deleted by creator

Not even going to read the thread before making this comment.

Remember rule 1 in this one.

I was raised in a pretty conservative religion that listened to right-wing radio and news. However, I recently deconstructed religion entirely and can see it for the sham it is now. Once I did that my political ideology completely changed to the opposite. I’m now pretty progressive and happier than I’ve ever been.

I’ve lived in the Southeast USA, SoCal, Southeast, and SoCal again, each for many years. It amazed me how much the culture is polarized in each area. I think both areas suck hard on the propaganda sauce. I’m hard left now just because I’m for helping people, and hate zealotry

I wrote a lot about it earlier today.

https://lemmy.world/comment/1641271

I thankfully was raised in the exact region and community with the correct religion and prevailing political views. /s

In reality, humanities courses in university, living in the many different types of communities (urban, suburban, rural), and good parents who taught me not to take claims at face value.

I was brought up pretty non-religious. I remember in my very young years going to a non-denominational church. There was Sunday school and stuff. We moved across the country when I was 10 years old and family never went to church again. Mom would get a bit deep in it at Christmas with some bible reading. Got to my teenage years, searching for an identity. Tried church and totally was not for me. Too much telling me what and how I’m supposed to think. I’ve been an anti-theist ever since. 35+ years now.

Raised devout Mormon/LDS. 9/11 reaffirmed political conservativism. Church assigned me to be a missionary (age 19-21) in Portland, Oregon where I found liberals treated me with better respect than conservative christinans.

In 2006, my house rep said something royally stupid, so I voted for his Democratic rival. And like Pringles, once you pop you can’t stop.

Today I’m a fiery but loyal moderate democrat.

Being poor and being treated poorly was radicalized. Serving in the military reinforced my world view.

Somewhere in there, I even considered myself a libertarian. Then I realized how childish they were, learned how manipulated they were by rich, greedy people, and since gone further left than most.

I did your mom

Once I hit my early 20s I had a goal for myself: to find out what the truth is, whatever it may be, even if it shatters my most cherished beliefs. I went through so many different belief systems. I explored every kind of mindset I could regarding everything I could. I would get very involved with some belief system or ideology for a time and absorb what I could from it and then move on to something else.

Over time, I saw a ton of patterns emerge and I saw that ideologies of any kind place a limited filter on how one views reality. I decided that what makes the most sense to me is to simply seek to do the most good while doing the least harm. Whether or not one believes in a god is irrelevant as life does as it will anyway. Adhering to a political party is just team sports. Social norms are basically attempts to not be uncomfortable and only pretend to be about safety and order (neither of which exist regardless of what social norms exist).

Religion: I was raised Christian but my parents weren’t very observant. I started to see cracks when at my primary school we were taught about god creating the world and the big bang.

When I was 13 my girlfriend died. I turned to the bible for support and after reading it realised it was just fairy tales.

Social and political: I was a punk as a teenager. More due to my love for skateboarding and depression/anger about my girlfriend. But in that culture I started to realise how fucked everything was.

Serveral homeless people would wonder by the skatepark and we’d talk to them. Many of them we’re lovely people who had some sort of awful tragedy happen. I realised how heartless society could be. If you can’t work and function then you have no value. This was reinforced by how people talked about like they were the scum of the earth.

This was the early 00s in a rural county so racism and homophobia were rampant as well. There were probably single digit people if colour I saw in my town but again some used to stop by and chat with us / cheer us on when skating.

Again this showed how horrible the majority of people were.

So my politics became pretty simple. Everyone deserves to live a good life. That view is not very well reflected in the right.

I am currently part of a church that loves these types of questions because it means that I can bear testimony of God and bring the holy spirit into the conversation. I don’t like doing so online with a profile that I try to keep somewhat anonymous.

There are two “science only” reasons for my faith:

• outcomes. Everyone lives longer, has more education, has more wealth, has more kids, but stays away from self medication (alcohol, tobacco, caffeine) so a bunch are on prescription antidepressants. Umm “by their fruits you shall know them” and (last I checked) education in this church is the only one that is positively correlated with church activity.
• pascals wager. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_wager

I have struggled with depression myself and have found the best solution is service. Church is a great “batteries included” way to serve. I also have a day of the week where I call up family and ask if I can help with anything. I was able to help my father in law renovate his house by making these calls.

Regarding politics. I hate political party “vendor lock in”. I have no clue how any of the issues get discussed based on how much astroturfing and bought/compromised news outlets. I imagine that my interactions with politicians is like reddit’s “upvote” where it really does nothing unless you sort by new. So I follow the money only.

Got raised in an openly leftist country, with socialist ideals permeating the culture everywhere and a pretty strong hard on on communism. No need to say that ideas never worked in real life.

I Experienced how it slowly drive the country from better to worse without any external output and meeting these public officials face to face always pointed to them using the position of power and claims of popular sovereignty slogans to pocket their own bags.

Nevertheless my family worked hard to raise us, a task becoming increasingly difficult by each and every socialist policy put in place.

Price controls? Everything became scarce. Of course the higher ups always had food to eat while we spent 3 weeks eating loafs of bread. The last week we didn’t eat at all.

Currency controls? Great, now whatever was remaining from price controls now was 100 times more expensive. Not for the socialist party members tho. They had access to the privilege of the American devil’s money

Defundind the police? Great, now the little safety there was while going out on the streets went kaput and crime soared even more. Oh but not too the government members, no. They had private security.

Food sovereignty projects designed to feed the population? Hijacked by the same leftists claiming to love the people to pocket their bags even more, with tons of food going to waste directly and never reaching people in need. Of course, you had to be a member of the socialist party to receive the little that did arrive, mind you. Nevermind it only lasted for a week, your human dignity was well worth the price, as the socialists had effectively lowered it.

Medical centers built all over the country? Sure, that couldn’t backfire could it? No if you count the exploitation of others brought to our country, and which salary got Pocketed by the higher ups, not only from our socialist government, but also from the party members outside the country of a not so far island. Nevermind also the usage of these centers as propaganda machines, only half built at times and being re inaugurated over and over for years in a wasteful showcase of public funding.

And much more

After experiencing that, I promptly proceeded to tell my history and my country story with socialism, leftists and communism in general, only to be harassed constantly by wannabe champagne socialists on the internet. Mind you, English is not my first language so my interactions are less than ideal, with much of my wording getting confusing to anyone not inclined to understanding and more so, empathy.

After all that, is it a wonder I despise leftists, socialists, communists and authoritarians to my core?

I’d say it’s not.