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In response to
"I agree with most if not all of what you say. Out of curiosity, when did you change or how or why your views on these things? And forgive me if I'm "
by
JackDawson
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correct, i used to be that semi-republican/libertarian who didn't give a lot of thought to this stuff. -- (edited)
Posted by
colin (aka colinski)
Apr 1 '20, 07:57
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left religious life completely, started hanging out with more liberal people (not that i wasn't, i just never got into social/political stuff with folks that were), and started paying attention to politics at a deeper level. i had huge amounts of apathy about anything social or political going into 2016 plus living overseas was a good disconnect from american way of life and showed me a lot of variation to what's possible in society.
i also started working through my upbringing in relation to racism and white supremacy (Layla Saad was huge in that) in my own life as an effort to try and become a better advocate. learning about the institutional racism that drives a lot of the shit i'd been shoveled over the year was startling and made me change quickly. that along with my parents becoming more extreme, more racist, and more self-righteous about being christian/republican put a lot of this into contrast.
there are other things like working for a mega-tech corp, being self-employed, the stark contrast of stepping away from conservative commentary and then coming back and seeing it for what it was was important. but i think the biggest was having a partner who became an advocate for rooting out racism and sexism in her industry - her passion got me involved and we've been re-examining our old views pretty heavily and with a lot of embarrassment. i'm thankful we both don't judge each other on who we were.
i've noticed that in recent years years, you've argued with me as though i was holding those old views when we were often on the same side. my views have changed pretty heavily, they were veeeerrrry incorrect, and i recognize that. thanks for also recognizing it. it's totally work in progress, but i feel like i'm aligning towards being the compassionate person i want to be (although i do get pretty angry as a result sometimes, as you saw with the first post to crash).
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