Have you ever changed your mind about something big or deep-seated? How and why?

Did a bit of a search and didn't see a general topic like this so here goes

Everyone has their ideas about who they are, what the world around them is, beliefs about others, etc. Whether we learned from our parents, from environment or whether we had our own formation or any combo of the three; we all have our ideas. Some of those ideas are pretty deep set. So my question is as follows:

Has there ever been a time where you were swayed and changed a deep seated belief about yourself or how you treat others, etc? If you did...what helped you get to your new understanding? Why did you change?

In the interests in post involvement I will put mine down first

This might seem really insignificant to some but for some reason it was huge to me.

About a month ago I found out that for the last three years of college, my cousin, who is a bit overweight and has had an acne issue her whole life, has been being demeaned and emotionally messed up by her piece of crap roommate. She's talked to RA and has not been able to move. She has depression issues already so being further beat down has been awful for her. A couple of days later my wife and I are driving and we started talking about the general lack of humanity in this country...a very popular topic for us. We were talking about my cousin and I started talking about how if I met her I would want to emotionally rip her apart for what she did to my cousin. After a discussion, my wife said "what good would it do except to make the girl a martyr and potentially destroy someone who is already clearly hurting and projecting. I put it out of my mind then two days later, out of nowhere I started thinking about it and it occurred to me how right she was.

It wouldn't erase three years of her emotional abuse. It wouldn't do anything to help my cousin feel better. And more importantly it might make stuff worse. What if I pissed this girl off even more and she takes it out on my cousin even worse? What if...and here is what made me really think...what if this girl, although mean and offensive, suffers her own serious abuse as well? Would I feel better about myself if now two people were really hurt?

That afternoon I talked to my wife and said "I know this seems small to you, but I changed my mind about the situation...then explained the above to her

It meant a lot to me

So how about you?

a reply to: KyoZero

Yes.
I used to think that the majority (not all) of women that get abortions were useless hoes that live on government assistance and should be made to live with the responsibility they they created themselves.

Now I believe that they should be allowed to choose to abort the unviable tissue masses so that they don't create more people that will grow up in that culture and end up on government assistance.

I used to be pro-choice until I met my husband. His mother was an unwed 16-year-old who gave him up for adoption. He missed the Roe v. Wade decision by very little.

I might never have known the love of my life.

I use to be a Christian ...the freedom and emotional health that came with that change is indescribable.

my big ephiphany was realizing that we are all pretty clueless and therefore, blaming each other for what appears to be the result of lack of real, comprehensive, factual data. a condition that exacerbates the problem. this carries over into topics such as your op. alot of human beings are currently suffering with various emotional and mental struggles, that unbeknownst to them, are actually the end result of thousands of years of us humans abusing one another. it's systemic and generational.

a reply to: undo

Stars for everyone whether I agree or disagree

undo...great response I must say....I learned a lot by opening my mind and getting over myself

I used to hate all homosexuals equally. I thought it was a choice, and a selfish one at that. I thought they were gay because they simply didn't know how to relate to the opposite sex, and instead of taking the time and work at their shortcomings, they took took the easy way out. I saw them as weak, selfish individuals.

Then a few years ago I got to know the life of a homosexual post-mordem through a friend of the family who told me a story. He was privy to the mans personal possessions after he was deceased because he more or less inherited the home. He told me this simply because it opened his eyes to his outlook on homosexuals that we both shared. An outlook that was unforgiving.

The deceased in question was raised in a strict and unwavering Italian Catholic family that hailed from New Jersey here in the states, and Sicily originally. He was very learned and had degrees allowing him to be a college professor and a CNA. In his spare time he taught a foreign language pro-bono for the local community college and amassed quite a bit of real estate locally. They called him the man who never slept. When he did, according to the locals, it was 3 to 4 hours a night. He was very frugal as well. When he died he had cash and assets totaling over 4 million dollars, yet he never owned a mattress and got his food from the local food bank. He told his sister once, the only one in his family who was nice to him, that if the floor was good enough for his dogs, it was good enough for him.

He was running from something. That was obvious. He also had a low sense of self worth, and it was not just his habits outside of his home that led my friend to believe that. It was the nationality and religious preference of his family that drove him to work so hard to find acceptance elsewhere. They certainly weren't going to accept a homosexual as one of their own. That, and in his garage were some paintings. Self portraits. They were all filled with dark colors, dark images (one of which was him beheading himself), and nowhere in those paintings was there a smile on his face.

He was a tortured man. And it dawned on me.......why would anyone CHOOSE that way of life? Why would anyone choose to be that miserable to the point where you ran yourself ragged?

