what dearly held beliefs of yours have you changed
That my older son's calm and well-behaved demeanor was a result of my sterling parenting skills.
What persuaded you?
Having another kid.
I changed from supporting to opposing the death penalty from learning how poorly the system seems to work. There are other examples that I can't think of at the moment; they're generally moves from right to left on issues of low media salience.
1 frightens me, and maybe I'll never have another kid just so that I can maintain my illusions. (Not that PK is especially calm and well-behaved; but he has other virtues.)
I've stopped thinking Kevin Drum is a jackass. He actually seems like a pretty nice, well-intentioned guy to me, and I think he handled some pretty harsh feminist criticisms very well. I still disdain Larry Summers, though.
Oh, also I've gone from thinking Canada is the answer to hating Canada and then to a probably more reasonable balancing position that it has many strengths and advantages but that for better or for worse I am an impatient bitchy American.
what dearly held beliefs of yours have you changed
That if I really wanted something, I possessed the will to do all the work required to get it.
What persuaded you?
Repeated failures of will. (though I am not sure I fully have changed my mind; a successful application of willpower might change my mind back.)
I was going to ask if this was the first time you've posted the same thing to both blogs, but then I saw that you hadn't done that.
It's a shame. There's stuff I'd like to talk about in response to this, but nothing I'd talk about in 'public'.
1) Where (geographically) I'd be willing/happy to live. Mostly a function of enforced change (had to move, had a longer commute, realized that if it's on a train it's not as bad as I feared).
2) That people of faith are not necessarily stupid or irrational. Took a very long time, and involved repeated one-on-one contact with religiously observant people I respected (hadn't had much such contact at all in my growing-up years). A much smaller part of the change is attributable to reading and learning about less-high-profile religious activity that is in line with my values (i.e., progessive faith-inspired change didn't end with Lucretia Mott).
3) That some political leaders sometimes do bad things out of genuine malice or malevolence, rather than simple incompetence. Came mostly as the result of repeated, wholehearted attempts to understand a particular policy stance, often involving discussion with friends who agreed with said leaders. In a few cases also came out of direct responses to my letters (to elected officials).
4) That welfare reform was a good idea. Thought it was awful in '96, and had lots of reasons. Still think those concerns were valid, but now are outweighed by the value in actually respecting all people -- disabled, poor, homemakers, whatever -- enough to think they are capable of paid work. Now, if we could just get living-wage jobs....
5) That universal health insurance is legitimate policy goal. Happened for two reasons: a) Duh! moment when I realized single-payer insurance is not single-payer care. And b) solidifying of a devout economic belief that freeing people to change jobs at will is a good thing, and that national health insurance would reduce the stickiness/friction that makes so many of us hang on to bad/unpleasant/awful/tedious jobs just because our health insurance is tied to them.
That got long. There is actually one more, but it's not public.
Is 6 to me? I'm much more factual here than I am over there about personal stuff.
I think that Witt's 4 is something I mostly have changed my mind on, too.
6 was to Becks. Sorry for the confusion.
I've never heard a note of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs that I know of, but I hate them for that stupid name. Worst band name in the history of music?
12: No, the worst band name in the history of music is "Better Than Ezra."
You weren't confused, Teo. I did have this post up at the other site first, when I had just planned on making the point about the YYYs. I thought of the connection with the other post later, and the bigger question, and decided to move the post here.
I have changed my mind: not every single bourgeois white east-coast person should be rounded up and drowned in potato sacks. Sometimes you fall in love, people, and suddenly, where's your Revolution now?
15: thank god for that. I hate drowning.
17: Is being an anal cunt worse than being an uptight bitch?
Well, exactly.
Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be fucking your wife.
Apo: There's also this. But both bands are trying to be shocking, so they're disqualified. "Better Than Ezra," by contrast, has "earnestness" written all over it.
20: Yeah, I kinda thought that would take longer. Don't ruin my image of you, apo!
I used to believe that commenting seriously and extensively on blogs could be a good use of my time.
questions like this are great.
1) the israeli-palestine question. i was really pro-palestinian in my youth (could tell you all day about chaim weitzmann's early zionist slogan "a land without people for a people without land"). changed by falling in love with a graduate of ponevezh yeshiva (has anyone heard of it? teofilo?) and listening to his arguments. am now much more moderate -- am not pro-either side.
2)i used to think nothing could be genuinely transcendental - and now i think it's possible, in a limited way. you will probably think i am crazy but it was a big deal at the time.
All I've got to say is that if those guys are Better Than him, Ezra must be pretty bad. (I've held that view, unchanged, since their first single came out when I was in high school.)
When I was a kid, I went through the motions of opposing evolution, but then was just instantly convinced upon hearing it presented in high school biology class. I used to be a Nazarene, then I became a devout Catholic, and now I've settled into "normal" Catholic (i.e., not attending church) -- I was convinced to make the first change by the fact that all my friends in high school were either just secular or Catholic, and Catholicism made more sense to me than Nazarenism (which isn't saying much). I used to think that it was really bad to have sex before marriage, but then I did it and it didn't seem so bad.
