It's easy to be stuck where you are, to think of the world around you as an inconvenience where anything that doesn't quite match the values you have is wrong. After all, it doesn't agree with you, it must be wrong, right?
And then something happens. It could be a conversation, or maybe it's something you watched, or perhaps you just woke up one day and suddenly realized the thing you thought you knew was wrong.
And it's okay.
Learn from it.
Like these people.
Reddit user, nathan_thinks, wanted to know what finally got you to change your mind when they asked:
"When was the last time you changed your mind about an important belief, and what persuaded you?"
It doesn't even have to be anything super life-altering. Honestly, it could be a belief you've had since you were little because that's the only world you've known. It's the only path you were shown.
You Take Up Less Space?
"I was brought up to believe this:"
"Traditional funerals - with the body embalmed and buried in a cemetery 6 feet under, encased in a waterproof sealed vault - are the only way to go."
"But now, I much prefer the idea of a simple cremation with ashes (cremains) scattered or buried in a requested place."
Back2Bach
A Huge Failure
"I used to be very anti-drugs and kind of assumed criminalising drug use was OBVIOUSLY the only sensible thing to do. Like, a world where drugs are legal? Unthinkable."
"But watching The Wire and a documentary called The House I Live In really turned my thinking upside down as they introduced me to the reality of the failures of the war on drugs."
thinreaper
Just Enough To Get By
"1-a couple of years ago, i realized "i don't need to do my best" Sure, i could give my best to get a better paying job, but what use will it be if i don't even have free time between working and sleeping? None. I can do my best and make a really good presentation. But is it really that much different from a "slightly better than average" one?"
"I don't need to do my best, i just need to do enough."
"2- i don't need to be optimistic. I always thought i should believe in the best result possible, but then someone broke that belief. Furthermore If i don't expect anything good, i don't get disappointed."
Blowst
Doing Anything For That Cheddar
"I always wanted to become extremely rich, and was sure I would sacrifice whatever it took to achieve that goal."
"Now I want to have financial stability and have some passive income, but I prefer to enjoy life with my family and friends, or spend time doing my hobbies."
"I saw a really young son of a couple that are friends of my family lose his life to blood cancer. He did not have time to fulfill any important goals. His life vanished before he could start to enjoy true freedom."
"Time is a finite asset, and no amount of money can purchase more."
ezanchi
You know what helps make you a smarter person? Reading.
You know what helps make you a better person? Critical reading.
Don't believe all of it until you've done it the right way.
The Internet Being Used For Something Positive For Once
"Not the last time but the biggest change of opinion was believing vaccines cause autism. I had my first kid in the mid 00’s and most of my adult conversations were at a crunchy mom group. In 2006 we could finally afford to get a computer and internet and I dove in. Looked at stats, info from the WHO etc. and then talked to my wonderful doctor. Back before the anti vax movement was really organized online it was a lot easier to find reliable information."
awkwardlyherdingcats
"Thanks for the hope, going through this with my sister and her young family now. The amount of garbage I have to refute from her social group of also stay at home moms (not knocking the lifestyle just the credentials) is tiring."
It_Happens_Today
A Switch Flipped
"I left Mormonism."
"Why? I did some reading from sources that my faith didn’t supply. It was really that simple."
"It might seem crazy, but my religious beliefs were in a special column that meant I didn’t view them through a critical lens. The same way no one critically examines if their baby is cute or not, I never critically examined my faith. Some precious things we put on a pedestal. And then one day a switch flipped and I asked, “why can’t I examine it critically? Seems like it would be worthwhile.”"
"It took a matter of hours to see it was all a sham."
daveescaped
Right Under Our Noses, Flouting Their Nonsense
"The last few years have really brought into focus the difference between harmless conspiracies/beliefs and those that hurt people. My dad is really into alien conspiracy and younger me would have tried to argue with him. Now I'm just thankful that he's not a Sandy Hook denier."
