I’m only 29 now… my biggest shift has been from thinking that education and learning and universities and knowing stuff was the most important and noblest thing there is… to thinking that any degree which doesn’t directly lead to a well-paying job is a scam, and that universities are monkeyhouses for people who can’t deal with the real world.
Not a homophobe, but a bible believing “hate the sin, not the sinner” stance Christian to a current staunch GLBT advocate. Also, from pro-life to pro-choice.
I was a screaming liberal for years. Then I figured out that liberalism is just as oppressive and ineffective as conservatism, just on different sets of issues. Now I guess you could call me a moderate anarcho-captialist or strict-interpretation constitutionalist,
My biggest change of opinion was actually the realization that I could be wrong. Followed by the realization of just how often I could be wrong.
I did a fairly major religion switch (Catholic to Pagan to Zen Buddhist). I can’t say why I changed my mind, really, it just sort of happened.
I also have made a fairly major shift from my college days as an angry minarchist libertarian to the social lib/fiscal moderate progressive (Obama Republican, perhaps?) I am today. Grew up Republican in a town full of broke-ass white people and seeing essentially all the worst stereotypes of welfare paraded on a daily basis (my dad was so hard-up for employees that I was a full-on shift manager at his general store at age 17, bossing around ladies in their 40s and 50s who simply didn’t give two shits about anything but their pin money. Literally the only full time employees to this day have been members of my immediate family, and not for lack of trying to find some.) My folks were always the kind of Republicans who didn’t much care about your skin color or religion or who you were having sex with as long as you were clean-cut and responsible, and I took that away. Got to college, and between learning more about the causes and issues of poverty and watching the Clinton and Bush Jr. years go by as an increasingly savvy adult started changing my outlook–first to minarchy, when I didn’t have much and wanted to keep it. As I started having more with job promotions etc it became apparent to me watching my friends and acquaintances go through life that ability and drive only go so far, and a lot of it is luck or chance–with that understanding I became a lot more in favor of setting up societally-based mechanisms that would keep the lights on and food on the table for the unlucky. The final step in my transformation was along those lines, only with the benefit of a few more years and understanding how long an unlucky streak could last–a case in point, two friends of mine who are married graduated in the same field with similar GPA, etc. Basically, qualification-wise, indistinguishable. He’s a senior engineer in his field with what seems like his pick of jobs (as in, he jumped companies to a better position last year in the midst of a particularly down spike). She’s been out of work for three-four years, was laid off with no explanation from her first and only job in the field, etc. When I can witness that and see someone who’d have gone from a year of $50k/yr employment and a letter of recommendation and then nothing for years, I can’t blind myself and claim that she brought it on herself.
I realized that girls aren’t scary.
Maybe that wasn’t an articulate enough thought to qualify as an “opinion” though, so I’ll say this instead:
But not this:
This one.
And I used to support capital punishment, but now do not.
When I was 20 I would not have accepted that utterly contradictory conditions could exist. The cat could not be both alive and dead at the same time. I now see that this is the general condition of nature except in very isolated circumstances with all sorts of conditions attached. Or as the drunks say, it is always happy hour somewhere.
I used to be against gay marriage. Then I confronted myself with the utter illogic of my position and I am now for it.
I used to think we should lower the drinking age.
Now I often think we should raise the voting age.
Disappointing experiences with church-going in my early years led to rejection of any kind of religion, making me sort of agnostic. Now I’m still against the church, but OK with God. I find myself reading about spirituality, and praying (never rejected praying). Maybe because I’m getting older and want to be on the safe side :)?
And…I’ve always had a bad relationship with my mother, who had her share of problems. Now we’re something like friends. I feel sorry for her - but still have to push myself to man up and do the right things and be a good daughter. But I DO do the right things, and feel better afterwards.
That the government should have nothing to do with industries that are not essential to society, and should leave other ones alone (within legal constraints and taxation reasonable to society, of course).
That everything in one’s life is impermanent.
That every political ideal is confounded by human nature - and rather than it being people that are wrong, if the ideal doesn’t take people into account, it means that the ideal is wrong. The only good political ideals are ones that take human nature into account at the outset - the rest are crap.
I went to a Catholic, All Male High Scool on Long Island. Homophobic epithets were thrown around all the time. It was pretty much standard practice to use all of the usual terms. I then went to college. Pretty early on, I threw out a homophobic epithet, and got a response like, “So what, I am gay”. So were other people in the room. Light clicked on in my head. Gay people actually exist, and they are some of my friends. I liked them before I knew they were gay, how does that knowledge change my relationship? It doesn’t. That original gay guy that opened my eyes is still a facebook friend of mine, 21 years later.
I use to be more tolerant of the extreme, extreme right-wing. I mean the crackpots provide us with so much free comedy. Then I grew up and realized some of the really looney ones aren’t performance artists. They are dangerous.
I realized that my parents did in fact know what they were talking about most of the time.
When I was a kid, I didn’t know (or didn’t think I knew) any real gay people. I didn’t like them, simply because that’s what the other kids said. I’ve always been a liberal-type, but just didn’t like the gays.
I moved to San Francisco many years ago. I have met many gay people. I am truly ashamed of how I felt before.
Joe
Homophobe to supporting gay marriage is actually a big one for me. I had a bunch of friends in high school that were nerds like me and couldn’t get any women. It never occurred to me that one of my close friends wasn’t actually trying to. He came out in college, but we were at different colleges, and he hid it from me for years for fear I would disown him. Truth is, had he come out in high school or even college, I probably would have. But years later, he finally told me, and the revelation that he was gay and yet such a great guy literally changed my opinion overnight.
Other things have come full circle. That is, right wing in high school, left wing in college and the first part of my career, then right wing again after graduate school.
Oh, and I was NEVER going to get married (celebrating my 13th anniversary to the greatest women in the world this year)…
I used to be pretty homophobic, but I got over that in the second half of my 20s. I currently have a few good friend and many more acquaintances who are gay. There was a period of several years when I lost touch with a really good friend because of my homophobia, and I really regret that.
Also, I used to be pro-life. Looking back, I think that my view of the whole issue was a bit simplistic. Though I loathe the way that the issue has been shoehorned into a dichotomy, if I were forced to choose one of the prevalent sides, I would pick pro-choice.
I’m much more agnostic now than I ever was as a kid.
I used to like dogs a lot more than I do now.
I can’t honestly see any reason for pets now, other than everyone else in my family seems to like them.
I went from trying my damnedest to convince myself I was religious to full-fledged atheism.
But the biggest change is simply one of tolerance. One day I realized that most people are doing the best they can and if I find them annoying it’s probably at least as much me as it is them. I still find them annoying, but I can at least see how bitchy I’m being!
Oh, and life is short as hell. And love doesn’t conquer all, but it sure does make the battles easier.