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 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 wrote a lot about it earlier today. lemmy.world/comment/1641271

I’m a Gulf War veteran. While you would think that the conflict theatre would have be a life-shaper it was three events that happened immediately afterwards that truly influenced the rest of my life.

The first was days after we departed the conflict area. Given an opportunity to disembark for a day prior to setting sail out of the Gulf several of us had opportunity to “hit the malls” in UAE. As we were leaving we were approached by a group of men near our own age. They were Kuwaiti university students. Up until that moment we were just a bunch of tired jarheads looking to pick up a few creature comforts for the trip home. The enthusiastic thank you from these gentlemen for our assistance in “liberating their home” made us realize that despite any politics that may have brought us there, we did a good thing. We touched some lives in a positive way.

Weeks later our expeditionary brigade stopped moving across the Bay of Bengal for reasons unexplained. We sat for days with little information until it was announced that we were being diverted north to Bangladesh. What would become known as Operation Sea Angel was a response to one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in history. We spent the next several weeks engaged in humanitarian efforts, removing debris, distributing food and rendering aid, twelve to sixteen hours a day, every day. Being close to these people, seeing the pain and misfortune that was inflicted upon them through no fault of their own other than they lived in a certain geography, was a profound experience. We were once again able to touch lives in a positive way.

Only weeks later we finished up three overly-drunken days of liberty in Olongapo City, Philippines and then boarded up for the remaining float to Honolulu and then finally, San Diego. Only days after we departed we were advised that Mount Pinatubo had erupted. While we never returned it is my understanding that the Olongapo and the Naval Base at Subic Bay were mostly devastated. The thought that the vibrant city we had just departed was gone, in an instant, is still something that I think about to this day.

I left the Corps in '92. I felt I had done all that I needed to do there. I have since spent the remainder of my life in civil service of one form or another. I’ll never be rich, though I’ll be able to retire at a reasonable age. Most importantly, however small it may have been, I know I’ve done some good.

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.

Developing a bullshit detector and having basic empathy. Atheist; friendly to friendly people, hostile to hostile people; believe government should serve the people, never the other way around.

• Raised Catholic - was pretty religious when young.
• In adolescence, started questioning things that didn’t make sense to me (e.g., why would God not want people to use birth control if they couldn’t afford kids? Why would he make people have a strong urge for sex but not want them to have it except for babies, and all the more typical things).
• Struggled more and more with things that didn’t make sense to me as I i got older (if God created everything, knows what’s going to happen, etc., how does it make sense to pray for something? Should he changed his plan because I asked really nicely? Etc.).
• Finally realized that all the myriad things that didn’t make sense to me disappeared if it turns out there is no god.
• Free from that notion, everything has clicked into place for me and the world makes more sense. It’s been 40ish years since then.

Severe abuse by the church made me firmly anti religion for most of my youth, and then meeting religious people of varied faiths who weren’t monsters softened my feelings as I realized it wasnt all entirely evil. Then studying some of my family’s roots brought me where I am now: vaguely pagan while still acknowledging that I’m always going to be culturally Christian. I like to just tell people I’m a “recovering Catholic” for brevity and a laugh.

As for my social and political views, it was seeing all my friends come out as queer and realizing that I could either keep the far right views my family taught me, or I could learn to get my head out of my ass to keep my found family. Once I started forming my own opinions, I realized I got fed a load of shit my whole life(and also I’d wind up coming out too lmao)

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

Remember rule 1 in this one.

Life experience basically. All the propaganda and so on in the world means nothing compared to that

Grew up in a moderately catholic home, had a strong sense of faith as a kid. Hormones took over as a teenager and resided to not knowing if God existed. Had a spiritual moment in my mid twenties (no, I won’t go into online) became a pentecostal Christian. Put myself through the church wringer for a little over 10 years. Started deconstructing my faith and asking a lot of questions about what I believe and why a few years ago. I still have a strong faith in God but how I live that faith is very different to the last 15 years and is very different to what I consider “mainstream” Christianity. I’m so much happier not being in “church” and I feel free to accept myself and others more than I ever had. Still working on myself though. So yes, I still consider myself a Christian but had to spit out a lot of bullshit taught over the years.

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.

Through 40 years of details that are impossible to sum up here.

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"
• pascals wager. 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.

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.

Religious: I grew up in a deeply religious household, my parents are still very religious and they consider that the cornerstone of their lives. No judgement here, they are great people and I’ve never once seen them use their religion to hurt others. For me, I appreciate the moral lessons I learned in that church and I think it made me a more empathetic person. I just have no particular need for a religion to be a good person. Stopped following any religion in my early 20s.

