Ask Lemmy

China bad America less bad.

I think China is no worse than america now. I don't put effort into buying american products anymore and will happily buy Chinese goods.

Used to think that if you put in the work at your job, showing loyalty and dedication, that the company would take care of you. That's how it worked for my parents...working for the same place starting as a college intern through retirement, or changing jobs when they felt like it when they wanted to move elsewhere.

It sounds naive now after years in the real world being taken advantage of, getting passed by, and getting laid off because of a company's whims...but when I showed up in the job market with a degree and good grades from college it was quite a shock.

In high school I was anti gun (even though I grew up with them and shooting since a young age). I had a pretty wild few experiences. Along with my current living situation I'm now extremely pro gun and consider myself an enthusiast.

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.

Well, I was raised a super political conservative, Mormon. Now I'm an Atheist Liberal. Does that count?

That science and programming are hard.

They are not. It’s just a bunch of rules much like learning a spoken language.

When I was a freshman in college I thought "Surely nobody would want to inherit genetic diseases, and why wouldn't we want to to try and make people just naturally live longer, healthier lives?" but then I did even the tiniest bit of research on how eugenics actually worked and I completely abandoned that line of thinking.

I once thought the Democratic Party in the US was liberal. Now I realize they're slightly right of center (with some exceptions), and there really isn't a truly liberal (or leftist) party of any note.

The Bicycle. My God I how hated to ride a bike. So freaking uncomfortable to sit on, hurts my lady parts and sweaty and you have to pedal so hard to make it move, I always would rather walk. Just walk like we are made to do.

I rode an electric bike at a 'rodeo' the city sponsored to promote their e-bike raffle and oh wow what fun, so comfortable the seat, so easy to pedal and it moves right along. I did not win a voucher but spent the money on one and I love it, it's my daily commuter vehicle, and I let people ride it and so many have the same transformation.

that people as a whole are inherently good

nope. nope nope nope. people are inherently selfish

half the population of the world seemingly needs to believe in fairy tales and a magic book to give them a moral code. people will, time and time again, do things for their own convenience or desires at a greater direct and immediate expense to somebody else, i.e. knocking somebody over to spill $10 out of their pockets and only steal $2 and run away.

fuck people. people will get respect when they earn respect. everybody else gets basic decency and nothing more, until they prove they're not an asshole. and the moment they prove that they are an asshole, they get treated like one.

Checks and balances in the US government would stop a president from doing anything truly egregious. Unfortunately that belief has been proven very very incorrect

(There was always the regular corruption and killing that the US was doing, but that was the "regular" accepted type of horribleness built into our system. But i truly thought the checks and balances would prevent the occurrence of extremely out of the ordinary radically new nakedly illegal tyrant style horrors.)

What do you mean by being spiritual? I'm an idealist so I think consciousness/subjective perception is the fundamental substrate of reality, and matter/the physical world is just an illusion, but I wouldn't consider myself spiritual...

I used to think, every good meal needs meat. Now I'm convinced, you don't need meat in a meal at all.

Forks with ice cream. Seemed stupid, tried it out, converted.

I used to hate furries back in highschool, mainly because I didn't understand it and all my peers hated them too. At some point I made the connection that just because people don't understand lgbtq people (something i do understand) doesn't mean they have to hate them, and I took that to heart.

I still don't quite understand it all, but I've become way more accepting. Live your life and be who you want, it's not my place to judge.

I used to be a conservative who shot guns weekly and reloaded ammo. I was deep into the group for years.

The last 6 years I've been democratic, gone to protests and do my best to educate others about the dangers of being on the right.

Problem is, on social media, everyone assumes your lying or a bot, so I can't help convert anyone over to the brighter side.

I was raised in a somewhat homophobic household. One of my friend groups throughout high school was pretty densely LGBT, and so I grew. Exposure was all it really took.

I used to hate when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired. The episodes felt like they lasted forever, and I had no interest in anything that was going on. I finally finished watching it about a year ago, and it is one of my favorite shows to date.

idolizing celebs, prof athletes, actors, singers...etc.

I turned 13 and learned what they basically do and how much they earn compared to doctors and teachers.

Politics. We have always been a conservative family (to relate: "conservative" here is the equivalent of the US Democrats, not Republicans!). My grandfather was a party cofounder and lived next door to our countries first chancellor after the war.

But the sheer disregard for the law by the (conservative) chancellor who was in office when I grew up turned me to the political left.

Did you do psychedelics, by chance?