Homophobia was the norm where I grew up in the '80s and '90s. Took me until the late '90s to start questioning that, and probably a year or two more to become completely cleansed of it.

That Trumpers can be reasoned with and redeemed.

I held this belief until Jan 6th, but I’ve only felt more validated that Trump supporters are fundamentally irredeemable monsters who should be treated like hostile terrorists rather than fellow citizens.

I used to be anti-nuclear energy until I learned a bunch of science and engineering behind it. Turns out things are less scary when you know more about them.

Edit: I also learned that it’s okay, and usually preferable, to not have a strong opinion about things that you don’t know about.

I used to be excited and optimistic about new technologies. Now I’m just jaded.

I used to eat mostly plants. Ended up with NAFLD, had to change my diet entirely.

I was raised conservative, back-country compound with apocalypse preppers, homeschooling, israel prophecy, the whole nine yards. I was raised with The 700 Club and Rush Limbaugh playing every day and night.

I read science books that distant family members managed to smuggle to me in gift boxes alongside other “safe” books like Kid’s bibles, I learned more and more about the world around me, I started collecting my own book collection and just read and read and read, and the doubts started to grow, uneasy, shameful, scary-as-fuck doubts.

But the big turn happened when I got out of there, and America started one it’s many wars and I was watching FOX news cover it. A humvee passes a civilian box truck and shredded it to pieces with an automatic grenade launcher. Probably a family trying to escape the city… cut to the host, smiling and praising America’s might, and that’s when it hit me: We’re the bad guys.

A few more things really sealed it, when I had friends start to come back from these conflicts in boxes, or a couple guys I knew who blew their own brains out after coming home. I still despair at these horrific wastes of life and I can’t figure out why more people don’t see life as precious. How fucking stupid do you have to be to justify war, murder and causing destruction to society.

I used to believe the centrist idea that America needs a strong Republican Party and a strong Democratic Party.

The GOP actively calls all democrats and liberals enemies, demons, terrorists, etcetera while giving the billionaires all on our public wealth, tax breaks and subsidies.

America does not need the GOP at all.

So many of them. So, so many.

Maybe the only one I’ve kept perfectly intact is my belief that the golden rule is prime.

I was raised a young earth creationist, picketed abortion clinics when I was elementary school aged but don’t worry I was home schooled from kindergarten through high school. Was basically a republican/libertarian until about 2015 when my spiritual leaders, including and especially my parents, began to compromise all of their values.

More recently, probably even until 2020, I viewed myself as an aspiring centrist.

Now I’m an agnostic atheist who is seeing how far left the political spectrum goes, and I still think centrism is a nice idea, in a totally different world than the one we live in, with a totally different meaning to “center”.

Here is the thing I should disclose though, because I suspect it applies to a lot of things.

I was raised steeped in a level of bigotry that was all-encompassing but cloaked in Christian love.

I have intellectually separated myself from that bigotry, but I believe I still have instinctive/subconscious/unidentified bigotries to work through.

I am trying to be very conscious of that as I make my way in the world, trying to love my neighbor as myself, and trying to continuously expand the definition of “neighbor”.

Edit: I also cut my parents out of my life entirely around the time DOGE sent their “fork in the road” email.

Used to be an apple fanboy, use reddit, use Instagram; now I use linux, grapheneos, Lemmy, and self host

Having children: I was completely against it for most of my adult life, then dated someone who wanted children while I still didn’t and realised what compromise meant. Now I’ve got a kid with another person and the person who changed my mind is almost set against having kids.

Recreational drugs: I thought they were stupid and should be banned harder until my friends started smoking weed, etc. I eventually became a stoner for a while, but have since figured that the issue is more around disordered drug use which is more socially circumstantial than individual.

My opinions on the death penalty would turn liberal philosophers in their graves enough to power a town.

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

Until i was 24 I fell into a camp of thought called transmedicalism. Which is shitty because I am cis and didn’t support a friend because of it. By the time I learned what a jackass I was being he died. Don’t think my absence in his life was the nail in the coffin at all but there were way too many of us who ignored him when he was almost alone.

I don’t think just doing a 180 on my opinion there was enough

A less shitty turnaround was my atheist heelturn. I only think it’s worth mentioning because I wasn’t awakening from Christian I was awakening from loose agnostic spiritualism. Thought I should be tolerant of people’s idiosyncrasies because finding personal meaning is a deep need that we rarely ever get (Fucking ironic considering the transmedicalism, right). 2016 and the following events were my little clue-in to the possibility that people aren’t using belief as a way of building meaning, they’re using it to justify their worse impulses full stop. I never really respected enlightened reddit athiest brainlets but if there’s one thing to take away it’s that you don’t hate belief in the supernatural enough.

At one point I really, truly believed that the internet and social media would be a turning point in human interconnectivity and cultural understanding. The ability to just… talk to someone on the other side of the planet, at will? When we know that exposure to other beliefs and cultures is superb at punching holes in hatred and misunderstanding? Surely this would lead to great things!

Yeah, that was a miss.

Exposure to other is still a fantastic way to grow understanding. But the internet and social media were not a highway to it, and as the “wild west” era of the internet faded and we instead got corporate-governed, algorithm-driven siloization of views, my views on the value of social media changed sharply.

Idk why we’ve reached the point where anyone saying they’re anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren’t a bigot. Being religious doesn’t make you a bigot and being atheist doesn’t mean you aren’t one either.

I had a similar 180 though, I used to be an atheist but in the last year or so I pivoted into druidism. Turns out following a religion that focuses on spending time in nature helps to get you out of the house when you’re going though a depressive episode.

Used to make fun of small cars and “ricers”. Now I have like 3 of them and hate large vehicles.