Raised conservative christian, took a disgustingly long time to lose some of my shittier takes
I recently saw a shirt for sale online that says, “I’m sorry for everything I said when I was evangelical,” and that really just about sums it up.
Fellow former conservative christian here, and I share that pain. I eventually came around thanks to a LOT of patience from friends who understood my background.
I try to pay it forward by putting myself out there and extending a hand to anyone looking to understand and accept others. I have had decent success with anyone who asks in good faith.
Same. Lost a very good friend because I was too slow to change, lost my family because I did.
I’m sorry friend 🫂
Don’t beat yourself up. Seriously.
I was able to break free early partly due to how absurd the hypocrisy became. My mother was going to hell, not because she’s a cold narcissist, but a Jew and a ‘practitioner’ of new age bullshit. And my father saw nothing at all wrong with this type of belief.
Not to mention he was pretty racist (though in a ‘subtle’ way), while helping raise my adopted Korean sister.
I was lucky that he and my mother were such atrociously bad examples of how to deal with others, that I vowed to never be like them.
I didn’t figure my way out until I was in my 30s. Been out of it for over a decade.
I was brainwashed, my head was full of carefully crafted indoctrination. My extended family will almost certainly never be free of it.
We were subjected to an evil process from an early age. It’s not our fault. Losing the hate and guilt is also a process. Go easy on yourself. Takes a tough person to change their entire worldview. Only a few of us make it out.
That my dad cared about or respected me. After a family dinner, my wife asked me if he always talked about me like that and it just kind of clicked. Things like telling my kid, “If you play too many video games, they’ll melt your brain like your dad” or “why would anyone pay you that much” when I told them that I broke a six figure salary. She made me realize that this wasn’t normal and I didn’t have to sit there and listen to it just because of who he is.
I haven’t spoken to him or really any of my side of the family in almost two years now. Good riddance.
Some parents forget to support your goals when it’s not in-line with their goals for you; despite probably having the same childhood.
Always be looking for the opportunity to forgive them if it should appear. Not before, but be ready in case they clue-in.
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Being Mormon.
They always told us that people who gave us anti-mormon literature just made stuff up and it was Satan’s way of tempting us. They said to never take any anti-mormon literature and if someone did give it to you then to throw it away without reading.
But at the same time they taught us that the Mormon church was the true church. And they also taught us truth was absolute. Well, i figured if truth is absolute, and if the church was THE true church then it would be able to withstand any criticism. So i read anti mormon literature, like the CES letter. From there i did my own research about various things and found that the Mormon church made up a lot of stuff and did lots of gaslighting.
There was some specific issues that i also had been struggling with, like their treatment of women, gays, and black men/women. That also helped push me to want to make sure if the Mormon church was really true. And it wasn’t. Now i can love my friends unconditionally.
Good on you for challenging beliefs and forming your own opinions. Not easy to pull yourself out of these things.
Good for you because morning Mormons are batshit.
Marshmellow is not correct. It’s marshmallow. I learned by spell checker. Only took nearly 21 years.
Fun fact, it was originally made from the roots of the marsh mallow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althaea_officinalis
Again: Til
Til
I’m still reeling over cemetery not being spelled cementary and it’s been 20 years.
TIL, I guess. I always thought it was spelled with an ‘A’ too.
That misspelling means you’ve been mispronouncing it, too. (Not in a way that would be noticeable.)
The consequences of not growing up with first you take the graham, then you take the mallow!
For the longest time I was under the impression that everybody has unlimited potential, that you can essentially take a homeless junkie of the streets send them through college, give then a job and have a functioning intelligent person come out at the end. That is absolutely not true. based on my own experience we all have limits and glass ceilings. Yes, we all live on the same clock, but some of us have to deal with so much behind the scenes just to stay afloat while others can breeze through life like its nothing. There are people who are incredibly academically gifted but absolutely inept in personal or household stuff, some people are thick as a rock but incredibly charming, etc. We all have our strengths and weaknesses but sometimes of course all the marbles roll into the right holes and you get somebody who’s good at everything they touch and are almost doomed to success.
There are just things that I will never able to grasp, or habits that I will never able to form because I tried my whole life and it never worked out. I consider myself as a fairly baseline dude, so its safe to say that if I have these experiences the majority of people will have them as well.
