The pandemic and seeing just how much my fellow Americans truly do not care about the lives or well-being of others.
Sadly this; and that most of my fellow countrymen/women/everything in between are apparently brain dead when it comes to politics, that and how pervasive conspiratorial thinking is. Not fun thought experiment conspiracies either, straight up reality denial
I was a altar boy in my teens. One time in winter we had to attend a funeral. First we were in church, so I put on the white rope stuff during the mass. But then we had to go out to the graveyard for like half an hour more and stand there in the cold.
I told the priest that I would just quickly put on the jacket underneath because it was freezing outside. But he forbid in and said I should have thought of it before the mass and had it on under the ropes in church all the time because now there is no time for that. He forced us out without jackets into the freezing cold.
Right there I started thinking what kind of a priest do we have who cares more about dead people and make it convenient for them instead of the living. And if the priest represents god here in our community because he talks to him and can forgive our sins in his name and so on, then this is also gods will. So what king of a God am I worshiping here?
Anyway, I think that was the start of me stopping believing in God. I stopped being an altar boy, later stopped going to church and started actively researching those deeper questions around organized religion and god. Over time it led me to became an atheist who hasn’t seen any evidence for existence of any god.
I was a altar boy in my teens.
i was expecting this to turn a different direction.
I was raised catholic and went to a catholic primary school. At one point we had a class where we would visit the local catholic church once a week and the priest would explain things about how things worked in church.
On one such occasion he pointed out a red light near the altar and said that the light indicated that god was present in church. (Apparently it’s called a ‘sanctuary light’ in English). I spent an entire week trying to figure out how this god-detector worked. I had several designs worked out in my head, like it having an unreachable switch that could only be pressed by god himself.
The next week we arrived at church a little early and I caught the priest putting a candle in it and lighting it himself. That’s when I started to realize the whole thing was one big scam.
Once I volunteered for a nonprofit fundraiser type thing. It was early spring and cold as hell. My friends got taken to the hay rides and the fire pit and they stuck me at the highway, pointing people towards the highly visible parking area. I marched in circles and designed ten thousand signs that could do the job that I was doing. I vowed then and there to never, ever be a cog in some Boomers vanity charity event ever again.
Service clubs tend to treat volunteers like slaves and then lament that no one wants to volunteer to be their slaves.
I am an atheist myself but sometimes I comfort myself thatbthere may be someone who enables a afterlife for the sake of the dead. Also - a priest doesn’t talk to god in the catholic church; Only prophets do.
Just want to suggest: The entire mass got there with jackets, etc. He could indeed have postponed going outside in order for the staff to put jackets on.
But he did teach a boy a lesson: Think for yourself and think ahead. Among the dead are people who may have suffered tremendously. In order to respect them you had to be brave and strong.
Your story doesn’t contain lost fingers due to frost bite. And it cuts short of the things afterwards: He may have invited his staff for hot chocolate afterwards.
It formed you in some way and you could cherish that. And respect for the priest that he stood his ground regardless of his wrong doing: He tried to convey his point - Though I agree that it was shit-tey.
respect for the priest that he stood his ground regardless of his wrong doing
What…? Why would we respect the priest for doubling down on being wrong? The venerable, mature thing for him to do would have been to acknowledge the situation of the child and show some understanding and mercy.
Without knowing anything else, this instance makes him sound petty, or at least negligent, and not like anybody deserving of unconditional respect.
I did plan ahead, the plan was to get my jacket in between when everyone was walking out of the church to gather at the graveyard.
Also if we are nitpicking then everyone can talk to god in the catholic church, including the priest after he listens to all my sins, but god for some reason only responds to the prophets.
Anyway, those nuances are for the scholars, not for a teenage altar boy.
I was a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit against a huge company. It was so rigged. The judge had overseen the class action lawsuit that we opted out of and acted like we were ungrateful little shits. But never in front of the jury; in front of the jury, he was all perfect law and order. But when they weren’t there, he was so obviously biased. I lost basically all faith in our justice system (USA). And I only had money on the line; for someone in a criminal case, it would be sooo much worse.
Yeah. Found myself in the system due to a misunderstanding. I was helpful and cooperative, they gave me the maximum sentence.
This would probably be the gist of my answer as well, both as an observer as well as someone in a dispute.
I’ve watched my best friends fight battles one could say are incredibly unnecessary, from the guy best friend having his family torn apart by the CPS based on false accusations before they went after his mom to harass her since they couldn’t successfully arrest her like they could with his dad on a false basis, to his GF (my other best friend) constantly having friends pulled away from her, to what me and my BF have gone through often (it should be noted what we consider the actual issue and what their active ingredients are has differed).