Social and political: See also 1. Being bullied as a kid made me have a deep rooted hatred for people who harm others, which means I tend to champion oppressed people now. Honestly, however, this should be a normal human thing to do. I guess that makes me one of those snowflake liberals that are destroying America?

I was directly programmed by George Soros himself in the secret city on the moon, as all leftists are. Duh.

Raised in a Pentecostal church, which made the real world really hard to deal with. Ended up in public school, which started opening my eyes. Not in the classroom, just in the halls. Joined the Army. Met people from all walks. Saw the failings of policy while in Iraq.

A great deal of my negative experiences in life have been “for the Glory of Christ”

Fuck your imaginary sky men.

Religious views: I grew up going to church occasionally (maybe every month or two.) It always seemed fucking weird to me. Like, even my first memories of church I remember thinking along the lines of “wow the adults are all going along with this?” We stopped attending church by the time I was 9-10, and my dislike of religion has only increased since. On the one hand, for those that find it helpful to have a spiritual connection or believe in a higher power, all good. On the other, my social and political worldviews are colored heavily by two main ideas that don’t really mesh with religion, and especially not religion as practiced in the West.

The first view is simply live and let live. Meaning, no one should be legislating or giving a shit about something that in no way affects them. This can get difficult in a larger aspect because there are aspects of the law that affect me, but not directly. For example, even were I to have no kids, I would still argue heavily for strong educational programs because without them things that do affect me, like rates of poverty, crime, etc, go up.

Which brings me to my second point of view, which is “common sense” is probably just about the biggest misnomer in the English language, and few people actually possess it. We legislate and make decisions for fully irrational reasons that are often against our interest, see also, the entire Republican Party for the last 40-50 years. When it comes to these types of decisions, we should focus on rational, evidence based reasoning which often clashes heavily with the way religion works.

For example, combining these two things I believe that nearly all drugs should be decriminalized, regulated, and that as part of a comprehensive overhaul in our healthcare system, addiction prevention/treatment programs and even just safe spaces to do drugs should exist. If I want to do quite a lot of different types of drugs, that doesn’t affect you. Like up until the last 20 years or so, it’s an absurdity that marijuana was illegal everywhere, and still ridiculous there are places that it still is. That said, people who get deep into meth often turn into a societal drag because the addiction takes over, they start stealing, etc. In countries that have stronger focus around healthcare and treatment/prevention rather than policing and incarceration, they generally have more positive outcomes (lower rates of addiction, violent crime, etc.) and thus a better societal outcome for the rest of us. These sorts of policies however almost never get traction in this country though, because as stated above we often don’t react rationally and religion, which is based in virtually direct opposition to these principles, drives far, far too much (eg: > 0) of the conversation.

As for how I got this way, I have no idea. My family background is probably a feature-length Jerry Springer episode so it wasn’t really taught to me. My mind has just kind of always worked this way, and though I’m veering deep into copy-pasta territory, it’s all a lot like feeling really weird in church back when I was like 5.

Reading, talking to people, thinking, observations, etc.

So I grew up as a conservative, and vaguely Christian, but not really (meaning I went to church, but just sat there drawing in the bulletin). Later I was still conservative, but became an sincere Christian for well over a decade. Then finally I developed a chronic illness and experienced first hand how awful conservative policies were if you’re not part of a the majority. This was before 2013’s healthcare bill and I couldn’t get insurance and almost died.

Also during the pandemic, seeing Christians and conservatives go out of their way to NOT help the most vulnerable, by wearing masks and getting vaccinated, I was done with all of it. I’m now no longer Christian or conservative. I’m now liberal in virtually all respects and I’m not terribly concerned about religion. In terms of philosophy, I find taoism interesting. It’s a major influence on me, though I’m not sure I’d call myself a taoist.

So I grew up as a conservative, and vaguely Christian, but not really (meaning I went to church, but just sat there drawing in the bulletin). Later I was still conservative, but became an sincere Christian for well over a decade. Then finally I developed a chronic illness and experienced first hand how awful conservative policies were if you’re not part of a the majority. This was before 2013’s healthcare bill and I couldn’t get insurance and almost died.

Also during the pandemic, seeing Christians and conservatives go out of their way to NOT help the most vulnerable, by wearing masks and getting vaccinated, I was done with all of it. I’m now no longer Christian or conservative. I’m now liberal in virtually all respects and I’m not terribly concerned about religion. In terms of philosophy, I find taoism interesting. It’s a major influence on me, though I’m not sure I’d call myself a taoist.