For me it was that other people think in the same manner, basically. But it turns out that brain usage is very different for people. So some people use more of their visual cortex for maths, making them see color in numbers.
In this video Richard Feynman explains it better then I could.
Feynman explains most things better than most people can.
This video was really interesting! Thanks!
Yeah that’s his talent, such an amazing man. If you haven’t, read his biographie.
The video is part of a longer series ‘fun to imagine’ is really with it watching them all.
A large majority of that is winning the luck lottery of which family you were born into. Most people who have “trouble staying afloat” are also those who are economically disadvantaged… as in, in the lower-90% of the economic population who are desperately just treading water. Most of the people who “breeze through life” have the intergenerational family wealth that permits this behaviour.
Yes, that has also been my experience. But this also evens out fairly well with age. I’ve come across very well put together people in their 50s and 60s whose childhood all the way through late adulthood has been literal hell. But this might be survivorship bias.
So you’re telling me we can’t just steal a baby from one of those secluded amazon tribes and force them to learn the quadratic formula so I don’t have to? there go my weekend plans :(
As a non American who has never been to the US, but grew up well within its sphere of cultural influence.
I thought that about half of the population was black, maybe 40% minimum. I was surprised to learn that it was just above 10% in reality.
They tend to be concentrated in a few areas. There was one place I lived where none of the dudes living there had ever even seen a white dude in person other than cops and social workers.
I was wrong about who I was for several years. A pretty unexpectedly intense DMT trip set me right
EDIT: This isn’t really the ideal place to elaborate on my experience, but thanks for the interest.
Care to elaborate?
They’ve remembered they are DB Cooper
I knew it!
Details?
That if you weren’t part of “our” religion (my family’s religion, Catholic), you were basically living your life wrong and were an awful person. When I went to college I met people who believed different things, including in nothing, and I realized they were not, in fact, terrible, almost subhuman, people. I quickly changed for the better and that’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. It’s amazing how accepting you can be when you just accept people for who they are
It could easily have been the same for me, as my father is a Protestant pastor. Fortunately, my family has always been very tolerant and open-minded. That’s how my parents brought me up, for which I’m still very grateful to them today. It’s good to hear that you’ve found your own path, which certainly wasn’t easy. Respect, my friend.
Three of my cousins are sisters in the same family. All three are vegans, just one of them militant.
While we enjoy the two happy vegans and their great families and their joy at sharing their chosen lifestyle, we get no judgement from them; unlike the militant sister who reminds us we’re all going to a kind of hell on earth of our own making and we deserve to be sick for eating creature-flesh, etc.
Your comment reminds me that beliefs other than religious can be used by over-eager proselytists to judge and belittle people. And yeah, she’s so off my friends list.
I thought I’d live a comfortable stable life pursuing the sciences for the sake of knowledge. I learned in the past year or two through studying political economy and climate science that this is pretty unlikely. These days idk what to do. I want to do something more useful, I want to help people but it all feels quite hopeless. It often feels like revolution is the only option but I fear it may even be too late for that. We are already past the point where hundreds of millions will die and be displaced. We are already past the point of inevitable severe famine and societal collapse in many places. We aren’t even accomplishing damage control and it feels like most people don’t even dare acknowledge it.
If it makes it any easier, those hundreds of millions of people are going to die anyway, the only tragedy about it is that it’s from something we could technically prevent or mitigate, but most things are like that… Traffic, smoking, guns, unhealthy diet… The climate changing isnt really going to affect the earth, our short sightedness and ignorance will just make lots of areas we can comfortable live in now much less comfortable or unlivable entirely. It’s going to suck, but do what you can with what you have and just the fact that you know enough to care means you have something to offer.
You are vastly underestimating what will happen if we allow things to continue as they are. We are already at the point of severe famine and 100’s of millions dying and global emissions have continued to increase at essentially the same rate as before every year. Every day that we do nothing the list of dead grows longer. If I were to do nothing but watch then I would consider myself complicit. I think the worst part is that we all know exactly who is responsible but still somehow do nothing about it. I’m genuinely honestly shocked that we don’t see them all as the mass murderers they are. This cannot be a sane world.
Despite this, I do appreciate the condolences.