Homosexuality is not a choice in most cases. A person is born with it........in most cases. Some are the type I described in the beginning of the post. But in either case, depending on their upbringing and support system of friends, they will either be happy, well-adjusted people.............or not.

To look at it that way was a big change for me.

a reply to: Peacetime

oh how sad. : (

i agree. my kids had a friend when they were younger, who you could just tell was going to be gay when puberty hit. and sure enough, now that he's a grown man, he is gay. that was easy to spot too. so i don't think people can say he did that to himself, for gosh sakes he was just a little fellow when my kids would play with him. he preferred playing dolls. he was more interested in hanging out with my daughter than my son. he was feminine too. i'm sure it's not always that easy to recognize, but for goodness sakes, in his case, you could set your watch by the predictability of it all.

I grew up in a military family and work in Corrections. I always thought that pedos and serial rapists should be euthanized. Someone here showed about 7 years ago that there might actually be meds that can change them. I'm not totally on with that but I can see the possibility.

I used to be an agnostic theist now I am an agnostic atheist. Once I started actually looking into the issue my opinion changed.

I used to be racist then I joined the military and I fully embraced the mantra that the only color that mattered was green. I grew up a bit.

I used to be homophobic then I realized I was being an idiot. People are free to be whomever they want and it is none of my damn business.

I should mention I used to live in a town where the KKK was pretty active then we moved away and I later joined the military.

I used to think the US was the greatest nation on earth, but then I traveled the world.


I used to be extremely ignorant, but now I am a just a little less ignorant.

I was raised to be a fundamentalist christian, conservative, anti-homosexual and anti-abortion.

Now, I am an atheist leaning agnostic with an open mind towards spirituality.

I don't align myself with any political party. I agree with the conservatives on some things, I agree with the democrats on some things, and there are things that I don't agree with either.

I'll admit, it took me a while to come around on this one. It was really just ignorance on my part. A little knowledge goes a long way. My former attitudes are quite embarrassing. I now see being anti-gay as illogical as being against red heads. (Then again, you know how those red heads are... )

Abortion is the one thing I struggle with the hardest. I personally couldn't do it. I guess you could say I am more tolerant of it. I support anyone who wants an abortion during the first trimester, but I am opposed to 2nd trimester abortions. It has taken a lot of contemplation to get me to where i am at now. Personally, I would rather that everyone gets high quality sex education and unrestricted access to birth control.

The thing is, my opinions and beliefs are always changing and evolving as I am exposed to new information.

Same as Zazz....the day I finally worked out that organised religion is a scam, and the amazing uplift in outlook and consciousness that followed my decision.

I dont know what God is....but I know what it isnt.
No idea what death is, but the fairy land in the clouds is likely to be fiction.
Love is a deap seated attachment I feel for certain people and experiences in my life, but not some doled out ambrosia from a cranky old jewish man suffering from altitiude sickness.

The Point of it all ? :With some game time still to run, but the major plays having been made before now, its a learning experience. Not so much a game as an education, how to deal with problems and situations. From the serious to the tedious and including all the variances and subtle developments you encounter.

How you approach these ever more important trials and then all over again as other people begin to be involved in your time here.

Of course it could all simple be an array of random experiences, that at the end, you feel youve done well or not.
But at the final moment it exactly that....a random array of what life offers certain players and that you will drift off into the eternal sleep, unaware of the other participants past or to come.

Personally I hope for a peaceful cerebral state, perhaps like a dream that you thought was 'Heaven', where you can exist as you prayed for, with those you loved from family to pets. That its an eternal dream of your direction it can only be described as bliss. No hellish ground hog days lurk there, you summon those pleasant constructs and characters as required and as easily as you did your whole life when you dreamed.

On the downside, those who chose a darker path may well find that 'Hell' as being all they ever visited on those souls they abused as their line ran its course. How hellish can a place be where it portrays all that chills you inside and all able to produce some elegant and subtle barbs when you think you have found a way to escape the worst of it all.

Fin ? : Suppose Im wrong and we do have a meeting with a Great Architect.....
I can stand up and say that since my own awakening, that I did my best by my meagre means and abilities. That I shunned the charlatans and snake oil sellers and stood on my own two feet and ready to be judged as a man!

Thats my plan anyway

Ill jump on the christianity bandwagon. I was raised Catholic. Went to catholic school my whole life until i was 18.

I actually found ATS and there was a thread about Jesus being a symbol of the Sun. It took me awhile to click on it, but when i did it opened up the rabbit hole.