I used to be a Rush Limbaugh listener, but now I'm a socialist -- I think I was kind of convinced of this through reading Slavoj Zizek, which is weird in retrospect. I used to be a Republican, but now I vote for people who (a) are not Republicans and (b) stand a reasonable chance of winning, which in practice means I'm a Democrat. I know that I'm not likely to get what I want politically in the US, but the Republicans have really bent over backwards in recent years to prove to me that they are dangerously corrupt and bloodthirsty, so I'd be pretty satisfied to keep them out of power at this point.
I've been thinking hard about this question, which is a very good one.
I don't think I've changed any of my deeply-held beliefs since I became an atheist (from being a devout Catholic) at 13. However, my beliefs now are more tempered and less crude; I am much less dogmatic about them less likely to push them on others. I used to be a socialist activist; now I'm a socialist who doesn't do activism. I used to be a crusading atheist; now I'm a quiet atheist.
I've settled into "normal" Catholic (i.e., not attending church).
Both my sisters married Catholics and were willing to convert, but slacked off when they realize that that meant they'd have to spend more time in church in two months (about 40-50 hours) than their husbands had spent there during their entire lives up to that point.
The minimum standard for Catholics seems to be rejecting pagan practices, rejecting competing religions such as Judaism, and taking confession about twice a year. But only the middle standard is strictly enforced.
Somewhat like dagger aleph, I faded from militant leftism after about 1984. Partly I came to understand that some of that stuff was wrong, for example enthusiasm for third-world dictators, but mostly because I realized that it wasn't going anywhere.
I also used to believe "Do what you love: success will follow", but I now know that that is not true for everyone. Really it's only true for already-successful, socially-competent people who are thinking of switching to something riskier but more gratifying.
A principle I still believe: Being a sectarian fanatic prepares you well for adversity -- and that that's a good thing, because you end up getting a lot of it.
I used to think that "If your heart is pure, you can get away with anything", but now I know that the truth really is "If your heart is pure, you have no one to blame but yourself".
29: I've been cynical for a long time, so I don't remember ever believing, ""Do what you love: success will follow." People say it to me all the time though and it pisses me off.
Thankfully, the left sectarian group I was in had no enthusiasm for third world dictators, or for Cuba, or for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, like other groups I could mention. The individuals were mostly reasonable, but then a delusional faction took over, and believed that bingogate in British Columbia signalled the imminent implosion of the capitalist system. No lie. Then there was a split, and I and many others were just like, "feh."
Bingogate was supposed to be a hyperlink, not italicized.
It's highly acceptable, and even preferable, for a man to not wear undershirts.
actually, strike that. The belief was that it is unacceptable for a man to not wear undershirts, an illusion which has since shattered.
what dearly held beliefs of yours have you changed in the last few years?
"Country music sucks." Persuaded by actually listening to some decent country music, like Hank Williams Sr. and Merle Haggard.
"Libertarians are mostly tools." Well, some of them are, but this was before I was exposed to (for example) the Jim Henleys of the world and realized that yes, sometimes people do learn from experience and broaden their perspectives.
"I will never touch [X]."Where X is a range of substances that one really shouldn't use but are nevertheless fun to do. In consequence, I've also acquired much more sympathy for and understanding of the addicted than I previously possessed.
"Moderation is Good." After having reacted against the Marxism-lite of my youth, I believed (for just under a decade) in the more-or-less consistent value of "moderation" and "balance" and "even-handedness." Accordingly, I scoffed at the naivete of hippies and anarchists and radical leftists. Well, I still think those folks have plenty of flaws, but the last few years have taught me that "balance" is the idiot cousin of objectivity, and that many of the people who swear by it are in no position at all to be scoffing at the naivete of hippies and anarchists and radical leftists.
"Do what you love: success will follow." I used to think that, and then I thought "do what you love, and if success doesn't follow, at least you spent your time doing what you love", and then I thought "I want health insurance."
I used to think people who claimed to like Coltrane were pretending, but now I mostly like Coltrane.
Incidentally, getting back to what Becks says: what was so awful about that Yeah Yeah Yeahs show? I've mostly heard good-to-amazing things about their live act.
36 - I know. Everybody says their live acts are great. At the one I saw, Karen O was sooo drunk she was falling all over herself and could barely stand, let alone sing. She kept talking to some friends of hers in the front row and ignoring the rest of the audience. There's punk rock and then there's pathetic and unprofessional. (And she had a strike against her from the start in my book for not playing an instrument.)
On the subject of the post, I guess one thing I've changed my mind on in the last year or so is the importance of taking risks. I've learned it can be good to do something stupid and ill-advised a little more often than I had in the past.
37: I wonder if there isn't something of a gender dynamic going on. Most of the good reports I've heard come from (male) Rawk Writers who find Karen O. to be Crazy Sexy... which I imagine could distort perspective a little.
The question is a good question and needs a bit more though before answering properly (although quite a few earlier comments have echoed changes of belief that chime with me).
However, here's one thing I used to believe and still do:
Music is the best thing ever.
This touches on the transcendence thing mentioned by mmf! in 25.
Also,
I used to believe that all (or most) classical music written _before_ 1900 sucked.
I no longer do.