No, we are not past that point. Stuff can happen fast. Christianity becoming a world religion after being some strange hippy cult for few generations, the collapse of communist eastern europe without a war, noone saw that coming. I agree it looks grim and I’m not optimistic, but I refuse to give up just a few years after grasping global warming. It is not too late and becoming a doomer is not helping.
Just go into a high paying field, and move somewhere that won’t be affected as badly. The apocalypse is BYOB, so start prepping.
It often feels like revolution is the only option
Well, first of all, that’s never gonna happen.
But more importantly, the boring shit is working. China’s greenhouse gas emissions probably peaked this year. The US peaked ages ago. The world isn’t far behind china. Taxes on fossil fuels and investments in renewables will see us through this. By 2026 at the latest, every year will see decreasing global emissions.
Well I’m afraid to say there were a couple revolutions. Maybe you need to check your history book.
Username checks out
I was certain that a gander was a group of geese. Why? Because apparently everybody who has ever used the phrase “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” around me was using it wrong. I just learned this week that a gander is a male goose. So based on misuse, I thought that the phrase meant that what’s beneficial for one is beneficial for the greater group, but what it really means is that what’s acceptable in the case for one should be equally acceptable for others in the same situation.
I’m nearly 36 and I would say that I’m smarter than most people, but this was a gaping hole in my knowledge that was pretty damn humbling to learn of and correct.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gaggle” still works
Oh wtf, this one got me.
Is this just a “happy wife, happy life” variation?
No, it’s more like “if Larry gets a 10% grade reduction for turning his paper in a day late to you, then I shouldn’t be getting this 20% grade reduction for turning this paper in a day late to you.” It’s more of a call for things to be fair and give everybody equal treatment.
There was a recent court decision regarding Donald Trump that, more or less, appointing a special counsel for the purposes of DOJ impartiality is not constitutionally acceptable. As a result, Hunter Biden, who was investigated and prosecuted via special counsel in order to maintain impartiality from the DOJ since his father is the sitting president, essentially argued that “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Meaning that if Donald Trump should have his case dismissed under the pretext of special counsel being an invalid idea, then so too should Hunter Biden. That decision was already generally seen as fucking silly, but the silliness was put on full display for partisan hacks and their audience.
I learned that in school, when we read a story about a proper gander.
Well, I just learned something.
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Alanis Morisette is not the artist that did the “I’m a bitch I’m a lover” song. Meredith Brooks is the artist.
I found out because I had the song stuck in my head and I looked it up on yt. The comments section showed me that I wasn’t the only one who thought the song was by Alanis Morisette
LlllinkAlanis Morissette did the song named “Ironic” in which she gave a bunch of examples of things that were not actually ironic, which in itself is ironic.
Fun fact. Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins met when Foo Fighters were on tour with Alanis Morrissette. Taylor was drumming for alanis at the time.
I always think of “You Oughta Know” when i think of her.
I still think/hear “cross eyed bear that you gave to me” instead of “Cross I bare”
Hah! Up until this exact moment, I thought it was “The cross eyed stare that you gave to me”
I’m not gonna click on that link because there’s no way this is true. You can’t fool me.
🤯🤯
TIL
Um, did she at least cover it?
Thinking the words, “just calm down” in the heat of an argument with my wife will actually work if I just try it enough times. Mathematically it should but it seems math doesn’t care about that.
My gorgeous wife’s ginger hair and flashing green eyes warned me off that tactic early on. And I’m alive to tell the tale.
Yes, I’m still learning that. Also giving emotional support instead of trying to fix everything instantly is difficult.
The longest was probably the vegetarian → vegan pipeline.
My position was that ‘employment’ of animals was humanely possible, if you genuinely treated them like you’d want to be treated.It was until I read how cows need to basically be kept continuously pregnant, that I realized there was just no way.
I believe, you could have a bite of cheese every year or so, if we don’t do forceful impregnation, but at that point, why even bother?I mean maybe eggs, if allowed to roam and given their shells back. But modern chickens are just absolutely genetically ravaged by centuries of breeding for absurd egg output and massive growth.
Before domestication they’d lay about a dozen a year. Now they lay once a day or so.
Chickens always gave a lot of eggs. That’s why they were popular since ancient times. As long as they had surplus food, they start laying eggs. A dozen a year is just misinformation - that’s only in the wild, during spring because that’s when they have a surplus a food. If humans feed them every day, then they lay eggs because they always have extra food.