Around the same time I learned of astral projection.(from ATS again) Tried it every day. After 4 months i finally had a consciously induced OBE.

In my mind i thought, "why the hell isn't this on the front page of every news paper." Now I understand there is a war on humanities consciousness.

I also used to think the government actually cared about its citizens. that what we were told on TV was the truth, that what we were taught in school was was legit.

You know what they say. Ignorance is bliss.

I also used to be a cocky little &^%@ as a kid. Psychedelics changed that...

Yes.

I used to be a "believer" without hesitation when I was younger. As I aged and began to doubt my convictions, I became profoundly disillusioned, and found mundane explanations for 90% of the phenomena I had previous ascribed to "otherworldly" happenings. This also led me to doubt my spiritual faith and in time to profound depression and borderline nihilism.

I replaced my search for the truth I had hoped was there, for a search for the most objective possible interpretation of reality. A depressing investigation to say the least, as all evidence suggests there is little or no meaning or purpose to our existence other than random happenstance, and that indeed we may even lack free will as we traditionally conceive of it.

Without the usual cognitive dissonance driven existential terror management, I became profoundly melancholy for years. It was a dark time in my life.

Eventually however, I changed my mind yet again. One day I realized that due to the fallibility and limited nature of human perception (and all information processing for that matter,) a truly objective perception of reality was for all intents and purposes impossible. Subjectivity is intrinsic to all perception, even the most objective possible scientific measurements we can make. And incompleteness plays a roll as well. We can never have a truly complete picture of the universe or our place in it, because of incompleteness. (A fascinating subject unto itself.)

I then also realized that even the most ardent skeptic still believes in things for which there is no evidence. For instance, that their love for their child or significant other actually has some real meaning. (Versus simply being an evolved behavior, and neurotransmitters in their brain working in tandem with memory associations to create the subjective illusion of meaning.)

I came to the conclusion that it is for all intents and purposes impossible to escape from the human nature to create meaning from meaninglessness. Whether that meaning is "real" or not matters not. It is our nature.

Perhaps this was simply the new form my existential terror management and cognitive dissonance decided to take, because I could no longer tolerate the depression. Or perhaps it was just me finally giving up. But it brought me comfort. I decided that we cannot escape illusion, and therefore that I should embrace illusions and use them to my benefit instead. As well as allowing other people their illusions.

I stopped caring that I could find no proof for meaning. I made up my own belief system, engaging fully with at least the possibility that there is "something" and some meaning to all of this. If there isn't... oh well, I'm not risking anything then am I? And if there is, perhaps I would find some measure of gnosis enabling me to realize and experience that someday.

I am therefore now what I term "Agnostic, actively seeking and engaging with potential gnosis." Rationally skeptical, but emotionally and spiritually a "believer." As belief and knowledge are distinct, and I can both engage with a belief fully in order to experience those possibilities as though real (and in the hope and voluntary choice to believe that they are,) while also rationally in the back of my mind knowing they may not be and that it may simply be another illusion. An illusion I am willing to accept if true.

Ignorance may not be bliss necessarily. But surrender, for me, is. Peace.

I use to try to lie to myself about my sexuality and gender identity, I even joined a church group when I was young but never could identify with what I thought was a dogmatic belief system and felt like even more of an outcast. Joined the military but got a general's discharge after a DUI largely because I was trying to fit in be 'one of the guys'. That was almost 7 years ago and I still haven't had my Driver's License reinstated and the stigma of having 'alcohol rehab discharge' on my DD214 has kept me using my military experience to gain anything useful and permanently most many opportunities. I also still think the Re-hab program I went to wrongly labeled my as alcohol dependent, in others words an addict but I now realize they get money for each person they sign up for their 'program'.

I am more content now than I have ever been largely because I realize who I am and it's okay to be different. There is so much more important things than making money though most of has to slave through a crappy job just to make rent.

My views have changed a lot over the years. I still feel like I have the capacity to learn and maybe complete a degree but simply do not have the time or money to devote.

I am also not sure why this became a thread about abortion.....

I used to believe that mathematicians knew what they were doing...

/long boring story about investigating conspiracy and the history of human beings on earth
/long boring story about inventing a new form of mathematical division
/long boring story about me checking official sources for how one _really_ determines the perimeter of an ellipse

Then I find out this...

There is no simple exact formula: There are simple formulas but they are not exact, and there are exact formulas but they are not simple.

I was never told that there was an area Mathematics had not solved yet.

Now I don't know what to do.


Mike Grouchy








A small list of formulas the mathematical world uses to solve for the perimeter of an ellipse.

