Times where someone / something genuinely changed your mind about a Political / Ethical / Social Issue

A spin-off from the "friends with right wing brain worms" thread, where I posted a link to an article of techniques which have been shown to be effective for de-brain-worming, and noted that the techniques described were often quite at odds with the methods of arguing (and venting) that we often use or fall back on, on ILX. And often the things that *feel* the most good or righteous to do, can be the most counter-productive at effectively changing opinions or behaviour?

So I'm going to flip the question around.

Tell me about a time when *YOU* stopped doing, or saying, or expressing, or believing, or acting on, beliefs that you now know to be mistaken, incorrect, incomplete, ignorant, prejudiced, or just bad and wrong. Who or what changed your mind? What was effective at getting you to see how you had been wrong, and make an effort to correct yourself? (And, sure, that does include talking about stuff that *wasn't* effective, or made things worse - but I'd really like to concentrate on the positive, on exploring and drawing out methods that *do* work.)

PLEASE NOTE - this may involve some pretty personal 'putting ourselves out there' in terms of admitting to ~bad shit we once believed~, because NO ONE is born with perfectly formed, perfect political views, and we all grew up in a world deeply embedded with racist, sexist, classist, cisheteropatriarchal, etc. power structures. Please try to refrain from condemning or even just o_0-ing people based on stuff they were taught and had to unlearn? We *want* people to be able to unlearn the bad stuff.

What worked, for you?

speaking to you (Branwell) maybe about 8-10 years ago on ILM made me confront and analyse a lot of inherent views on sex and gender that until then I'd never really considered before. so thanks for that!

working at a major newspaper and being witness to a pro-trans demonstration outside their offices made me realise how important trans issues were, whereas I'd never really thought to consider it.

reading a very good essay online around the time of The Knife's 'Shaking The Habitual' which talked about intersectionality and sexual desire, and how it's almost always portrayed from the point of view of younger people and especially straight men, was also very eye-opening.

I think this hasn't happened to me in specific moments so much as by osmosis - which is to say, having friends with different viewpoints and appreciating them as persons, hanging out with them a lot, made my views on certain issues less rigid. Flip side of that is once we lost contact I think most of them have probably reverted back, lol.

Actual specific instances where someone has made me care about something/have a strong stance on something I previously didn't I think have only happened when I didn't already have strong views on something.

I'm going to start with a completely ridiculous and slightly facetious example: as a teenager, I had my mind changed on The Death Penalty, by a completely ridiculous and overwrought television drama (I think it might even have been 21 Jump Street?)

(I think that one thing Right-Wingers are correct about, is how great a role pop culture does play in shaping people's ideas of what is and isn't acceptable on Social Issues.)

I know that there are definitely things which ILX itself has changed my mind on - when I first joined ILX I was incredibly ignorant and naive (probably still am?) - my conception of ~politics in the UK~ was essentially that of a 9 year old. I'm hugely grateful to people who didn't patronise me or call me names but took me at face value, and filled in what I had missed. I can only vaguely remember the conversation (and many of the participants have now gone, I'm thinking of Enrique in this particular instance) - but it was an ILX thread that (don't laugh) taught me that 'Meritocracy' was a completely bankrupt concept. I feel vaguely ashamed now, that I ever bought the idea that it was someting valid - but I'm grateful that people gave me the benefit of the doubt, and worked with the presumption that my understanding of the concept was down to naivite and hopeful gullible utopianism, incomprehension rather than inherent malevolence. (There was quite a funny exchange with Tom D, where he made some joking allusions to 'flat caps and whippets' that was greeting with such genuine bafflement on my part, that I think it clicked with everyone else in the thread, that I wasn't *even* stereotyping, I was so wholly ignorant that I didn't know even know enough to stereotype?)

But that was very early ILX, and I think it is easier to give people ~the benefit of the doubt~ when it's just the same 20 people who meet every few months in the pub. It's harder to give the benefit of the doubt when people feel more like hostile strangers, as giving the benefit of the doubt is an act of trust and respect? (And also, as I have got older and less naive, I have started to recognise how many people exploit benefits of doubts.) But for me, I'm far more likely to be convinced by someone who not just 'meets me where I am' - but someone who actually takes the time to find out *where* specifically I am, and how I got there?

