Having simple conversations and open discussions with people who held views I thought were similar to mine.

In my teens I was a big philosophy reader and this turned into economic and political philosophy. And after I read and learned enough I did what any young informed man would do, which is go onto the internet and debate randoms online. I think I would have considered myself a Marxist, and a lot of that background was informed by my readings and own personal experiences of growing up in poverty and working what felt like endless and unfulfilling jobs. It seemed like the morally correct position to take and it seemed like it had a lot of philosophical backing to not be wrong.

But then as I talked to more people I started to just run into... weird stuff. A lot of my philosophical underpinnings were based on things I viewed to be right or wrong. And on some of these debate forums (just here on reddit) I'd run into people who were heavily stalinist or leninist with a large radical anti-capitalist component in their rhetoric. But an objective historical lens shows us the outcome of these specific camps and ideologies which were literally paved by blood and starvation. I think the breaking point for me was when I encountered someone saying that North Korea was better and more ethical than the USA. I had just watched a documentary or read a news article or something detailing that some North Koreans had to eat fucking tree bark soup just to not starve. And here we have some guy typing freely from his computer in an air conditioned room not starving trying to sell this line that there was nothing wrong with literally one of the worse regimes that currently exist. I couldn't break through to him and it slowly occurred to me that radical ideologies can consume even the most well intentioned people.

Material conditions: :sleepi:

People on the internet challenging my "objective" blind trust in the news: :frothingfash: