I don’t know, sometimes the though of “what if all my leftist ideas are false? What if trans people are just mentally ill? What if gay people are just deviants?”
I honestly really don’t like it…
It’s good to question your beliefs I guess, it’s how you grow, but it sometimes makes me really uncomfortable. Why does this happen? Can I stop it? Should I?
Why does it happen? Because the world is crazy and if nobody does anything about it then it starts to feel like you’re the crazy one. It also doesn’t help that there’s all this propaganda out there to make you feel that way.
But what do you do about it? Questioning your beliefs on a factual or analytical level is very useful. I don’t think I could have reached my current beliefs in the first place without that openness to new information and critical eye towards what I knew.
But I think the important thing is to separate that out from what you VALUE. What are the things which you care about independent of what the facts are? Do you value treating people kindly? Then it shouldn’t matter if it turned out that some other group was actually inferior. That shouldn’t change that core value. Now if you only value people based on how useful they are, then thinking that someone else was inferior would change how you treat them.
Thinking about my own beliefs and values, my political beliefs have changed a lot over the years, from vaguely American liberalism to some kind of communism, but my values haven’t changed. That’s because the values nominally espoused by the mythological American national identity are good ones. What’s not to like about freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness? Democracy sounds great!
But as I learned more about the world, it became more clear how America failed to live up to those values and more precisely, didn’t really hold those values, or at the very least had subtly different meanings of them that created wide gaps in how those values were acted on.
“Freedom” in America is something you can buy. The more money and power you have, the more free you are. And the freedom to use that power to exploit others consequently means you’re less free if you’re poor.
“Equality of opportunity” that is blind to historic inequality and power structures creates this illusion that everyone had a fair shot to succeed or fail and therefor “deserve” where they end up where in reality we never started on equal footing and where we end up is largely an accident of birth. Rich people aren’t necessarily better or harder working than poor people. People don’t actually get to keep the value of their work, it’s just not taken through taxes, but by capitalists in the form of profits. (Also, this is another values thing, but even if the assertions of meritocracy and equality of opportunity were true, I still don’t think a society with this level of poverty and inequality is an acceptable outcome even if people somehow ended up where they were through their own failures.)
Democracy in an unequal society where the rich can put their thumbs on the scale isn’t really democracy. Plus when you learn about the founding of that “democracy”, you learn how explicitly it was set up to favor those powerful few over the many. This is kind of one of the things that makes me feel crazy. I didn’t read about this on some obscure internet blog or commie book, literally everyone in the country learns about the founding in school and more or less learns it’s anti-democratic bend. It’s not hidden, it’s just that everyone kind of forgets it or doesn’t really internalize the way it relates to our experiences. Also, if we like democracy so much, why do we effectively suspend that democracy for half our waking lives when we go into work? Why shouldn’t people have a say in that? “Nobody’s forcing you to work” doesn’t really work when the alternative is starvation and homelessness.
I still want the ideal, I just recognize the ways I’ve been lied to by people who claim to share that ideal. And that’s where you have to be careful. Not everyone is honest about what they want. ( Sometimes even with themselves) There’s the saying on the left “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds” because for some of these people, when you really confront their beliefs with evidence that contradicts it, instead of growing and changing, they just reveal their true colors. Some people who talk about equality while being racist aren’t just misinformed, they actually do believe in hierarchy and the concept of equality is merely a way to rationalize away the that hierarchy. Sometimes you show people how the US fails to be democratic and they reveal that they don’t even think democracy is good. That people are too stupid or evil to rule over themselves.
So yeah. Test your beliefs about the world, but the only way you have a metric to test them against is if you know what your values are in the first place.
Right or wrong is rarely as binary as you seem to be imagining. It’s a spectrum. Alignment with reality is contingent upon a habit of seeking better information. If better information comes along, any intellectually healthy person should be willing to accept it and integrate it into their understanding of the world.
Also - cultivate a habit of knowing that it’s ok to be wrong. Your beliefs don’t define you as much as HOW you choose to shape your beliefs.
We have pattern-seeking brains that instinctually crave a sense of certainty that rarely exists in reality. We always have to be aware of that. We also live in a society that unfortunately reinforces this tendency.
Don’t strive to be “right.” Strive to be well-informed.
You seem to be obsessed with a certain area of thought, particularly with your own sexuality & that of others. You should get therapy and figure out your own sexuality before examining this any further. There’s something extremely wrong with worrying about other people and where they put their genitals.
Ok, let’s run that thought experiment, what if we’re wrong?
All too often, even if my premise is wrong, I’d get to the same results. Even if I agree with their premise, they are monsters. However you want to marginalize people for different preferences or presentation or not matching their body or skin color or gender, that’s no excuse for the abuse, taking away human rights, taking away normal accommodations for everyday life. Treat people like people.
Equally the thought experiment just proves the original point. Let’s assume there are people who believe the government is full of waste, fraud and abuse, and we need to fix that. They haven’t presented anything to convince us that’s true, their actions cutting people and agencies without investigation, due process, contractual requirements, or regard for constitutional checks and balances is quickly a much bigger problem. Then you have those same people acting above the law, a very suspicious correlation between cuts and personal enrichment of those involved, and you’re firmly in bizarro world territory where the asylum is run by the real lunatics. Even assuming the worst of people employed by the federal government, I can’t conceive of a way this isn’t far worse, proving my original belief
The mile markers along the road to truth are ideas we used to believe were true.
Further truth can only be obtained by holding currently accepted truth to the highest standards of scrutiny.
There’s one single thing in the entire universe that I’m absolutely certain of - something nothing could ever change my mind about: the fact that it feels like something to be. That there’s qualia, subjective experience. I could be a simulation, a brain in a vat, or something else entirely - but it’s undeniable that it is like something to be whatever “me” is. Everything else is up for debate.
Now, sure - there are things it would take a lot to convince me otherwise about, but I’m also not married to my ideas. I don’t attach my identity to them. I’ve been wrong before, and I’m almost certainly wrong about plenty of things even now. I don’t reject ideas just because I don’t like them. There are uncomfortable truths in this world, and not believing them doesn’t make them untrue. Even politically, it would be statistically absurd to think one side is right about everything and the other side is wrong about everything. It’s a mix. The challenge is figuring out where you are mistaken.
As for the examples you mentioned - homosexuality and transsexuality are human-made labels, ways to describe patterns we see. But like all labels, they’re rough generalizations. The differences between individuals even within these groups are vast - so much so that it starts to put the usefulness of the label itself into question. Personally, I’m just me. Tomorrow I’ll be a slightly different version of me. I don’t even fully identify with who I was yesterday - let alone some rigid label that society wants to stick on me.
Don’t stop it. It’s healthy.
Question everything.
I’m questioning your profile pic.
(Profile pic checks out lol)
It’s important to question your beliefs when presented with evidence. My views on pacificism have loosened a lot, for example.
But the two view you mention are ones where the left is objectively correct. Homosexual behavior is a biological fact in almost all animals and non-binary gender systems exist across the breadth of human cultures.
Any belief system which serves as a permission structure for brutalizing others can safely be rejected as false.
pacificism
Hmmmmm
Lol oops. I have no specific thoughts on pacificism, truth be told.
I’m more of an atlanticist myself.
It’s a good thing to question your beliefs every once in a while. Sometimes people get things wrong, and sometimes ideas need re-evaluated.
The way I look at gay/trans/etc is to take MLK Jr’s advice: judge people by the content of their character.
If your leftist ideals are just that trans people exist and gays aren’t deviant then I would like to extend an invitation to the ShitLib party.
'cause that shit ain’t leftist. It’s just human. I’m a ShitLib and I support LGBTQ+. Nearly all of us do. You don’t have to be a commie.
I used it as a catch-all, I’ve got a few ideas I think many people would consider “radical”, but they’re not the point of the post. I picked general LGBTQ+ things because it’s what was on my mind, it could very well have been my stance on car dependency, drug legalization, the justice system… Also, what’s a shitlib?
A shitlib is what radical leftists sometimes call Liberals
Daily, but on a much smaller, pettier scale. What if I’m wiping my ass wrong? Nobody taught me exactly how to do it, and it’s not like anybody is around to notice and say “hey, you know you do it like this?”
I try not to think about my own opinions on big picture stuff as I can spiral fast.
Oh, you’re one of THOSE people. You should not be allowed in shared restrooms. What if someone sees you? What if a child sees you? For the sake of the children, banned from public restrooms. And yes this needs to be debated at the highest levels. I want to see days of congressional debate over your personal habits and how unconscionable they are.
Those happen too honestly lol. “What if I’ve been reading wrong all my life, somehow”
As a bidet owner, let me tell you that only wiping water to dry yourself is the best way to wipe.
You’re using all 3 of the shells, right?
One up, one down, and one to polish!
As a trans person, I have various mental illnesses. None of them is ‘being trans’, but it’s likely some of them are related, particularly gender dysphoria. In regards to your actual question, I’m so glad you’re evaluating your beliefs! Everyone should deconstruct and know why they believe the things that they do - and if there’s no good reason, to stop believing them - regularly. It’s the sign of a curious and humble mind.
The real measure of whether or not an idea is true, at least in personal view, is how well does it hold up to your internal concept of ideal self?
We do not possess a source of universal truth. Sure, there’s math and elaborate painstaking work done by scientists to identify what is true to the best of our knowing, but none of that is a “universal” truth.
After all, 1 + 1 = 2 only works when both of the 1s are the same things.
1 apple plus 1 orange does not equal 2 apples, you know?
Going back to the main point, if your version of your ideal self prefers for other people to be happy so that you can live in a world with as many happy people as possible, then ideally, leftist concepts and trans rights would be a truth for you.
What would matter to you about the lives and sexualities of other people is: are they happy?
If they are, great!
If they aren’t, treat them as they want to be treated in that situation.
I assume that that is something akin to your ideal version of you.
If it is not, I’m not properly equipped to identify for you what is truth.
But I will say this: if you think that trans people or gay people are deviants or messed in the head, what does it matter to you?
If the entire nation of bumfuckistan started having gay sex from 8.30 to 5, Monday through Friday, what does that matter to you?
How are you affected by the actions of other people that you never interact with, that you never encounter, and that you never see?
Even if it is the most degenerate, horrible thing that can ever happen, it’s between two consenting adults.
They’re not going to hold you down and make you watch. You won’t even ever know it’s happening.
So why would you even give the first fucking thought about it?
If it’s weird, we can be weird together.