I'm not in a deep essay place right now so maybe later but I confess a lot of embarrassment about thoughts and words I was OK using 20 years ago, as a grown adult, and that ilx and specific posters has been a huge learning experience for me in terms of intersectionality and issues of difference and politics since I've been here. And thanks for that, and thank fuck for that.

I think the thing that separates a lot of the examples itt from right wing brain worm situations is that mostly the descriptions seem like you were already primed to learn - as an example teenage me would've already considered himself anti-racist and in favour of gender equality (he prob would've avoided the term feminist) but obv had no idea of all sorts of internalized prejudices and complications that I later learned about. So that's about widening your thoughts and learning how to come closer to the position that you already want to have. But if someone starts out as, say, a "race realist", that's another thing entirely, no?

True and much more difficult

I don't think that's always the case, though.

In my examples, teenage-me was a total ideologue on that issue, and was not open to having my mind changed by argument or learning or anything else. My mind was changed by being hit, while not expecting it or being intellectually open to it, by an intensely emotional appeal - which snuck in while I was thinking about something else?

Sometimes people don't know that they are willing to learn! Sometimes people don't even know that they are ignorant, let alone that they need to learn something else. (But again, this is benefit of the doubt.)

It's tough because people have such different motivations. Like, for me specifically, I have never been moved much by peer pressure or social pressure, in fact that's one thing that's likely to make me double down and dig my heels in, is if I think that someone is trying to apply peer pressure to me. While, for many people, that kind of peer pressure, and having their entire social cohort slowly move and them feeling socially pressured to move with it is incredibly effective.

For me stuff happens thru osmosis from people I like I think

There's a thing I'm really struggling to articulate, so I probably need to go away and come back to it - which is about people's own self image. That it's so hard to learn / teach someone something which would force them to rethink or change or violate their *own* self-image. (Whether that is "A Good Person" or "A Leftie" or "A Moral Christian" or whatever!) It's not *facts* that they are resisting - it's what those facts would mean about them.

This is why I really wanted to hear concrete examples from other people! Of what worked. For them. Because people are all so different. Compare and contrast, you know? Might help me understand that better.

I can't think of any 'Eureka' moments during a single conversation. It's more of an iterative process, where the reasoning is presented by different sources with different illustrative examples and the weight of the argument is felt as an accretion. Unfamiliar thoughts take time to become familiar.

I feel like this has never happened to me, not because my mind has never been changed, but because I think that those changes are cumulative and happen over time, at least for me. In fact, some of you all have seen this happen in real time for me, on this board!

There's a thing I'm really struggling to articulate, so I probably need to go away and come back to it - which is about people's own self image. That it's so hard to learn / teach someone something which would force them to rethink or change or violate their *own* self-image. (Whether that is "A Good Person" or "A Leftie" or "A Moral Christian" or whatever!) It's not *facts* that they are resisting - it's what those facts would mean about them.

aka "Everyone is the hero of their own story"

the Psychology of Race course I took my freshman year of college completely eliminated the wishy-washy race beliefs I'd inherited from my folks. changed me to be pro-affirmative action, and actually introduced me in better detail to institutional racism so I stopped focusing just on the blatant type.

an arch liberal friend of mine in my 20s basically helped me see the futility and offensive nature of capital punishment

it's likely very rare that someone will change their mind at the point of conversation. in fact if the conversation challanges their existing views, they'll likely push back against it. it will frustrate them and they'll go away with the argumnet still blazing away in their heads because of course they're not wrong! they can't be wrong, can they? but it's the fact the argument is still playing out; they're still tossing the idea around in their mind, and next time they hear the conversation being played out, they might find their perspective has shifted somehow.

aka "Everyone is the hero of their own story"

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Monday, 26 October 2020

No, it's not realy that... I'm really struggling to articulate this. I can only really go at it sideways.

It's about, how to get people to stop asking "what is my opinion on this?" and getting them to start asking "what is my *relation* to this?"

But this might just be my own personal learning style, like for me, there genuinely have been total paradigm shifts where I read a book, or a blog, or had a conversation with someone with very different experiences from my own - which totally changed my whole viewpoint upside down, made me realise that I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle, that I was looking at things from completely the wrong angle.

And so far, it looks like most people don't have that 'paradigm shift' experience - they just experience a long, slow, chipping away process.

So many times, on ILX or on social media or wherever, I have this feeling where I'm watching two people arguing with one another, and it feels like each of them has one key piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but neither of them has the *whole* puzzle, so neither of them can see that they are BOTH, in their own way, partly RONG! and it's neither of them that are right or wrong, but that neither of them can see the whole puzzle, they just see their own pieces.

And I flip that around to my own experiences of insight or change - that it has been that sudden glimpse of the *whole* puzzle (or at least a greater part of it!) beyond my specific bit of it, that has changed my mind?

But it's *so hard* to flip yourself out of that - or flip someone else out of it - like, so often conversations boil down to this outside-ing process, that it's always *those* people, over there, that are the problem, it's *those* racists, *those* sexists, *those* transphobes, with their incomplete, warped, bad pieces of the puzzle, that are seen as the WHOLE problem, rather than, like, "this is a weird, twisted, power-warped system that we are all deeply embedded in, in different ways" and that our puzzle pieces are missing a whole lot of information, too? And it's my general feeling, though I can't justify or defend or even explain it properly except in these oblique references - that resolving these arguments isn't endlessly going round about "my puzzle piece is right and your puzzle piece is wrong" but getting both people to see the much larger jigsaw puzzle in which both pieces fit in different places.

But that might also me being hopelessly utopian, thinking that's even possible. That it's easy to see how *those* racists over there, *their* puzzle pieces are hopelessly warped, and feel that sense of righteousness because your puzzle piece isn't as warped as theirs, but so much more difficult to see how your own puzzle piece is warped. But that that *also* holds true FOR those racists, over there. No one can see their own warping.

I should probably stop trying to do these threads, I just get frustrated because I am so bad at explaining. I should just be quiet and listen to what other people find works for them.

So only 8 people on ILE have ever changed their minds!

What an obstinate lot you are. ;) If I'd asked this on ILM, there would be 100 new answers by now...

I used to be extremely against the idea of owning a gun and then outright fascists gained control of my government and signs supporting them started appearing sporadically in my neighborhood. So, not so much conversation as much as the world dramatically shifting around me in an extremely noticeable way.

i've even started to think of owning one because of how insane and hate-filled this country has become, but no way am I owning one without going through the proper steps to know how to use it properly and handle it safely.

so then my logistical brain starts to think "when can I schedule training sessions, I'm so busy over the next three months, and how can I ensure my instructor isn't a Alt-Right shithead and where in my house will I store it safely and will I bring it to Applebee's" and I just think twice about it.

Yeah that's what has been happening to me, too

well except for that I'm definitely bringing it to Applebee's, I already know that

Nile Rodgers changed my mind about disco.

The training you’d get from a NRA-certified instructor, you can honestly get from watching videos on YouTube. Guns are pretty indestructible, you really don’t need to know how to take it apart or even clean it.

The time sink is that you need to be going to a range and shooting 100 rounds a week (without even delving into practicing with stress and adrenaline).

I’m not going to discourage anyone, but getting to the point where you’re not a danger to yourself is a serious undertaking.

This is difficult to answer because I think there's a fundamental difference between brainwormed people and people who have different and potentially abhorrent views. Although there is often overlap its not necessarily so

To my recollection I've never believed anything patently false and then been truthpilled by a person rather than the arrival of further information

Mind changed on political/social issues? Definitely but gradually and I don't recall any specific interactions. The main one that springs to mind for me is also guns. I used to be anti-gun though I wouldn't say 100%

What changed my mind? People talking strategically and asking me to follow my train of thought through to where it would lead, how it would happen (same as Brexit). But maybe crucially both what I thought previously and what I think now, both pretty loosely held

Scottish independence.

I was fairly confident I was in favour of it at the start of the decade. And it's obvious why: an escape route from Tory Government.

