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Been There, Believed That

Entry 2434, on 2026-03-21 at 14:01:26 (Rating 4, Politics)

When debating people it is always useful to have some perspective on where their ideas and philosophical preferences come from. By "philosophical" here I mean in a very generic sense, covering politics, religion, and other fundamental beliefs.

One of the reasons I think I am sometimes quite effective when debating against others is that I have "been there, believed that" myself in the past. For example, politically I used to be fairly firmly on the left and regularly voted for Labour, along with even the Greens on one occasion. And when I left school I was quite credulous about a lot of paranormal claims, and was quite the opposite of the skeptic I am now.

So when I see other people making those same mistakes I made in the past I know exactly where they are coming from, and I am often quite understanding of their position, because I used to have the same ideas myself!

I saw this comment recently on social media: "Everyone starts off as a lefty, and then wakes up at some point... After you start either making money, working, or trying to run a business, you realise what crap ideas they are and go right".

Of course this claim of "everyone" cannot be taken literally. Maybe better would be "most people" or even "every rational person", but even those claims are debatable.

There are also these quite common concepts: "If you don't vote left when you are young, you have no heart; if you don't vote right as you get older, you have no head" and "I still feel I support the left like I did 10 or 20 years ago, but the left has gone so crazy it has left me behind, so the right is now my only option".

I can identify with all of these points. Many people who have more extreme views opposing mine are either very naive (especially younger people), or live in a "bubble" where they don't have to face many of the realities others do (the main example here being academics and teachers), or base their opinions on emotion rather than rationality (dare I mention that many of these are women, especially young women).

Note that in no way am I saying that all young people, or academics, or women are out of touch. This is a purely statistical argument. There are plenty of older non-academic men who believe a lot of nonsense too, just like there are plenty of young people, academics, and women who are very reasonable.

Also note that when I use the word "right" I use it as a convenient shorthand rather than an exact description. I do not think of myself as a conservative, although I think some conservative ideas are good. Currently I think of myself more as a libertarian, although I also recognise many weaknesses in that belief system.

And many of my ideas might be seen by some people as quite left leaning, although I would say they are just common sense and supportive of individual freedoms. For example, I support gay marriage because what harm is it doing me? What right do I have to try to control the lives of gay people? And I am not religious, unlike many conservatives, so I tend to reject the religious ideas of people I otherwise might agree with (Charlie Kirk for example). And I agree with government controls over the worst excesses of capitalism, although I would prefer to see less of those rather than more.

So I fully recognise how ridiculous some of my opinions were when I was younger. I'm not an academic myself but I did work in a university for a long time and I know how many of them think and I agreed with them for years. And I'm not a woman (could I identify as one for a while to get their perspective?) so I guess the point of this post is a bit weaker because of that.

When I see the arguments some people try to use against me, I recognise them for the same arguments I used in the past. I can remember what caused me to change my mind and reject them, and I know exactly what the attraction of them is. This makes it a lot easier to fight against them. Sometimes I even say "been there, believed that"

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