Ironically I generally don’t have the negative relation with officials that these other experiences would imply I would have. I’m more accurately described as someone the people always seem to be after, not the officials in a society, albeit it might be said semantics don’t do that justice until it has been paraphrased a few times. Another way it’s been explained is that I incur “guerilla dissatisfaction” and that even seeming technicalities have some element of that, even when I’m being productive in its face, with their “three weapons” being denial, justification, and pretending to not understand.
On the authoritarian side of things, it has only been recently (as in an epiphany that dropped out of nowhere some weeks ago) realized that an enormous amount of what could be called covert targeted bias against some of us, especially when the individuals who the bias is in favor of have the bias in favor of them as a form of some sort of social prestige, has been or is boiled down to secretly wanting to “humble” the person the bias is against.
Example:
A superior might say out loud “you acted in self defense against a killer, but it was still assault, so I’m going to give you a bigger sentence than the person who killed your dog.”
In their minds: “maybe this is the perfect tool to humble them, they never seemed humble to me and an extraordinary large sentence might serve as a good character builder, not actually given to punish them.”
My very best friend in the whole world mentioned a trans person, shook his head, and remarks that “we need a purge”.
I really, truly thought that different ideologies could get along until then. With that comment, I realized that, no, I cannot get along with an ideology that believes that marginalized groups “should not exist”. Because, deep down, a belief for their “non-existence” is a belief for their death. And I now refuse to have friends who believe things like that.
Civility is compliance. I kicked him out of my house, my final words to him, as he angrily screamed at me, being “bye, bitch, bye!” It hurt me so badly to lose my closest friend that day, but my life really did improve after that. Now he might actually have to pay for the therapy he so desperately needs. God knows, he won’t, because he believes that “mental health excuses are just pussy shit”, but considering he’s howling that no one has wanted to fuck him for the last x amount of years shows that his anger and bitterness are still holding him back. He’s insufferable.
Fuck any belief that punches down. Y’all deserve to exist peacefully and not be fucking bothered by dickheads about how you live your life.
The only thing we do not tolerate is intolerance itself.
I recently got introduced to a new friend group with plenty of trans people. It was quite eye opening. Not that my views changed, but rather upon hearing their stories, realizing how much senseless hate there is towards them. Imagine not getting a job after a successful interview, because some asshole looking at your ID sees that your appearance doesn’t match your birth assigned gender. It’s one thing to be indifferent or not get queer people, it’s another to actively fucking harm them!
I especially hate the project2025 rhetoric of “Economy bad” followed by “Let’s spend our entire budget, murdering the queers”. These people are monstrous…
I have a good friend like this. He says quite extreme things like that from time to time. I don’t attack him for it. Instead we talk about it. I ask him questions, share my view on the matter etc. more often than not he then walks back what he said and openly admits that he shouldn’t generalize and understands that the few bad apples he has had to deal with don’t represent the majority.
People change. I did too. I used to say horrible things about gay people myself too when I was younger. Then I grew up and realized I’d actually like to have some of that dick too.
Your friend on the other hand probably only holds down to those beliefs even stronger now because of how you reacted. These are the people who vote for Trump to “screw with the libs”
His friend was too far gone to start with.
Visiting ground zero of Hiroshima and then visiting pearl harbour. Super different vibes. Note: the aftertaste of visiting pearl harbour and their attitude towards war in general felt just so wrong. Hiroshima gave a definite sense of war is very wrong, and PH was just like “we’re not done yet”. It was ick.
Normally you need to put a coin in shopping trollies around here to take them out. When you properly return them you get the coin back. It’s not a lot of money, usually 50 cents. And if you don’t happen to have a coin on hand most shops will give you a key chain with a properly sized round bit of metal. It being so common, most people have one of those key chains anyways. I’d always thought it was a fine system, but people were pretty decent anyways.
Then during corona because of hygiene reasons shops could only reopen if they cleaned the trollies after every use and that meant not using the coin system. Later the cleaning part was delegated to customers using facilities from the shop and then got rid of entirely. But the coin system wasn’t put back due to hygiene.
To my surprise people would just dump the trollies everywhere. They would not care one bit where they put them. Some people put them away neatly, some just shove them sort of in the right place. Others would just leave them on the parking lot or shove them aside to end up in a ditch.
As soon as possible the coin system was put back into place. Later some shops got rid of it again, because it’s easier for customers. But only in select places where people are decent I guess, or the shop puts in the effort to monitor and handle the carts. You would think it’d be the crowded inner city parts where the coin system was needed. But near me in a rich part of town they use the coin system because rich folk just leave the carts in the parking lot, feeling like putting it back is beneath them or something. In a more crowded normal part of town one shop I go to doesn’t use the coin system and I’m surprised every time. The carts there are always perfectly placed. Although that shop has an issue with people using the disabled parking spaces if they need to run in and out quickly, which is a terrible thing to do.
