this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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For me, it's stuff that I consciously realize is wrong but unconsciously and irrationally still believe in to some extent.
I still believe in personal responsibility bootstrapping to an unreasonable degree. For example, I see obesity and drug use as personal moral failings that are wholly on the individual, and only the individual, to rectify -- for myself anyway. I don't wield it as a cudgel against others at least. Come to think of it, I think I mostly believe in this solely so I can be hard on myself.
I also for some reason vacillate between reactionary Dawkins style anti-theism (extreme to the point where I'm convinced I'd crucify Jesus again if I ever met him) and being convinced that religiosity and spirituality are prerequisites to being a good person and that my inability to convince myself that god is real means I'm an ontologically evil subhuman.
Also also I find it hard to resist my hard-wired programming to be a knee-jerk western chauvinist. A lot of my "unlimited genocide on the first world" style posting is partly to counteract this tendency within me with an opposite extreme. I guess growing up during the war on terror and never coming across opinions like "maybe all those people our government is bombing are human beings actually" until I'm an adult will do that to a person.
Same, and that's coming from someone who has been in the gutter himself. But I think that me getting out of it on my own causes thoughts like that because I also realize that systemic oppression and liberalism and whatnot play a huge part in keeping people down, so much so that bootstrapping alone isn't helping that.
I managed to get out of my shit due to 1) a lot of discipline and character and 2) let's not kid myself, privilege. And I see so many people stuck in the shit at my job and I think to myself: man, if only you'd do this or that and things might improve. But that's arrogant on my behalf, really. Like I know it all.