Changes

[East]

East, am not sure if it is personal evolution or merely cynicism, but yes I too have parts that are gone.

I believe that it is rooted in our fight / flight bias. The drastic changes prevent most of us from going bonkers. We all know people who have invented their own reality, simply by becoming so focused on one item. They have become detached from the reality that surrounds them.

Sadly, we have huge corporations / organizations / religious entities who exist solely to continue the fight of one ideology. And for whatever reason we support that. There are those that attempt to fix time and space to a particular event that happened decades / centuries ago. To me, such people (and their organizations) are preventing our society from evolving.

I think the fight/flight and protecting myself from going bonkers is a definite part of the equation ...so thanks! That helps a lot actually because it makes sense why I did it.

The shills and the people who spread propaganda and talking points wore me down and it became so ugly for me I just wanted to take a bath. The deception I think took it's toll and I realized if I was talking to a wall I might as well do something else with my time to remain sane. I remember thinking initially after I figured it out that too many idealogues were using deception o define the conversation.

I do worry, however, that too many people who should be part of the conversation will get weary as well and the idealogues and corporations and other entities who do not have the best interest of the population will achieve their goal. I think that is why this change is bothering me...I don't want to help them and I worry that silence will do just that.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

And pray tell me how many of these arguments did you win? How many neo-cons did you swing away from their con position even to a more moderate position?

Many, few, a couple, none???

In my religious debates I learned long, long, long ago that there is no real winning. The debate waged warmly, you may make a few points, but the person rarely, if ever, actually changes their view point thus you have just tilted at a windmill, and the windmill won.

Most of the older people I know who are still alive (around my age) have reached a point where they realize there are fights you can win and fights you can't win and its just a huge waste of time, energy and resources to fight those battles that you can't win.

You have sufficient experience now to know the realities of the situation. I think if you met someone with a neo-con view that you actually felt may change their mind with proper introduction to your side that you would warm up to the debate again.

Those are far and few between, and I don't know how well your experiences have taught you the hopeful candidates from the hopeless causes....

[Aike]

^ If I engage in a debate I don't usually expect to change the opponent's mind, at least in the sense of convincing someone else to adopt my views. But don't worry, this is not because I wouldn't want to convert people to my own views (of course I do), but because it's just something I've learned from my personal experience. Of course, changing the opponent's point of view is what a debate appears to be about in its very form, but usually the two fundamentally opposed views remain largely the same as before the debate (although maybe in a slightly modified form). But there's still a point in debating because one of the valuable things it does is conceptual clarification: arguing forces you to define the terms of the debate and to ground your views more firmly. Moreover, along the debate the issue explodes into a multidimensional one and you're forced to think about it from angles you're not familiar with. It has also happened to me that a debate has shaken my beliefs - but not in the way my opponent intended and only some time after the debate took place.

[jimcrackcorn]

I spent three years battling for LGBT Equality on a military forum and it took it's toll on my normally happy demeanor.

Politics & Religion were a large part of that equation and I knew from the start that I wouldn't be able to change many peoples perceptions of LGBT folks. I suppose the hardest part was putting up with all the derogatory names that were thrown my way, while trying to remain civil and polite in order to get my point across and not get kicked out of the forum.

I finally had all I could stand (was loosing sleep at night) so I stopped posting in that forum and joined GS where it is more peaceful and friendly.

When you've had a ton of "hate" thrown at you for several years, it can be damaging. Sometimes you have to let go of the fight and let someone else take your place.

I accept that my age has slowed me down, and I'm no longer able to mentally keep up with a heavy debate,,,, so I bowed out and sent my ass to the retirement pasture.

[ETOTE]

will always mourn the loss of my innocence, faith and trust in people thanks to my wonderful, selfish, manipulative and abusive parents.

[50Plus]

Part of the struggle with the changes is that as individuals we oft times argue from a position based in ideals. But we are arguing against those whose position is based in a collective (and usually historic) ideology. As we age, and theoretically become more mature, our ideals change. Yet 'their' ideology does not - it merely becomes more modern.

For my personal life journey, I look back on what I used to be. 35 years ago I would have been a card carrying member of the youth wing of the Tea Party, with wishful thinking of something even further right. Women were for sex. Gays were to be bashed / condemned / insulted. The environment was to be raped and pillaged. Anything different was bad.

Through various iterations I now find my self as an environmentally sensitive gay male who thrives on diversity and whose viewpoints are very liberal. I do not have issues with my past, or question it, for it is part of me. But I do look back in amazement as to how much I have changed. Others around me have noticed the change in me as well. I call it my personal evolution on the way to being a higher being.

At some point I do hope to evolve in to nothingness.

[Bluelight]

It's puberty, the sequel.

[East]

UGH...It is getting worse. Instead of drowning...I feel like I have already drowned and part of me is just gone....dead.

...and I am not even fighting it but I think I should be.

It just happened to me in the Wildlife thread that LONDONER posted. I really want to say something but I have no more words......

I haven't changed at all what I believe ...I just don't care anymore to defend or explain anything....

Puberty...the sequel....LOLOL...

[MikeW]

I don't know about you, East, but I've gotten to the point where I don't want to "argue" anything online. I do make my point -- put the information I feel is worth while out there -- but I'm not going to go round and round with people about it. Either they get it or they don't.

As for politics specifically, mostly I see politics as a kind of distraction. That is to say, politics does not address the real structures of power and how they operate. From my point of view, until as a society we're able to take off the blinders and identify these real structures of power, how they operate, who benefits by them (at the expense of the rest of us and the planet), then politics is a kind of no-win situation. Or, at best, it is the equivalent of putting bandaids on a cancer patient.

What is needed are radically new ideas -- not the same old same old right/left debate.

[East]

I don't know about you, East, but I've gotten to the point where I don't want to "argue" anything online. I do make my point -- put the information I feel is worth while out there -- but I'm not going to go round and round with people about it. Either they get it or they don't.

As for politics specifically, mostly I see politics as a kind of distraction. That is to say, politics does not address the real structures of power and how they operate. From my point of view, until as a society we're able to take off the blinders and identify these real structures of power, how they operate, who benefits by them (at the expense of the rest of us and the planet), then politics is a kind of no-win situation. Or, at best, it is the equivalent of putting bandaids on a cancer patient.

What is needed are radically new ideas -- not the same old same old right/left debate.

WOW...now THAT makes me feel alive (and not underwater) just reading it... I agree with you 100%. Almost no one discusses this and most people get crazy when you even bring it up which has actually been a factor in my silence now that I think about it.

Their think tanks and talking points took their toll on me....

Thanks for the post BTW...I feel better already....