shootings occurring in the midst of armed conflicts muddying the stats.
Over my lifetime there's been a lot, but I'd like to recall one of the most significant ones.
I dated an emo/goth girl in high school. Her music and emotions were pretty wack, so eventually I broke up with her because even though I listened to punk and metal I did not believe in identifying with a group or image (I still don't...), BUT the next "normal" girl I dated cheated on me. And ALL those songs about suffering and pain with the whiny bitch lyrics started to make a lot more sense. You start to actually read the lyrics and read the artist's background sometimes and you realize, yeah sure some are just professional musicians using a formula but a lot are just humans going through struggles just like you.
So yeah I listen to all kinds of shit now. This also coincided with getting into poetry which led me to hip hop which led me to rap... Which was kinda too far so I settled for hip hop lol
There is no bad genre, only artists you don't like. Go out there and find your favorite hip hop artist, your favorite post hardcore band, your favorite bluegrass band, etc.
Can there be genres I don't like? [Redacted because I really didn't want to get into an involved discussion about a particular genre of music.]
I agree with the point that we should be open to trying different things, rather than pre-judging them, but sometimes there are just genres and styles you don't like no matter who's doing them.
Yeah. In that case you are sort of splitting the genre of hip hop which is rap's origin. So I might recommend a rap song that people could like and they could argue well that's because it's more hip hop and doesn't have any of the traditional markings of pure rap music.
I think Kendrick Lamar bridges the gap beautifully, try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM1ryY_KAH0
What music do you normally listen to?
[Redacted because I really didn't want to get into an involved discussion about a particular genre of music.]
I'm starting to be sorry I made that comment. I really didn't want to get into a long drawn-out discussion about the merits of, or techniques behind, a particular genre of music. I just wanted to make the point that it is possible to dislike a genre, rather than individual artists. I wasn't inviting people to defend their favourite music. And, the more I write, the more people are replying.
This is not a discussion I wanted to have. I have no interest in discussing music. I'm not even subscribed to ~music.
Sorry.
It's not your fault. There's nothing to apologise for. I appeared to be cooperative, because I was answering questions. It was your comment that made me realise that my politeness was getting me dragged in deeper and deeper. So, thanks for that.
Since rap is a very wide and diverse genre you should definitively be able to find something you like. If you care at all about music that is; people can live their lives perfectly fine knowing very little, there's nothing wrong with that.
In my experience, each time I thought a genre of music was "not for me" I was wrong. But it's a matter of being open (people often identify to genres of music, which gets in the way), curious and also bored (if you listen to a lot of music you'll get bored and crave for something different).
I don't. I crave music I know and like, rather than music I don't know and may not like - and I definitely don't crave music I don't like. Music should make me feel good.
Just not bored enough.
If you say so. I like to think I know my own mind, but it seems you know me better than I do, even though you've never met me.
As wide and diverse as it might be, I still can't bring myself to like any of it. I've tried a bunch of different artists, sought out recommendations from friends, but I just can't get past rapping as a vocal style.
Try again in 5 years.
I changed one opinion just through living, and one behaviour because of something a stranger said.
The opinion was that all people are selfish and only looking for what they could take from you. I have since realised that this isn't necessarily true of all people, and most people aren't actively seeking to hurt you. My excuse is that I had a difficult time in adolescence, dealing with various people who were just out to hurt me or use me. I learned better as I met better people.
The behaviour I changed was that I now always stop and listen when someone approaches me in the street - even if I'm sure they're going to ask me for money. The turning point was when I walked past a young woman who I assumed was just going to ask for money, and pre-emptively said “no” to her. She said, quite plaintively, “But you didn't even know what I was going to ask!” Which was true. So I stopped and let her ask what she wanted to ask - which was to beg for money, to which I then said no. But she had made a valid point, so I always make sure now to stop and listen to a stranger on the street before I say “no” (just in case they're actually asking for directions or something else).
I was raised with a very strong "authority has your best interests at heart and they're there to protect and guide you! also, all drugs are bad!" mindset.