This whole experience changed my view of humanity. I used to think almost all or at least most people were decent. Trying to do the right thing, with only a few assholes spoiling stuff for the rest of us. It showed me that a tiny little coin, not really worth anything is all that stands between a functioning neat system and total chaos. And it’s not just a couple of people, it’s more like half of them. A lot of people are lazy and inconsiderate, caring only about themselves. If it costs them money, no matter how little, they will do what’s required (because money is everything in this fucked up capitalist world). But if it doesn’t cost them money, they will just do whatever and not care.
This experience, along with many other during the past 10 years have spoiled my view on humanity. I tend to assume everyone is a total asshole in some way or another, which is honestly kind of a sad way to live. So I make an active effort to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it can be hard and a lot of people shortly prove they are indeed assholes.
There’s a radio guy that has a series called Cart Narcs on YouTube where he runs around patrolling shopping parking lots and shaming people into putting their carts back.
It’s a guilty pleasure of mine.
(Edit: I was caught by the grammar police, for my heinous crimes.)
I had my coming of age when going to college abroad. Oh what a time that was.
- Going to Amsterdam, and seeing how unconditionally nice and supportive people can be. Even if something is obviously your fault, nobody will ever give you shit for it and will actually help you.
- The absolutely pointless full scale war in Ukraine starting, shattering the “age of unprecedented peace” propaganda I was fed since birth. Especially once I started educating my self about all the wars that took place in this age.
- Visiting my American (now ex) friends. Realizing that yes, Americans really are that uneducated and spiteful. Wanting others to suffer, way more than wanting to be happy them selves. And today, the 2024 election cemented those feelings.
Some Americans are. Way too many Americans are. Feel free to disconnect. However not everyone is and there are like 380 million of us
2016 and the yeas since, but especially the US presidential election that just happened, have absolutely destroyed my faith in the people of my country.
Always figured the govt was fucked, but that the average Joe had a shred of good in him. After the bullshit of the 2016 election, the 4 disastrous years after, and the 4 years following of nonstop Nazi rhetoric from Trump… 74 million of my neighbors decided he’s the guy who represents them; and another 90 million or so decided not to lift a fucking finger to intervene.
No. Good people are a minority. I’m surrounded by hateful bigots who will go as far impairing their own quality of life if it means they can can harm others by doing so. This country and the majority of its inhabitants are evil. We deserve what’s coming.
This was a moment of disillusionment for me as well. I had faith that the country would pull together and do what I perceived as the right thing, but it seems greed and hate won in the end. Something shifted in me as the results came in. Something I can only describe as a loss of hope. Like I knew that whatever greater good we were working toward as a society was just thrown away for trivial reasons. Ever since I’ve had a more “glass half empty” feeling about the U.S. and the world as a whole and the outlook is just bleak.
Did you consider voting for Kamala the right thing? Because, IMO, it was BARELY the right thing. She offered nothing other than Not Trump to her voters. To me, it was expected that people didn’t vote for her because she had no vision and ENTHUSIASTICALLY promised to continue the ongoing genocide. She even sent Bill Clinton to Michigan a week before the GE to tell the Muslims there that they should be OK with innocent pacifist members of their family being turned into a pink mist because of where they live.
If one of the only two possible parties that is supposed to be left leaning refuse to stand by leftist ideas, a two party sham election system is going to inevitably push any country with Citizens United straight into fascism.
With all due respect, the Gaza genocide is a moot point as it’s likely to get turbo charged under a Trump admin. If you talk to most American voters they want this, as well as us to stop funding Ukraine. I don’t agree with these positions but that’s what most people here think. They believe that those funds will be allocated back to them via tax cuts and/or economic stimulus payments.
For me; my issues surround the environment, healthcare, education and workers rights here in the USA. Protection of the BWCA and the CHIPS act are of grave importance to me. A Harris administration would have protected these things. The Trump campaign specifically targeted these things. So while it’s nice to imagine a just government that cares about every specific group of disaffected people in the world, we simply do not have that here, and likely never will.
For me; my issues surround the environment, healthcare, education and workers rights here in the USA. Protection of the BWCA and the CHIPS act are of grave importance to me. A Harris administration would have protected these things.
Actually, Harris was basically president for four years with a Dem majority in congress and didn’t do shit about a single one of these things. How do you respond to that?
The healthcare one is hilarious. Kamala Harris is anti-Single Payer. She even had a fake single payer plan laid out in 2016 so filled with asterisks that it gave the American flag a run for its money for amount of stars.
Oh and worker’s rights? Stop telling jokes. She was part of the administration that made it illegal for rail workers to strike.
Yet the administration intervened to help them get what they were striking for.
There’s definitely a place for vital jobs where striking can be illegal, but the administration also made sure they were set
You might also pay attention to the other pro labor actions of this administration, including the first sitting president to stand on a picket line
I had downvoted you but nothing you said is untrue.
