What issue have you changed your mind on with age/life experience

11 comments

1. I used to think that church was a good thing. Now I think religion is one of the biggest problems in the world.

2. I don’t care about government spending. I used to protest that the government was “taking money from people who earned it and giving it to people who didn’t earn it”. I realized that taxes and spending are two separate, unrelated issues. The (federal) government (of the United States) just creates money to spend. They don’t need to take it from anyone.

   Yeah, yeah… deficits, interest on debt, OMG! inflation… yeah, yeah. That’s all overblown. It might catch up at some point, but ain’t gonna be in my lifetime.

3. Cars. When i was a kid I was so angry with how much space we give to cars,how easy it is for an accident to happen and thought i didn’t need one because I went to school,park and football practise on foot. Well was I wrong about that.

4. I’m coming around to the idea that someone fucking up doesn’t *always* mean you should remove them from your life.

   Another one — forgiveness is important. You shouldn’t walk around carrying grudges your whole life.

   And those moments where you fucked up, so when you think back, you cringe?

   You gotta work on forgiving *yourself* too.

   Forgiveness isn’t just for others…

5. In my teens, I had the typical American incorrect opinion of the French. ie snooty cowards. I realized as an adult that A) that was probably American propaganda due to France’s stance against the American-Iraq invasion and B) the French are magnificently rebellious bastards when the government goes against the wishes of the people, which makes them amazing in my opinion. French itself still sounds snooty though.

6. How often I do laundry. And that’s about it.

7. Your friend group doesn’t have to be people just your age. I’m one of the youngest people at my work, the youngest among my military friends, and the oldest among my local friends. Age really stops being that important after a while.

8. I grew up in an ultra conservative household then got to college and swung wildly the other direction…now in my 40s I realize that there’s actually nuance to most topics and it’s possible that one side of the aisle can be right (or mostly right) about topic A and be wrong (or partially wrong) about topic B.

   I also realized that a lot of what is right or wrong is opinion based which makes delving into the nuances to actually solve problems quite difficult.

   So I went from “if you don’t vote Right you shouldn’t vote at all” to “Vote Left or the world will explode” to “Huh, well this sucks” lol

   I also realized that theres a lot of money to be made in keeping people separate so I doubt theres much chance of reconciling most of these hot button issues.

9. All of them.

10. I used to be very liberal (not including the alphabet mafia). Now I’m very conservative.

11. When I was younger, I used to think that my generation would witness an exciting new era where the internet would connect people and facilitate reasoned discussion. This would in turn help to solve many of the world’s problems as we could overcome the divisions between different peoples and speak as equals.

    As you can see from the lack of world peace and the infighting here on reddit, this is clearly not what transpired.

    I’m now of the opinion that the internet has forced people to be connected against their will. By requiring people to participate in this strange new world for their daily bread, we have trapped them in something like small-town living on a global scale. By that I mean a lack of privacy, rampant gossip and fits of passion in the community, and petty spats over the smallest things.