•Ramanujan I and Lindner formulas: The journey begins...
•Ramanujan II: An awesome approximation from a mathematical genius.
•Hudson's Formula and other Padé approximations.
•Peano's Formula: The sum of two approximations with cancelling errors.
•The YNOT formula (Maertens, 2000. Tasdelen, 1959).
•Euler's formula is the first step in an exact expansion.
•Naive formula: p ( a + b ) features a -21.5% error for elongated ellipses.
•Cantrell's Formula: A modern attempt with an overall accuracy of 83 ppm.
•From Kepler to Muir. Lower bounds and other approximations.
•Relative error cancellations in symmetrical approximative formulas.
•Complementary convergences of two series. A nice foolproof algorithm.
•Elliptic integrals & elliptic functions. Traditional symbols vs. computerese.
•Padé approximants are used in a whole family of approximations...
•Improving Ramanujan II over the whole range of eccentricities.
•The Arctangent Function as a component of several approximate formulas.
•Abed's formula uses a parametric exponent to fine-tune the approximation.
•Zafary's formula. Improved looks for a brainchild of Shahram Zafary.
•Rivera's formula gives the perimeter of an ellipse with 104 ppm accuracy.
•Better accuracy from Cantrell, building on his own previous formula
•Rediscovering a well-known exact expansion due to Euler (1773).
•Exact expressions for the circumference of an ellipse: A summary.

p.s. Jesus helped me solve it, and just as the lady said earlier in this thread. Yes. Being Christian continually brings me emotional anguish, and restrictions on what I can do.

a reply to: KyoZero

I've changed my mind/beliefs a few times over the years on different topics but I'll just mention the first one that popped into my mind when I first read your post.

I became politically aware (for lack of a better term) when I was about 19 years old and moved out of my parents house and found work wherever I could. At the time I completely bought into the line, "Democrats are for the poor; Republicans are for the rich." I also believed that the liberal ideology (allegedly embodied by the Democrats) was truly about freedom, about not being categorized and given opportunities.

Then, as I began to place roots in a career path, and started to see how much of my puny paycheck was taxed, and how many people out there (either intentionally or by a series of unfortunate incidents) were completely living off of everyone else, and how excessive regulations (key word being excessive) really hurt businesses large and small (and prevent many potential entrepreneurs from taking the chance and starting a business.... and what I saw the liberal-leaning academia doing to kids in the public school system (my 10 years younger sister and her friends at the time)... I shifted towards being a so-called conservative/Republican.

Fast forward to a few years ago and I had the latest, I suspect final, shift in my political ideology. I have come to realize that in the end, there really is no difference between the two political parties in the U.S. For a number of years it, when I was unable to ignore it, it caused me to have a fair amount of depression. It was very difficult for me to realize that, when it comes to those who make decisions and create policy on my behalf, there were no good guys; only bad guys. It took quite some time for the realization to settle in that nobody, anywhere, ever, was going to be looking out for me. I (and the rest of us that work hard, don't game the system, etc) will always be exploited, taken for granted and severely abused. When I finally came to terms with it, I didn't necessarily become happy about it, but I realized what I had to do.

I'm stuck in this horrible system and rather than try in vein to fight it, my family and I are best served if I basically work within it. I am terrified for my almost-4-year-old son and what the US and the world will look like in 20+/- years, so I just have to do my best to put myself in the best position possible financially so that, in the event he needs help, I can be there for him.

a reply to: KyoZero

What a FANTASTIC thread! I've changed my mind on many things.

I was a Christian till I was about 30. Now, I'm atheist. It was a slow transition and a matter of simply letting myself question, learn and grow instead of closing my mind in fear and repeating things I'd learned that I really wasn't at all sure about. I "started over" in MY spiritual journey instead of adopting someone else's.

I used to think guns should be illegal. (LOL! I laugh at myself now.) But when I first met my husband, it was because his cubicle was next to mine and his conversations with others on the topic made SO MUCH sense, I couldn't help but change my mind and fall in love as well. LOL!

In fact, I have changed my views on so much over the years, that I've learned how easily my beliefs could be wrong... So it's hard to form firm beliefs. I usually sit on the fence on most issues. And I like it that way. I don't have to fit into a political group or be "devoted" to any particular agenda. I like the fluidity.

Yup, I gave up the religious dogma I was indoctrinated with as a youth with all its attendant guilt and fear.

Sex is not bad, eating meat on Fridays is not bad, not paying to go to church is not bad. Eating meat while having sex and not going to church is awesomeness defined.