But then our paolo posted in one of the politics threads the actual voting figures in Scotland, straight from Wikipedia, showing that the Tory vote in Scotland was in fact growing, and so the fallacy of "Vote No Get Tory" became apparent.

Then my own personal misgivings: namely, Brian Souter being a significant financial donor, when in 1999 he had ran a very high-profile campaign in the Scottish media basically telling me as I grew up that I was unacceptable because of my sexuality. I asked the question of reconciling this fact with the ambitions of the independence project and never got a satisfactory answer from anyone I knew invested in the campaign.

Then Ewan Morrison posted this and it chimed so much with my own experiences of everyday interactions with Yes supporters. It made me realise that a lot of the discourse around the issue was so binary and divisive, without room for healthy and difficult debate - or at least, it felt that way in my experience of discussing it with anyone.

At the referendum I spoiled my ballot because I wasn't convinced by either side, now I'm confident if it happened again I wouldn't support it. Watching the many ways the Tories have destroyed the UK and made life unbearable for people south of the border, I believe it's better that Scotland can send 56 MPs to Parliament to make their lives difficult. I find the moral argument of closing off the border and protecting our own to be quite weak, I don't believe social solidarity should stop at Gretna. At the same time, I completely understand why people support the movement, for the reasons I initially aligned with a Yes vote.

Thanks, Boxedjoy, that's a really wonderful reply - I really appreciate the thought and consideration you put into it, and it's very helpful for me to read your nuanced understanding of a complicated and non-simple change.

To my recollection I've never believed anything patently false and then been truthpilled by a person rather than the arrival of further information

I guess I wasn't specific enough in my original question - but I wanted to leave it wide-open enough for people to talk about both kinds of scenarios?

Because, basesd on a lot of stuff I've read by Whitney Phillips et. al. even when people *DO* leave genuine brainwormed, cult-like organisations, it is seldom the kind of instant truthpill, factbomb approach that does it, it's a long, slow realisation that stuff doesn't add up, followed by an unravelling and a disillusionment, rather than a sudden insight.

But the other stuff - the "you grew up your whole life being taught something that was just not true, missing or incomplete, and you believed it because you never really encountered information that contradicted it" - is more amenable to the sensation of sudden, ice-shelf-collapsing insight?

...

But the more I read this thread, the more I'm realising - it seems like (apart from the few people who have described sudden changes of heart) people don't notice themselves changing? That I read ILX threads from 15, 20 years ago, and I'm shocked by some of the attitudes on display. But things did change, because on threads from today, those same words, attitudes, actions are simply no longer acceptable. But I'm starting to get the feeling that most people, when pressed on what happened, why it changed, would not be *able* to give a coherent answer is why, or how, or what happened to make it different?

(I often read, in blogs and on twitter, about this strange phenomenon underlying insititutional racism, whereby racism just... "happens" without any white people noticing any actual racists. But also the reverse seems true, that labour gets erased, that anti-racism also just kind of "happens" without any white people noticing any anti-racists. Culture or cultural change as something that is just kind of *done*, without noticing who is doing the changing. In fact, I'm doing it myself, but saying "Reading on blogs" instead of naming the blogs, or "people on twitter" without saying who they are. Curious.)

I had a longish post that I deleted, but if I were to sum it up in a sentence I would say that change has definitely been slow and gradual for me, and the single biggest factor affecting my thinking has been being married to a non-white person for more than 25 years and just observing what they go through. (Just to pick one tiny example, I am the Designated Speaker-to-Authority Figures in our house, because having a white male voice on the phone gets better and faster results. I'm sure others can speak to similar dynamics.) That, and living in a town where I am a minority (I'm the only white person in my building, the only native-born US citizen, the only person for whom English is a first language) and just...living life.

Thanks, Boxedjoy, that's a really wonderful reply - I really appreciate the thought and consideration you put into it, and it's very helpful for me to read your nuanced understanding of a complicated and non-simple change.

I've gone in the opposite direction, I was pretty much a Unionist when I lived in Scotland, living in England has made me, not so much a believer in Scottish independence, as completely opposed to the Union, which seems a completely worthless and dishonest enterprise.

A lot of that was through interaction with English people and realizing they were so clueless and indifferent.

