Questioned religion from a very young age. Went hard into the “New Atheism” movement as a teen. Figured physicalism was a necessary consequence of atheism.

In March, I binged several episodes of Walden Pod.

Now I’m open to the idea of a soul and an afterlife. (Not convinced, but open.)

I’m still an atheist, just not a physicalist. It seems childish to me now, in the same way that religion seemed childish all along.

I grew up in a religious household that eventually became infatuated with what essentially amounts to doomsday cultism after the 2008 financial collapse.

The religion encouraged a lack if critical thinking development, and I easily bought into the scheme. We became fairly extreme preppers, stockpiling food, planning to move somewhere even more remote that wouldn’t be a nukeable target while also not being downwind of fallout from a neighboring target. We purchased plans on how to build various styles of underground bunker on a budget, and guides on how to rear animals and farm for subsistence.

At some point I came across a video of Christopher Hitchens debating a Pastor. I almost didn’t watch it, as I was afraid that to even entertain the ideas of someone trying to tempt you away from the faith would be dangerous, a way for Satan to worm his way into my mind and prevent my soul from being saved during the end times that were right around the corner.

But I was curious too, very curious. So I watched it. And I couldn’t come up with a single logical argument of how he was wrong.

That was the first glorious crack in the mental armor I’d put up against doubt of any kind. I would think about it frequently, which led me to want to find evidence that would prove him wrong, so I watched different debate with a different pastor, then another, each one widening the gap, until one day I had to admit to myself that it was bullshit, from top to bottom.

That opened the floodgates. What else have I not questioned? All this prepping, for what? All the mistrust in others, the seclusion, the countless hours of research on how to (impractically) survive as independently as possible… it was all pointless, or worse, actively mentally harmful.

Amazingly, when I slowly presented all these findings to my family, they saw reason. I think they were all as worn out from the constant terror we guzzled down from crackpots too, and if anything were relieved that it could come to an end.

From that point on, I made an effort to give myself a proper education, to finally trust in the scientific process, and to not be so intellectually lazy that I could be tricked into something like that ever again.

So the last time I really changed my mind in a major way was about a decade ago.

About a year ago, communism. This is what I’d say was the tipping point in which I began to see the world differently.

When Covid hit my wife was super afraid of Long Covid but I thought that shit wouldn’t get it. Now I’ve been living in my bed for two years because I’m too weak for much else. Yeah, changed my mind about that one.

There being totally different personalities that just don’t mix was something new to me when I started university in a different part of the country. Totally changing my social circle and meeting entirely new people was an eye opener. Growing up I thought that with a little conversation everybody could come to a single conclusion that would benefit everyone and work together. But now I know that there just are different people that want different things and there is no way to please everyone. And some even actively work against others just because they don’t like them without a valid reason.

I used to be what Americans call libertarian. Capitalism and free market ftw. I thought it would lead to a freer society.

At some point I understood that the consequences of capitalism lead away from what is actually my real goal - maximizing the liberty of each individual. If someone is afraid if they can afford food and housing they can’t really be free.

Now I support certain types of socialist policies with the same goal.

I was pretty adamant that Biden should stay in the race.

I figured that if he left the Dems would eat themselves in a giant squabble over who’d replace him.

Never thought they’d fall in line behind Harris.

Nice to be proven wrong.

In 2020 I got Left-washed by political podcasts and went from a Dem to a Leftist. The awful behavior from those on the Right also pushed me further Left.

This morning

i changed my mind about gun ownership sometime in the last two years

i used to think that like, sure i get that it would be nice if nobody in the world had a gun, but the cat was out of the bag. and remember when the covid lockdowns started? there were lines around the block at gun stores. it just seemed crazy to me to be the only person without a gun, like what if shit hits the fan?

i think i changed my mind around uvalde, because like, that event made it pretty clear that guns dont really contribute to the rule of law. all guns did in that scenario was allow cops to kill a child an hour after he murdered 21 other children.

i really had to kind of re-evaluate the pros and cons. sure guns would be great if, in the 0.05% likelihood event that society turns into mad max, i need to murder my neighbor for tomatoes so i can delay getting scurvy for another week. but in the meantime every single time someone has like a fucked up teenager phase or watches an insane amount of youtube incel shit or whatever, we’re making sure that they have immediate access to a means to kill like 100 people before anybody can do anything about it?

it just doesnt make sense to me any more to live my life planning for the worst possible societal outcome in a way that has very obvious and real consequences. itd be like if nobody had invented the seatbelt and the way we prevented car crashes was having giant fucking spikes right at eye level surrounding the car to disincentivize other people from driving into you

I’ve had many things I’ve changed my mind about this year, but they’ve all been related to past and ongoing wars. Currently there are six of these going on and it’s easy to think you won’t lose yourself in the immersion when just reading about them, let alone participating in them.

Veganism. I went vegetarian and stayed there for a long time, and I assumed taking the extra step to being vegan would be too difficult relative to what I thought at the time was a marginal benefit. A couple years back, I watched the documentary Dominion (NSFL) and realized pretty quickly that I’d been mistaken. Of course it was more than just Dominion, but it’s such an acutely traumatizing kick in the teeth that it was definitely the last straw.

I used to say ‘people can learn anything online but they might be too lazy’ which is partially true. Then, when covid hit, I realised my brain did not have the capacity to learn for too long when watching a screen; I had just been lucky with having blended modes that aaccomodated well.

Always made fun of vegans but then I actually looked into nutrition and how we don’t need toneat animals to be healthy. Yeah… So if I only eat them for taste, why the fuck would I want to kill them? Was a pretty big but also instant switch in my head.

Not me, but I still can wrap my head around how my sister went from a fully vaxxed reasonable adult who had both her daughters fully vaxxed too, to a raging Anti-vaxxer.

It started some time before the pandemic with public schools mandating measles vaccinations. I thought she was only annoyed back then, but the pandemic brought out her raging insanity. Unfortunately.