"You want to believe in ghosts and LoCh Ness? Cool! Just don't force your kids to eat crystals instead of getting vaccines, thanks!"
TransFattyAcid
"I'm kinda the opposite. I used to think conspiracy theorists were relatively harmless. And then someone who bought into the lizard people thing blew up part of my city and people who believe in Q tried to overthrow the government within 2 weeks of each other. I'm pretty strongly convinced of the slippery slope when it comes to conspiracy theories now."
idreamoffreddy
Most beliefs come from a narrow view of the world, an inability to grasp the troubles and problems of others. However, a tiny moment, calling out to you, can make everything you thought you knew change.
A Situation To Help You See Through All Lenses
"Marriage equality."
"It's not that I was "against" it, I just didn't see what all the fuss and fighting was about. In my eyes marriage was just a piece of paper and that piece of paper doesn't keep people together. So why go through all the legal fighting and expense just to be able to get that stupid piece of paper."
"Then I was living with someone. We had been together a long time. He was involved in a very serious accident and was touch and go for a bit. I was not able to provide any input on his care because I was not his wife. I was just "a girlfriend". His parents - whom he had little contact with - were allowed to make all health-related decisions while he was unconscious, even though I knew what he would want (based on our end-of-life discussions). Not having that stupid piece of paper, made a huge f-cking difference."
"That situation really clarified the fight for marriage equality for me. Our society - rightly or wrongly - affords so many rights and protections for married couples. People aren't fighting for the right to spend 50k on some stupid wedding or to use labels like husband or wife. People are fighting for the right for their union be legally protected in the eyes of the law."
"It bugs me that it took for something to happen to me for me to change my mind. I try to be better than that. But I suppose it's better than never changing it at all."
EttaJamesKitty
A Broken System Meant To Help Ends Up Hurting
"I was in support of the death penalty, because I (still) believe there are some crimes heinous enough to warrant it. But in learning about cases where people who have been sentenced to death were later conclusively exonerated, I realized that our justice system is not nearly accurate enough to have the death penalty. We have absolutely put innocent people to death, and that happening even once should be enough to abolish it."
paulcosca
"I recently came to this same exact shift in belief. I’m a corrections officer. I work with a lot of scumbag pieces of sh-t, some of the crimes they committed are almost too heinous to believe. At first, my belief in the death penalty became more and more concrete as I learned about the sh-t some of these guys did."
"And then two months ago or so, a prisoner who had done 30 years of a 65 year sentence for breaking into a woman’s house and raping her was exonerated by DNA evidence… yeah, that’s when I started doubting that belief. Even with all the advanced forensic science we have, it still took until 2022 for that guy to be proven innocent. If we had the death penalty, not only would that man be dead, his name would have been tarnished forever."
"Yes, there are some crimes which warrant death. But the possibility of faulty evidence, bad trials, lying f-cks, etc is, in my opinion, just too great for me to support the death penalty."
New-Income1328
Always be willing to learn more, to gain as much knowledge as you can about the world and the people in the world. Never be content with stopping where you're at. That's the only way you can grow.
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Life and death. One of the eternal struggles. Who gets to have what?
The death penalty is a searing hot topic that is right up there with abortion.
There are people firmly against it and firmly for it.
How do we deal with the most insidious of humans? People who are depraved and left misery in their wake.
Is it enough to just have them rotting in prison, still breathing, when they claimed the life of another?
Many feel an eye for an eye is appropriate, others... not so much.
Redditor_ramgab_wanted to discuss one of the world's most controversial topics. They asked:
"How do you feel about the death penalty?"
I'm not sure how I feel. It seems like a situation that has to happen to you somehow, to truly know how you'd feel.
Bad System
"There are people who deserve to die, but we can't trust our system to make good choices." ~ EarthExile
"The main problem but not the only one. If someone is executed for a crime they didn't commit the file is closed and whoever did commit it is free to continue."
