Mostly a lurker here and not in the mood to go into detail, esp since it gives away too much personal info, but it's been a painful, fumbling 20+ year process to get to this point. For a tiny bit of context, I come from a different class bg (specifically, one of my parents did) than most of Hexbear, and I'm also in the upper half of the age range. Also not white.
Let me just put it this way. It starts with trivial inconsistencies that you notice in your day-to-day life. Things as simple and seemingly innocuous/"apolitical" as the way society talks about your culture vs. your actual lived experiences. One by one, these tiny hypocrisies and contradictions start piling up. Small lies or even "innocent" misconceptions from trusted authority figures, from textbooks, from people you love and care about, people you don't want to doubt. It is madness inducing. Just an endless cycle of disbelief, disgust, confusion, undirected anger, denial.
Eventually there came a point where I just couldn't paper over the cracks anymore. Also, the older I get, the more I realize just how damn much I don't actually know -- and how confident I was in my own ignorance at many points in my life. Once it's obvious just how many lies you've been exposed to your entire fucking life, all you can think of is "what else?"
tl;dr the "radical" left was the only place offering sober, logically coherent analysis of the state of the world and honestly, after COVID any last lingering doubts I may have had were utterly demolished.
Mostly a lurker here and not in the mood to go into detail, esp since it gives away too much personal info, but it's been a painful, fumbling 20+ year process to get to this point. For a tiny bit of context, I come from a different class bg (specifically, one of my parents did) than most of Hexbear, and I'm also in the upper half of the age range. Also not white.
Let me just put it this way. It starts with trivial inconsistencies that you notice in your day-to-day life. Things as simple and seemingly innocuous/"apolitical" as the way society talks about your culture vs. your actual lived experiences. One by one, these tiny hypocrisies and contradictions start piling up. Small lies or even "innocent" misconceptions from trusted authority figures, from textbooks, from people you love and care about, people you don't want to doubt. It is madness inducing. Just an endless cycle of disbelief, disgust, confusion, undirected anger, denial.
Eventually there came a point where I just couldn't paper over the cracks anymore. Also, the older I get, the more I realize just how damn much I don't actually know -- and how confident I was in my own ignorance at many points in my life. Once it's obvious just how many lies you've been exposed to your entire fucking life, all you can think of is "what else?"
tl;dr the "radical" left was the only place offering sober, logically coherent analysis of the state of the world and honestly, after COVID any last lingering doubts I may have had were utterly demolished.
This is exactly where I'm at right now.
And 100% yes about being the only place with logically coherent analysis, I'll never forget the feeling of the world starting to make sense for once.
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