We raised free roaming wild chickens. The hens had a high up coop we’d close to keep safe from predators that they’d return to on their own at night.
A dozen a year is just misinformation - that’s only in the wild,
That’s likely true, but I also have serious doubts that a chicken completely untouched by human breeding would output like the breeds bred to lay even if given unlimited food. I also doubt their bodies are made for such production.
They still lay about 24 eggs a month, sometimes more sometimes less depending on the temperature and if there’s a rooster around. Again, we had the wild breed of chicken (Gallus gallus). We also had guinea fowl and ducks.
It’s an animal that can reproduce a lot. Don’t know why people find that hard to believe but don’t bat an eye at the reproduction rates of rabbits.
As a vegan it gets old when people assume I still eat dairy, eggs, or fish(???).
I had to explain to someone recently that the person who told him chicken is vegan was fucking with him. He was genuinely still a little confused after.
There was a crazy amount of people conflating organic with vegan when that fur hat J6 guy went to prison and asked for a special diet too.
I generally don’t mention it if I can help it, or I just say I don’t eat animal products. But people still have a hard time figuring out basic things like honey is an animal product.
Look, I just don’t want to disturb the animals if I can help it, alright? It’s just super unnecessary for my survival.
How about chicken?
The US government stores over a billion pounds of cheese in enormous caves. I think we can probably get away with reducing production quite a bit.
I want to go there. with crackers.
Rinsing after brushing teeth. The fluoride in the toothpaste should stay on your teeth for a while to be effective. So you should floss, then brush, and wait to rinse or not rinse
I learned last year that you’re supposed to floss BEFORE you brush. I have no idea why no one ever taught me that.
Yeah you loosen up every thing and then brush it out. Actually, I floss, swish, then brush. I end with brush because the fluoride concentration in toothpaste is much much higher than in most fluoride mouthwash. I’d rather leave that on my teeth after I’m done.
I floss, rinse, then brush. The fluoride content of toothpaste is much higher than rinse, so I’d rather end having that on my teeth than a weaker dose from the rinse.
I’m referring to rinsing w water or even drinking water
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That’s only true in England, because they don’t flourinate their water. In the US, you get plenty of flouride from tap water.
Except for school I never went to any institution as a kid. No nursery, no kindergarten, no after school programs. Both my parents worked part time, so there was always an adult at home. For most my life I felt sorry for the kids who had parents working 9-5 and having to be in institutions and getting institutionalized.
I was well into my 30s before my wife explained to me why I was wrong. She was studying for these kind of pedagogical jobs, and while following her education on the side line, it really turned on a light bulb in my head: I was wrong.
While the home-raised method might have worked decently when I was a kid when more people did it, it would absolutely not work today. Most of my own issues throughout childhood and later basically also comes from not socializing enough as a kid. My own kids have been through the whole institution process because both my wife and I have had 9-5 jobs. Due to this, my kids are much better developed to tackle the world that they live in, and they have not lost any off the ability to think freely or anything that I previously believed was the negative effects of being raised in institutions. Of course there are some institutions that are better than others, but overall, their personel are a lot better educated to handle it than someone who has no education on this and only believes in “what was good enough for me…”
Even today, I sometimes meet people who want to home school their kids and such. While that might be a good idea in certain cases, it’s almost always done for the wrong reasons and without regard to how difficult it actually is if you want the best for your kid.
Funny, in American English, “institutionalized” means “sent to an insane asylum”.
I think this is compounded by the fact that many of the social institutions that used to exist are also greatly reduced, and children are expected to be much more structured now than they were. Used to be that kids could reasonably be expected to walk to a library or playground on their own, or play with neighborhood children, without being constantly supervised. (And yes, bullying happened, and yes, so did the Atlanta Child Murders. But the former was a much more realistic problem than the latter.) Kids were also going with parents to church, parents probably had some kind of social outlet, etc. There was, in general, more community. (I’m not bemoaning the loss of religion, since I think religion is trash, but I do miss the community that religion helped build.)
And yeah, most people I know now that home school kids are doing it to ensure that their kids aren’t exposed to ‘dangerous’ ideas.