I can thank my friends for helping me claw my way out of that blindness. Also, pot is awesome. And there's a legal corner store mere blocks from my apartment. :D
Gamergate actually changed my opinion, but in the opposite way that you might expect.
I used to be your standard edgy teen who somtimes went on 4chan. I held opinions such as "feminism is good, but too many modern feminists go too far" and other similar ones. I was there for the original gamergate thread and I remember reading it and realizing how insanely stupid it was. I realized that the people posting about Zoe Quinn were reaching super hard to find any excuse to be cruel. It made me start to question a lot of the things I was seeing and helped start me on my journey to feminism/leftism.
In a sense I was "radicalized" by Gamergate, but from your South-Park style radical centrist to a leftist.
this was generally also my political trajectory, although it happened a little earlier, took a longer time, and i was always fairly liberal throughout. i was decently popular on tumblr as an anti-SJW blogger in 2013 and 2014 (when i was quite literally 13) because tumblr served as the ground-zero for that sort of thing back when it was becoming big in internet circles. eventually that got me quite swept up in gamergate when it happened (going so far as to occasionally use 8chan for awhile) and for a very long time i was also quite anti-SJW in that a lot of the youtube content i consumed was anti-SJW--but i never really dropped my beliefs in favor of further-right ones, so i was in the weird position of being fairly vehemently against what i considered overreach of liberals... while also being a liberal.
i dropped out of the anti-SJW camp on tumblr when reactionaries started taking it over, and the same happend with me and gamergate when it became apparent that most of the people in it weren't actually in it for the ethics and were actually just internet reactionaries. it took me a bit longer to shed being an anti-SJW and actually even as late as early 2018 i did still have contact with a few anti-SJWs from previous days--but really, by the time the primaries of the 2016 presidential election came around, i had pretty much dropped all of those beliefs entirely. i went just as vehemently for sanders (who was about as left as american politicians come) as i had for being an anti-SJW, and i haven't really stopped moving to the left since he became a major figure in american politics. this is reflected fairly well in the political tests i've taken since: at the end of 2016, i scored -25, -40 on Spekr; yesterday, having retaken it for the fourth time, i scored -78, -80.
I was still fairly liberal, just a very progressive one, until a year ago or so. I made friends with some people outside my typical group and they introduced me to some of the problems with liberalism.
I just took that test for the first time and scored -71, -32 if you're curious.
I was very religious in most of my adolescence mostly because I was raised in a religious family. My parents was very conservative so even though the religion they believed in was profoundly liberal (Hinduism) they were very strict about practising religious rituals. They made me pray every day which I didn't like even though I was religious back then.
When I became more active online most of people I met were atheists so I rationalized the theory that I need to be an atheist to be perceived as an intellectual and I became one. For most people it won't make much of a difference if they are atheist or Hindu. But for me it definitely does, because I would fight with my parents most days when they force me to pray or something.
After a while I became what they call an arrogant atheist. I started to bully, criticize and defame religious people in discourses relating to religion(online).It was mostly my frustration towards my parents I was venting on these people. But, I found pleasure in doing so and I was getting attention and validation which I craved so much.
Fast forward nowadays I became much more tolerable to people with different opnions again because of the people I met online (Im still an atheist). Today Im a 21 yr old person who have dreams,hopes and opnions which I believe can be altered by the environment Im living in. This is just one change I have gone through there are ton of them like approach towards feminist ideologies etc.. most of which happened online
liberalism is probably best defined by the terms equality and equity. it supports equality of people, equity between groups, is generally very pro-democratic, and supports freedoms of people such as freedom of the press and freedom of religion where they do not conflict with other people's rights.
libertarians on the other hand value liberty as their core principle, and thus support the maximization of freedoms where possible and maximized autonomy of the person, alongside voluntary association and freedom of choice. generally, they're also quite skeptical of institutional power and state power, and thus advocate to minimize or reduce such power where possible. the implementation of libertarianism is more complicated than liberalism though, because left libertarianism (i.e. libertarian socialism, anarchism and related ideologies) has almost nothing to do with right libertarianism, which developed well after it and is almost uniquely american (but informs the platform of the american libertarian party and has since sprouted many offshoots in ideologies like anarcho-capitalism and minarchism.) in practice outside of the few commonalities i just described, they look totally different and act totally different.
