Have you ever changed a long held belief?
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But if we as humans are not really capable of changing our beliefs, regardless of what they are, then a lot of these debates are pointless, aren't they? I'm not a psychologist or psychologist, so I'm not bringing an expert perspective. I'm sure there's a lot of research on this and how human change held belief and how they form their beliefs and all that goes into that instead of soil. I'm just looking here for examples from all of you for your own experiences
Darrisha Daniel
@Dee94 · 1:54
And a bunch of, I guess you could say negative things about my personality that I didn't necessarily believe, but it just kind of seemed that way and yeah, just kind of over time, like forcing myself to be more friendly and open towards people that I meet kind of showed me how easily I can make friends and be social without even trying, really. It was part of who I was and am
Hi Darrisha Any belief about yourself is probably the hardest type of belief to change, I would think because that image of who you are, you build up over time and then at some point you cannot get beyond that and to kind of look at yourself from outside, if you will, and from a different perspective and then realize that you can be somebody different or you are somebody different. And that's truly amazing. Thank you for sharing
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:39
I think we need to find ways to honor the differences and create a few different places that are governed more efficiently, reflective of who we are and what our resources are. I hope that's sounds reasonable in terms of what I tried to stay here, but that's kind of what I've been thinking about with this question
But if people have not fundamentally changed and I think there is hope and there is a way to kind of go back to that if we can be more surprised. So anyway, that's how I look at it. The second point I want to make was if you go down that path that you said about breaking this country up, I hope you realize the factual lines are not really that clean. It won't break into two clean pieces
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:11
I've been cross country a number of times through my earlier career as a musician three times, and then more recently about four years ago. And what I see is goodness. Absolutely. I see the general behavior of human beings trying to be good to each other. All that is true. And yes, the media definitely highlights the fringe of this world for sure. I'm not disagreeing with you there. I don't think this country is run efficiently. I think the electoral system is a mess
Alexandra Hobson
@alihobson · 1:11
Hi Arish, thank you for this question. For me it was not necessarily changing one belief to another, but more so gradually taking in information around me. As I've gotten older to form my own beliefs growing up, I was never really forced to believe in something or like my parents never really told me what to believe in, for example, religion or like a political stance, stuff like that, which has allowed me to become very open minded about things
Barbara KB
@barbarakb · 1:41
Such an eternal question. Such a great question. Always, always, always. I don't know anybody who hasn't changed. I think we all change now. I think a lot of people aren't aware that they've changed. But, boy, if I look back at my life, where I was in my twenties as to where I am now completely, I've changed in so many ways. And honestly, I think some are good and some are good
Katie Callahan
@katiecal · 1:53
And so in middle school, I started really kind of changing my beliefs. And it's kind of crazy, like how set in one thing you can be, and then you learn new information and you can completely disagree with what your past self thought. So, yeah, I think this is a great question, and I think I'll a lot of people have had this, not with politics only obviously, but people change. And it's interesting
So my own examples have been also, it has taken time whenever I have changed one of my beliefs, it has never been like a flip of a switch. It's like those different stages, right. First there's denial and then there is acceptance, and then there is you go and do your own research and over time, only you crushingly start accepting and at some point you realize you have started believing something completely different
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:54
So we're not talking about spiritual in the sense of like, there's a monotheistic God who's doling out punishment and reward and that sort of thing, but more in the sense of what is this that keeps us all in unison in terms of thought and imagination and curiosity, things that science can easily explain. Those are the things I've kind of become fascinated about later. And now I feel like I'm a strong advocate for emotions
Hi Daiwan, thank you for your reply and explaining how you have had a patient to change your belief. I think the one thing that you mentioned that really struck out to me was how you changed many things once your children are born and that is something I can completely empathize with. I think once your kids are born the perspective changes so fundamentally, your priorities change so fundamentally that a lot of things that are important no longer seem important and a lot of other things become important for you in life
So I think that it depends, right? And I don't know that it depends how long you've held belief, because we could say that religion was a part of my life for 30 something odd years, and yet it took a number of years to let it go. Here I am approaching 47, and I believed these negative, horrible things about myself until this past year, and that fell away in a matter of months
I think that's what really makes us human is to share those experiences or the narratives, something that not only captures our mind, but captures our heart. And then suddenly it'll make us pause. We're not on guard. We're not defensive. We're not considering that we must fight against, defend against or something someone's view we're allowing ourselves to receive
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:29
So that was an example of where I had a long held belief and how I had viewed women up until that point in terms of dating and courtship and all that stuff to which it kind of got turned on its head. And she was one of the pivotal factors with that. And also just a part of me just growing up
Hi Seeking Plum, thank you for sharing your perspective on this thread. I was really struck by what you said about stories. That's actually a really powerful insight. I had not thought of it that way. But you're right. When people when you tell a story as opposed to just tell the fact or make a debate a case, if you just simply tell a story, it does kind of get through our chinks in our armor
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:05
This was such a fascinating conversation, and I feel like my beliefs have evolved and changed in so many aspects of my life over the years that it is really difficult to pick just one. But I'll say that most recently, I think a person belief of mine around children, and whether or not I personally would want to have children has definitely evolved purely based on just witnessing people in my life creating families in various kinds of ways
And then Ali of a sudden the feeding space, I noticed that there's community being built and actually people being rehabilitated who have mental health issues or economic issues through the community and experience that firsthand. And then I went to India and I saw it happening at a scale where foster children are being brought in and becoming educators and facilitators themselves
Hey Bowie, thanks a lot. That is a great example of the change in belief and what led you to it. I think similar to what Indy also posted, it's not even about like storytelling or convincing. You just see of things happen around you and what you saw with all the changes happening, people making a difference in the community, and then what you saw with the people you know and bringing up children and kind of how it affected you
Robert K
@Neopatriarch · 1:47
And of course, now my question is, why does anybody have to rule over you? Will we have to work together? Yeah. But can we do it voluntarily? I think so. And if we get your dream where you divide the United States up, I'd like to join with the people who want to live voluntarily and not live under the sort of Damocles, as it were, where the government says this is the way you're going
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 3:03
Thank you for this. I've actually been speaking with many people about their belief systems. And I don't mean religious belief systems. I mean east in terms of overarching narratives about their Teleology. I have a friend of mine who is a scientist who's been a virologist for many, many years. And when I say they're a scientist, they're not dogmatically a scientist, but they would consider themselves atheistic
And this happened to me in the way that I was in University and I was about a semester away from graduating from school and I got sick and I had to pause my schooling. And basically life sat me down. I couldn't keep just plundering forward as I had been going. And at that time, a lot of people came into my life that helped me understand that it was okay to sit down and to think
When people, I think, have these kind of beliefs at the foundation of it, it's much easier to reach that hand out and to help others and to guide others and also to receive help and guidance from others as well, because there's that foundation that I care about you or what's better for all of us helps all of us live
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