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  • I’m 31, I was most conservative in my teens when I was in a private Christian high school in the south. Then I went to college, worked at a jail, went to law school, and in the process learned about the world and the people in it.

    I am still astonished at the people who have done similar things and still don’t have an ounce of compassion for the poor and struggling. Conservative values only make sense when your sense of self only encompasses you, your family, and your religion. Once you realize that you are a part of something bigger, and the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you it’s a lot harder to think of them as enemies or pitiful souls who need to be saved.

    When you realize that people are people, and we are all the same, but for our circumstances, then it’s impossible to be conservative.

    • I think some people have trouble conceptualizing those around them as human. From what I can tell it's not intentional cruelty, at least at first, they just struggle to conceptualize and understand the idea that all of the people around them have just as dynamic and complex inner worlds as they do. When it's a struggle to make that connection, it's easy to go through life ignoring the plight of those around you, disregarding them with the same ease most people dismiss a warning on a computer.

      • As someone formerly in the same boat, I think belief in the Abrahamic religions makes it hard to identify with the plights of others, because if you believe in a just, loving god, then "those people" have the religion and hardships that they do for a reason (and the reason is usually either "it's part of God's plan" or "they made bad decisions").

        When you base your entire worldview on a faulty premise, you can use sound logic to get all the way to libertarianism without a problem. Once I reexamined and discarded my belief in the Christian god, it was like flipping a switch; I went from douchey religious Libertarian to bleeding-heart socialist almost literally overnight.

      • I'm skeptical that many conservatives have dynamic and complex inner worlds ... I don't see much evidence that they think much about anything, but rather offload as much as possible onto others. My mother, as she gets older, appears to actively avoid thinking for herself and has begun the decline into right-wing thinking. She likes the Daily Mail to do her thinking for her.

      • I agree, and I honestly think its the push for individualism over community that causes people to unknowingly become solipsistic like this. I think a lot of people don't even realize how much trouble they have conceptualizing those around them as human, let alone having empathy for them

    • "private christian high school" That sounds really bad...

    • Once you realize that … the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you

      Therein lies the disconnect. Religious zealots regard people like that as abominations to be destroyed in the name of their god, not people to be loved.

    • All it needs is a little self reflection on your actions in the current world. If you never question yourself and always assume your choices will lead you forward, you will never get even a hint of what’s realistic and what’s just egotistic bs.

  • Actually I went from moderate liberal to pinko-tree-hugging-anarchist-commie-radical thing.

    Some folks did the math For me, it was watching shit go down in Ferguson 2014 and then realizing this what America looks like a bit too often. Next thing I knew, I was outraged and reading Das Kapital and singing glorious Bolshevik anthems.

  • I was always leaning liberal and now I'm even more leftist. Mainly because conservatives got even more dumb.

    And I'm someone who grew up with parents that were staunch republicans and made me go to church every Sunday. Then I turned 18 and my parents are still christian, but they don't do church anymore. hmm wonder why. Also one of them hates republicans now and switched registrations. I don't even think older people even believe that whole "you get more conservative as you get older" garbage.

  • I was born in 1970 and have steadily grown more and more toward the left. Mainly that's because the right has gone completely insane.

  • I had what turned out to be Semi leftist ideals as a kid. As a teen I went through an Anti Conservative edgy Atheist ark. Intellectual dark web tried to turn me conservative, but while I was watching Sargon and other Alt Shite content I was always watching some leftists. My homepage was a nightmare. I believed in the marketplace of ideas, free speech, and socialism. But I didn't know the word socialism. I was a no theory having motherfucker. So, I became an anti liberal mad at SJWs for thinking everything was more important than class and that Class wasn't important at all. However, the right ended up being homophobic and shit with no principles and also didn't care about poor people are class.

    So I'm a communist cause I finally found the politics that actually cared about humans. The politics that were treated as "impossible" my whole life. As I age, I only drift further and further left. I challenge more of the grand narratives I was raised with. Even if I was to "get something to conserve" there is more out there than my crumbs.

    We need to end capitalism so there is a future.

    • Question...what drove you to Communism specifically? As opposed to, say... democratic socialism? I've read the communist manifesto by Marx...and I have to say, while tend to agree with some of the points made throughout...there is definitely some parts of the manifesto I do not align with. Do you have any more modern recommendations for a good communist society outline? Im trying to bridge the ideological gap in my mind because I despise capitalism in it's current form.

      • Sorry, I'm late responding. Haven't been on here enough. I fundamentally see Democratic socialism as insufficient. I see capitalism as the problem. Theres the TLDR up front. For clarification, Capitalism is a system that splits us into two groups. Those being owners and workers. Owning your home or a business you work at isn't what we mean. Owning the means of production that give you the ability to extract value from workers is. This is class struggle. The rich owners want as much work for as little money. The workers want as much money for their work.

        Now, I'm not trying to get into a debate on this, but this is bad. It creates a conflict and tension in society where one side has the power. Now, lets look at another system for a moment. Slavery is bad and had to abolished all at once. For if the slaver kept any power and leverage all improvements in the conditions of slaves could be retracted to suit the slaver's needs.

        We could say "don't abolish slavery, but try make it ethical", but not only does this fail to address the moral issues with slavery, but its also ineffective at preventing future abuses and the reduction in rights for the group of people without power.

        So, return to capitalism. You have media, beholden to ad companies (the rich by proxy) and the rich who fund it and invest. You have politicians who rely on donors. The more you look the more you find that capital is power and leverage.

        Those without have little beyond labor power and the threat of things like violence or sabotage. So, what little treats we win in a demsoc or socdem model will be always subject to the capitalist class allowing it and us maintaining the tension that won it in the first place.

        Thus, like the slave owner would worsen the conditions of slaves again. The owner class would worsen the conditions of workers. You can't reform this or slowly improve it to a bearable state. It has to be abolished. And it has to be replaced with a system of collective ownership of natural resources, automated industries, and the ownership of the means of production by the workers who work there.

      • As for recommendations. Not really. I have my own ideas, but frankly I believe in local community, education, and autonomy. I don't believe the final form of society will resemble a central authority saying what it ought to be. So I feel what matters is giving everyone the freedom to solve their local problems in their own work, place, and community. I think this will be achieved via a government structure built around workers, unions, and democracy. I see the workers banding together to run the business and business unions forming unions around trades and then these interacting with local government for resource allocation.

        I feel like more details is me trying to prescribe what it must be. My primary issue is capitalism and I'm open to discussions about the next step. I'm open to imperfect solutions. Capitalism isn't perfect. It has market crashes, recessions, depressions. We would be fools to believe communism must be perfect and not just better.

  • I think we radicalize when we get older. The issue is that the boomers have radicalized to the extreme, turning into the people their parents gave their life to fight against. So we are turning ourselves to the other direction. Also, the center in the us would already be considered right in Europe so having a mild leftist opinion is perceived as extremist.

162 comments