Good points. Honestly I think the whole "left v right" thing is nonsense. It's entirely possible to believe in views from either side. You don't have to be all the way to one side.
You may already be well aware of this, but one of the things I find most difficult in political discussions is that a lot of people seem to treat left, liberal, and Democrat as synonyms, and the same for right, conservative, and Republican. It's frustrating and counterproductive when one person turns out to be discussing a philosophy and another is using the same terms to discuss a party who may (depending on the issue) differ hugely from that philosophy.
More generally, left/right has picked up a lot of baggage over and above the original economic distinctions, which is a problem as a lot of the issues are orthogonal to each other. I'd strongly recommend checking out https://www.politicalcompass.org if you haven't already.
political compass is alright, but for getting a more concrete idea of where you stand ideologically, i would probably also take Spekr or 8values at some point, since those actually name more specific ideological positions associated the results you put in. each of the two have their own shortcomings (Spekr is apparently designed by an anarcho-capitalist and exists on a website that tries to sell you on it, 8values has some... bizarre questions that feel out of place), but no one test ever covers all the bases, and political compass doesn't do the best job of specifically telling you what your results are actually supposed to mean.
I grew up in a pretty conservative, Christian home in the American south. When I was younger I just absorbed the opinions of those around me, and held on to them strongly, including the opinion that gay marriage should stay illegal. Well, when I grew older I realized that that’s a pretty ridiculous opinion to have, for several reasons, most of them obvious.
I’m still religious, but a lot of my opinions on certain things have changed, that being one.
edit: slight grammar correction
My heroes had to be perfect, so I would cycle through them as I uncovered their flaws. Every time it was heartbreaking to me because it seemed impossible to live a successful, honest, and virtuous life. Finally, I discovered Penn Jillette and he flipped my idea of what a hero should be. He flat out said, "I'm full of shit carnie trash and you shouldn't believe what I say," and it made me realize the obvious - no one is perfect and the most honorable thing you can do is be willing to be wrong.
Penn is great! Any interest in the NPR episode where he talks about Teller’s ball trick? If so I’ll dig it up for you.
Absolutely! I haven't heard that one.
It's Act One but the whole episode is worth a listen if you like magic:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/619/the-magic-show
EDIT: And it looks like my memory failed me. It's mostly Teller talking about the trick, but if I do recall there is a couple good bits with Penn in it. He comes off as kind of a jerk IMO but that's just part of who he is, and I love that.
To make up for that oversight, here is a transcript of a great interview with both of them: https://www.npr.org/2015/08/01/428169268/for-penn-tellers-magical-partnership-the-trick-is-telling-the-truth
Great stuff. I had heard that TAL episode before, but had completely forgotten about the P&T story, so that was a fun listen and is more insightful now that I'm more familiar with their personalities. Thanks!
I grew up very conservative/Christian and was strongly anti-lgbt into my teens. Then one day a friend I played games online with came out to me, told me that he'd already come out to everyone else in our group of friends, but was afraid to tell me because of my beliefs. That moment changed a lot in me. It gave me pause because my beliefs made him uncomfortable like that and he was the first gay person I'd ever known (to my knowledge, at least). Fast-forward 15 years later and I'm so thankful for that friend having been in my life. He changed my views for the better and made me a better person for it.
Similarly, my brother held onto his (religiously motivated) anti-lgbt views for longer than I did, but in the past year one of his closest friends from highschool got fired from her job at the Christian school we went to when she came out on Facebook. That didn't sit right with him at all and I've seen a lot of progress in him. Hopefully he completely pulls his head out of his ass eventually.