No party represents me. The Democratic Party pretends to (to the satisfaction of many, clearly) but it is honestly a joke if you compare us to the rest of the world.
They passed the chips act and upheld environmental protections. What are you on?
We will see how workers rights fare under Trump.
The more I read your comment the more insane it sounds. The Dems never had a majority in congress. They had the senate, not the house. The senate can’t do shit if the house isn’t aligned. A VP’s role is not the same as a president and her powers were very limited. Regardless we’re splitting hairs over these things.
ACA is on the chopping block with Trump in control of all executive branches of government. They have no healthcare plan.
We will see what happens, but please stop bullshitting me.
Leave it to libs to take one small symbolic, easily reversed law and lean heavily on it to excuse the clear pattern of impotence and bloodthirstiness of an almost equally corrupt major power.
For sure, I grew up in a rural conservative area. I thought i knew these people. I thought they were just like me and I could understand their perspective even when I disagreed with it. But 2016 went against everything they claimed to believe in, and they just started making less and less sense, they just started getting more toxic, more hateful and spiteful , more anti-everything and everyone. No. No I can’t.
Maybe I’m falling for the echo chamber effect also, maybe I’m falling prey to those who would keep us divided and at each others throats, but I’m finding it difficult to sympathize, difficult to even want to understand them again. Difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are decent people being manipulated with base emotions. No, this is them
I don’t think you need 2016 for this. All you need is to be remotely awkward in grade school and this side human nature is abundantly clear.
leaving my home country for the first time.
all the “immutable facts of life” are a plane ticket way from becoming weird rituals or disagreeable foreign affairs.
That is a very good point, but it only works of the world is somewhat open to immigrants. I migrated 3 times in my life, starting from practically one suitcase each time. I’m very lucky to have ended up in times and countries which allowed me to stay and to contribute to their society. Sadly that seems less and less a given.
overall, it seems to be getting easier to travel, with longer-term visas being offered and most visas offered through online applications.
there are more routes for legal permanent residency in countries as well these days, although i prefer itinerance.
I think you’re talking about permanent residency, which is inherently more bother than living somewhere else or traveling full-time.
Yes indeed, and it might still be OK, but the world moving to the right and the right being so against immigration I forse a future where permanent residency is not that easy anymore. Especially if you’re not like me a white fairly well educated male from Europe. People like me seem to have huge privileges in many the parts of the world.
you seem to be extrapolating far-off tangential after-effects of a vague dystopian future not based on the current state of travel.
yes, maybe someday everything will be worse.
but then, maybe someday everything will be better.
as for right now, travel is objectively easier for everybody than it has been in a very long time, maybe ever.
We can start with that.
When I told my Rabbi that I’m not interested in dating or marriage he screamed at me for an hour and told me I deserve to die. From that point forward I realized that you can never make religious leaders happy, they will always take until you have nothing left to give. So I stopped giving a damn and I still don’t.
Different people in different places.
If you never leave your hometown, you’re keeping your brain in a baby crèche for the rest of your life.
It’s much easier to understand how the world works if you’ve seen it yourself
Psylocybin
I have been exposed to hospitals as a guy who worked on their software, as a friend to a doctor, and as the relative of a patient. What I have seen is that hospital staff are generally well intentioned but extremely overworked, to the point that they can overlook obvious signs of a life-threatening illness. You can’t just assume that if you’re in a hospital then you’ll be taken care of. The doctor can be too busy to pay attention to you or too tired to think clearly about your condition. The doctor might even just forget that you’re there. You have to make sure that you’re getting a doctor’s attention, even if that means acting in a way that makes you feel like an entitled jerk.
My grandmother went to the hospital a couple of years ago because every few hours her heart would stop for several seconds. After she was in the emergency room for a day without receiving any treatment, some hospital employee came and wanted to discharge her. She and I refused so she ended up in a hospital bed for a couple of days, still with no treatment. Finally my sister came from another state, and my sister is less shy than I am. She actually found the cardiologist and made sure he looked at my grandmother’s condition. Once he did, he immediately sent her to surgery. She had a pacemaker put in and recovered.
(In case anyone is curious, my grandma says that when her heart stopped for long enough that she lost consciousness, she felt a wave of heat go through her body, her vision faded to black, and then she passed out. It didn’t hurt. In her case, her heart started again on its own but I suppose that for someone less fortunate, that would have been what it felt like to die.)
I’ve gone through some fun heart stuff, mostly my electrical system is just funky, wore a heart monitor, the whole thing - but yeah when finally talking to a cardiologist they were like “it’s nothing” and I asked “okay, so how do I know when it’s not nothing”. “If you lose consciousness, that’s when it’s not nothing”. Glad she persisted and pushed for it.