That and nothing having to look at "Scorrish" Nationalists on the news everyday.

not having to look

I'd never claim to be Mr woke but I think a long exposure to a range of voices here and on the slightly less horrible corners of social media has been something of a very slow awakening.

I'd always considered myself to be Not Racist and Not Sexist and Not Phobic of anything LGBTQI. Some of my best etc etc.
However, I grew up in the wild and white West of Scotland where racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and abliest jokes and views are aired readily and frequently and are rarely challenged. I grew up in a world where people are nominally socialist but read and repeat right wing tabloid garbage.
I therefore arrived at adulthood as something of a mixed bag, mostly left leaning and right thinking but riddled with prejudice and bias built up through years of exposure.

Exposure to better behaviour and thinking online has, I think, helped me to change my thinking, behaviour and language accordingly. More importantly, it's helped me articulate these issues with my children in ways my parents would never have attempted (or even wanted to).

An illustrative example is in my attitude to trans women. When I was a lad they were called "trannies", they were very rare, they were seen as freaks and deviants, and they were there to be mocked.
I grew up and learned not to judge (bleurgh).
I still didn't exactly go out of my way to learn anything or to support them in any way.
I was exposed to some trans activism and while I broadly supported their aims I figured there were a lot of people on the Left wasting time arguing over pronouns while the Right was bulldozing the world.
I eventually learned how absolutely cruel it was to deny someone his/her/their right to be he/she/them.
I found myself teaching colleagues (fucking cavemen, frankly... "but what do I call It?" seriously!) about how they should treat and address a trans woman we occasionally worked with by leaning on things I'd read here and elsewhere online.

I still have a way to go on trans issues (e.g. I still _sometimes_ find myself thinking some of those worried about self identity wrt "female spaces" might _sometimes_ have a point. Also less importantly I think the impact on female/women's sports is uncertain and needs some thinking) so I'll keep reading and listening.

Similarly I'm sure my attitudes on all those other biases have matured.

So I don't think I've outright had my mind changed so much as allowed it to be molded into a slightly better shape.

Sorry, I should qualify that bit on self identity. I worry about the risk of it being done in bad faith by a predatory man, not by a trans woman.

(still got lots to learn)

I was raised Catholic but like many people I rejected the faith in my adolescence, and by the end of university was one of those people who says things like "religion is a virus". But in my early twenties I began to notice that the people I admired the most were religiously active people. I don't say believers, because belief suggests that what's central are the propositions of a religious, what the god is like, what its rules are; and many of those things didn't matter very much to me, or even seemed preposterous. But the ways these people lived their lives, against money and the accumulation of wealth, caring for others directly (i.e. not just by sending checks), indeed devoting their lives to care: I came to admire them and to want to live like them. And so I became a practicing Christian again, first as a Protestant then finally again as a Catholic.

I want to stress that it wasn't what others said that changed my mind, but what others did.

The only time I can consciously remember this happening to me as a result of my personal lived experience is with guns. I was fairly pro gun, comfortable with them, had used and owned them, then an experience involving guns caused me to critically reexamine my assumptions about them and ideas about safety, power, fear, defense, etc, until i realized that very little of what I thought about guns and our relationship to them held water. But even in that case it wasn't an overnight thing, my experience was a catalyst that caused me to start rethinking my ideas, it was probably a couple years before I realized that I had made a 180 degree turn on the issue.

Less dramatically, I can name a number of times this has happened to me with regard to various environmental or related science issues, which I guess makes sense because those are issues where its often possible for even an idiot layperson like myself to just sit down and try to educate yourself on the actual relevant science and get a sense of whether my original assumptions were accurate or whether i was talking out of my ass.

for example, a lot of people dont realize that the earth is actually not a globe but a flat disc

I want to stress that it wasn't what others said that changed my mind, but what others did.

Euler I am sort of in the middle of that transition myself, not quite as far along as you but getting there. True as well in my case that its very largely a result of other people modeling behavior & ideas rather than people presenting persuasive arguments to me.

I'm glad to hear it, One Eye Open!

Oh that's actually a very good one; I was EXTREMELY anti-religion until I got to college. I realized the church choir paid its singers and auditioned for entirely mercenary reasons, then fell in love with the breadth and scope of sacred choral music, which made me seek out other church choirs when I graduated, which put me in the orbit of a bunch of really great, liberal/progressive religious people that turned my view of how people interact with their faith on its head. I wouldn't claim to be a Christian but I have a lot more respect for those I've met and sung with/for, and I know there are many more out there like them, which gives me some amount of hope that I never previously had.

This is a great thread idea, Branwell, it's been nice this past hour to recherché my changing views over the past 30-or-so years and take stock in them.

I had a highly resonant conversation with an activist friend some five years ago. It went like this:

Me: "How many times a month do people point out that something that you've said or done is racist?"
Them: "Oh, like once a week?"

This friend's engagement with activism, and commitment to allyship, has left them more susceptible to be on the receiving end of correctives. They had to work to allow their views to be malleable, and divorce their "hurt feelings" from necessary criticisms and corrective engagement. I think about this a lot!

As for "when my mind has changed", I have many instances where my mind has changed in a way that some would consider to be anti-progressive; that is, I have only become further entrenched in my (basically) pragmatic views, that conflict can be resolved with resolution (not revolution), that equity can be achieved with discussion and amendment (not violence), that bad takes can be best addressed with engagement (not public humiliation). These attitudes, at times, run counter to certain accepted progressivist views.

Here are some instances where my mind has been changed in ways that would be, I suppose, deemed "progressive", that spring to mind, in reverse chronological order:

1. I was recently informed of the non-viability of the word "savages" and no longer use it or its variants

2. It was recently proposed to me that the best way to resolve TERF/trans conflict is the normalization of, and education of, penises as being "normal" on women. I've never felt anything weird about "a woman's penis" personally; the "eureka" was really that other people should be invited to have the same attitude, rather than allowing any concessions whatsoever toward obsolete and incorrect essentialism

3. Several years ago, but rather late in life, I was informed as to the motivation behind Imperialist escalation of conflict in oil-rich nations, and why a country such as USA would profit from escalating (or initiating) such conflict

4. When I was in my 20s, I had an apathetic attitude toward Indigenous people in Canada and their struggles. Because I was in close proximity to so many New Canadians, many of whom had immigrated (or their parents had immigrated) to Canada to escape situations of extreme conflict, I did not understand why Indigenous people did not share a New Canadian's pragmatic attitude toward existing and thriving in this country, and its colonialist structures. My attitude has changed to a point where I find my previous apathy to be execrable and shameful

5. I would retrospectively describe my politics as a teenager as being "extremely socially left" but being essentially economically conservative. In my 20s I became aware that "economic conservatism" is effectively a method of maintaining the same power imbalances that oppress people socially

6. As recently as five years ago, I had a fundamentally reformist attitude toward the police in North America-- I believed that the police force could be reformed with disarmament, and diversification of their activities (don't send a cop to deal with somebody who is suicidal, i.e.). I now have a hardline abolitionist attitude toward the police, and see no use for their continued existence, on the whole

Here are some instances where my mind has become further convinced of views that would be, in certain circumstances, considered "non-progressive", that spring to mind:

1. I maintain that the left is divided by semantics and hubris, and that the functional differences between, say, in Canada, the Liberal party and the NDP, while not superficial, are surmountable, and that the most effective amendments to critical social and economic issues will be achieved by unity of these factions-- essentially, the progressive vote is divided and this should not be the case

2. I maintain that conflict between most factions on the left can be simplified to disagreements between "abolitionism" and "reform", and that the sooner we can agree upon which is the most effective stance to take on any given issue, the faster we'll achieve change

3. I maintain my aforementioned attitude that pragmatism is the most effective path toward achieving equity; this, despite the fact that "the pragmatic left" has become somewhat of an insult in certain avenues of contemporary discourse

4. I maintain that pacifism and non-violent response are necessary at all times; in the face of people who would provide me with impassioned (and convincing) discourse otherwise, I remain resolutely pacifistic, and committed to resolution instead of escalation