"We got rid of the death penalty here in the UK for this very reason. A man called Timothy Evans was hanged for killing his wife. The man who actually killed her, their landlord John Reginald Christie went on to kill many more." ~ NiceOneCenturion
Doesn’t make sense...
"I personally think it should only be used for serial killers or mass killers because they’re just going to be going on and keep doing it. Pickton, Clifford Olson, Ted Bundy deserve it. In Canada Pickton is close to getting out after 25 years. So Canada’s most notorious serial killer will walk free? Doesn’t make sense. You can’t rehabilitate that." ~ jenh6
you killed an innocent...
"Some people undoubtedly deserve death. But how do you make sure you have REALLY got the right person? Judicial mistakes happen, and are more common than we like to admit. Lock someone up, and if there is a mistake you can correct it. Kill him and you are a murderer - you killed an innocent. That is why I am against the death penalty."
"EDIT: Some cases you can be pretty certain. You go to the guy's house, there's bodies buried in the cellar, body parts in the fridge, you know the whole works? Yeah I don't even care if he's mad, some things you shouldn't get away from - and if he's mad, its the sort of mad we don't need to recover."
"Other than this level of certainty? Even outright signed confessions have proven to have been extracted by guile (even going as far as saying "this will help us get the true guilty person!") from the innocent and weak-willed." ~ Tuga_Lissabon
Anders
"So let's take a person like Anders Breivik from Norway who slaughtered more than 70 kids on an island. There is zero doubt he did it. He deserves death, not a cozy cell for ending so many lives and ruining many more. That's where I'm for the death penalty. There is zero doubt he did it. They caught him there, with the guns. The plans. The manifesto." ~ Zonyxe
Gandalf
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” ~ Not_Zorns_Not_Lemma
"Lord of the Rings. Gandalf to Frodo on why Bilbo didn’t kill Gollum when he had the chance." ~ Helophora
Good points. Some people are truly heinous and need to be put down. But giving other humans that power of life and death, feels extreme.
John Knows...
"Against. Even the tiny chance of an innocent being sent to death is too much. Also the people that do the injection are not trained. Sometimes a few tries before they do correct and they die. There was a John Oliver episode about it that was eye opening." ~ Masfoodplease
Research
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmatesAs long as the state can’t guarantee that no innocent person ever ends up on death row it is immoral for a state to execute people." ~ Heiminator
"All of them were convicted before the invention and modernization of forensics."
"Therefore it’s not a great argument when we can pinpoint a crime to an exact individual nowadays. Back then it was based mostly of circumstantial evidence but now we can detect the perpetrator with something as small as a strand of hair. That’s why not a single person on that list was convicted after 2005." ~ ___And_Memes_For_All
No Trust
"I don't think the government should have the authority to kill people." ~ DaveSW777
"I barely trust the government to get my identification correct let alone have someone’s life in their hand. They fuck up things on a granular level constantly. Should they really have the power to kill?" ~ ArchiveSQ
Switched
"No. It is better to not kill the guilty than to kill one innocent person by mistake." ~ Plastic-Eagle5966
"I’ve switched over to this side as I’ve gotten older. I used to be on the side of 'if the evidence is there and it’s damning enough, then the convicted should die.' But that first proposition, “if the evidence is there,”... if I’ve learned anything in the past 4 years especially, it’s that we can’t seem to collectively agree on reality in general. So no, seeing as we can’t, as a society, agree on reality, the death penalty should absolutely not be a thing. One innocent person put to death is too much." ~ ThatsMyQuant
Worst of it All...
"Some people definitely deserve to die, but that doesn’t mean anyone else deserves to kill them. Also, it’s kind of a get out of jail free card. I’d take death over life in prison any day (although it usually takes decades for the state to get around to executing people on death row for some reason, so it’s sorta the worst of both worlds)." ~ bananafishandblow
So many sides to one coin. This topic feels like it's never going to find resolution. Which is so often the case when death is involved.
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