5. I maintain that any healthy society is grounded on an amicable and symbiotic relationship with one's government, and do not agree with any "smash the state" rhetoric; I believe that the state should be in service of the marginalized and under-privileged, and dismantling the state in the name of "revolution" only endangers the people who the state should be protecting

6. I do not share any idea that we will ever achieve an equitable society, and believe that society will constantly be in a state of upheaval; finding ways of making this change continuous and constructive is of critical importance

7. I continue to believe that The Enemy should be engaged with in conversation, not in battle

This is a subject I think about a *lot*, since I am someone who has done the ideological 180 in life, and it weirds me out to consider how it might not have happened if x, y, and z conditions hadn't been met. To be fair, when I was religious and conservative, I was still a literal child, and ignorant of so many things in the world. But I did have a real, self-consistent (or so it seemed to me at the time) worldview, so I wasn't simply parroting what I was told. I like to think this gives me an advantage when arguing with the brain-wormed, but sadly it doesn't really.

Along with virtually everyone else in this thread, my change of mind was more of a slow burn than a sudden enlightenment. I do think a key factor was being a teenager during the start of the war on terror. It became very clear then that the GOP's claims to be pro-liberty and gov't accountability were a crock of shit. Seeing the racism and xenophobia on the right go from latent to blatant at the time was also an eye-opener.

What is particularly interesting to me is this: while my beliefs about the problems of the world and how to solve them have shifted drastically leftward since then, my core *values* (influenced a huge deal by Christianity, though I do not consider myself a Christian any longer) don't seem to have changed much at all. They just express themselves differently.

Being an adult now with a modicum of self-awareness, I can observe the process of my mind changing to an extent. For example, I've come around from being a skeptic of police abolition to a supporter, but it wasn't any one particular person or argument that "made me" change my mind. However, the groundwork was already set because I was I already against police brutality and for accountability measures. If I was a gung-ho Blue Lives guy that change would probably not have been possible.

I think the most important factor is having a sense of epistemic humility. Like Branwell said upthread, simply knowing and accepting that you only hold a small piece of the puzzle is crucial. It often seems to me that most people in the world do not practice this, and they might not even know how, and that makes me feel very pessimistic about the future.

^ great post

The War On Terror had a wild effect on me. The Toronto Sun (a conservative rag) ran front page photos of two of Hussein's recently-killed sons bloodied and dismembered, with the caption "WE GOT 'EM!" I saw it and vomited in the gutter, and have resolutely anti-punitive views that are (broadly) universal-- even as these views are challenged by my own recurrent fantasies of seeing 45 and his family publicly disemboweled, I would certainly protest such an outcome were it tabled

Thanks, fgti! I feel similarly about, eg guillotine memes. The idea of retributive justice in general makes me really uncomfortable, even just "as a joke." It feels like a doorway to some really dark places.

this is just a side point to the larger points y'all are making, but one of the nice things about police abolition also inevitably bleeding into prison abolition is that it makes you rethink retributive and punitive justice entirely

having a sense of epistemic humility. Like Branwell said upthread, simply knowing and accepting that you only hold a small piece of the puzzle is crucial.

this is massively otm. i try to constantly check myself with this. in my life experience the biggest sign of intelligence (or maybe to put it better, that i'm talking to someone who i can learn a lot from) is ability to actually admit that you dont know something, or dont know enough about it to have an opinion.

Would like to point out that guillotines are to be used reluctantly, as a last resort, and not for retributive purposes

yuh

same could be said of ICBMs

Some really interesting and thought-inspiring answers on this thread today...

(But I'm also really struggling with my own self-imposed rule of 'do not argue with the opinions expressed on the thread' and wondering if I should take this to a different thread, because I am forever left feeling like I genuinely do have a different piece of the puzzle and there's got to be a way to fit them together.)

I did not understand why Indigenous people did not share a New Canadian's pragmatic attitude toward existing and thriving in this country, and its colonialist structures. My attitude has changed to a point where I find my previous apathy to be execrable and shameful

Wonderfully expressed, fgti, and I’m in exactly the same camp. I still have TONS to learn wrt indigenous issues but I’ve committed to doing the work, & am grateful to work in a company that has an Indigenous network in which I can participate.

Guillotines are a cure for billionairism, not a punishment.