Ok.
This is something I have been wanting to talk about in detail but never really took the chance. I think its important for people to understand why I'm so firm on my beliefs and yet why I still tell you that I'm very easy to convince and that I have a very malleable mind. And I don't know.. I have the little hope that it might make the 1% consider their own beliefs....
So let me take you on a little journey : The journey of my beliefs (political or not) and how I deradicalized from them.
Before 18, my mind was kinda blank on a lot of things. For different reasons, curiosity started to flow. I started to get a boulemia of information. I wanted to understand the world and make sense out of it. My mind went wild without constrain.
Problem : I had absolutely no mental defense or critical thinking behavior. My mind was literally too open.
This had for effect for me to eat every single information I could find on the entierity of the belief spectrum (outside of religious beliefs and the concept of God that I rejected in early childhood).
Here is a little list of all the early beliefs I had at that time:
- The Illuminati are ruling the word (didn't last long)
- 9/11 was an hoax (lasted a LONG time)
- Telepathy is real
- Clairvoyance is real
- Atlantis is real
- The Ancient Astronauts theory is real (lasted a long time) (racism)
- The Bermuda Triangle is a thing
- Psychokinésie is real
- Aliens are in Area 51 hidden by gov (lasted a long time)
- There is a New world order meant to create constant wars and divide us (lasted a long time)
- Anti-Global warming belief (didn't last long)
- Free energy is a thing but hidden by the gov
- Crop circles significance
- Water Memory is a thing (didn't last long)
- The Deep state is real (Lasted a long time)
- Pyramids were created by Aliens (racism)
- The possibility to an technocratic Utopia with our current ressources is real
- The Moon landing was fake (didn't last long at all, my love for scientific exploits didn't really allowed that)
- Toxic Chemtrails are real (Didn't last very long either)
As you can see those were all beliefs that consisted in seeing the world as a fantasy. I had no idea what real science really was and I was only looking at obscure documentaries and conspiracy websites and taking everything in without reflexion. But.. as I grew up and I understood more the world around me, I had to admit that a lot of those beliefs had no value and were just me trying to make the world a more fantastic place than it already was.
Letting go of all of those beliefs was not easy.
Then, the terrorist attack period in France started and I started to politicize myself (still without very bad sources of informations). I come from a progressive background, so I started quickly to be vocal about the defense of LGB (not T and I ) people, but like I told you, my brain was completely empty of critical thinking defenses..
Which means that I also integrated (on top of beliefs that didn't disappeared completely at the time) at the time a lot of various political beliefs :
- The belief that we should create a permit to vote
- The belief that we should not allow some toxic parents to have children
- The complete belief in meritocracy
- The belief that we should abolish the state
- A bunch of ultra liberal beliefs
- The belief that any business owner should be able to fire anyone they want without restrain
- The belief that Communism is necessarily bad
Etc. (I can't recall them all)
On top of those beliefs, another very problematic one appeared (I had three far right beliefs actually, not just one): The belief that we should allow and promote the abortion of potentially mentally ill foetus. Yup, this was literally an eugenistic belief, at the radical right of the far right. My argument was simple : I didn't want those kid to suffer in a society that was rejecting them (which is literally what I was advocating for)
Since the attacks or attempts were continuing, I started to seek the understanding of the ideologies behind the radicality of terrorists who were trying to kill us. I searched a lot ... and also saw a lot (things some people here might not be able to withstand without fainting). I saw the worst side of humanity... but also I understood that radicality doesn't come from nowhere. That hate doesn't start ex-nihilo, it can come from a social and common brainwashing, but it can also come from a reaction against oppression. This is at this very moment that I started to learn about the Israelo-Palestinian conflict.
And in front of horrible an unjust videos showing colonialists oppress Palestinians and seeing the fact that a popular comic at the time was literally outcasted by society for denouncing the double standard in favor of the politic of Israel..
A new far right belief started to appear :
- The antisemitic belief that Jews were ruling the world. (This comic is now fully far right, but I didn't have conscious of that at the time)
With that, previous beliefs (especially the deep state related ones) started to strenghten.
And this is at this moment that I discovered what we call in France "Zetetic". Its simply the discipline of critical thinking and the studies of our biases and fallacious reasonning.
This was the first time I started to put defenses in my brain about what I was reading and watching. (this was around 2016-17 I think). From that point, all the beliefs I had, started to fall one by one and my political compass started to shift more toward the center. Only remained the belief in meritocracy and a sharp liberal vision of the world.
I started to defend trans people and I started to discuss more and more with leftist like me. Not to discuss, but to have debate. At the time, I considered myself as a leftist, but I was still looking a sources of informations that were trying to politically confuse people (hence why I use the term "confusionnists" sometimes).
A few beliefs started to rise :
- The belief that SJW (there was no "woke" people at the time) were ruining feminism and were not truly leftists but extremist people
- The belief that reverse racism was a thing
- The belief that apolitism and later centrism was the best and most rationnal way of thinking
- The belief that all political figures are corrupted
And, above all else :
- The belief in Scientism
I had to separate myself from so many beliefs over the years and it had so many positive aspect on my reasonning that I thought at the time that the solution to create a better society was to push science in every aspect of it while reducing the impact of politics. (at this point I didn't really understand what politic was)
Then.. something you should all have see coming happened:
- The blindspot of Zetetic (which is scientism) combined with my early childhood hatred for religion started to transform me into an antitheist, I started to criticize religions like never before and I started to attack the one I was seeing the most : Islam.
At first, those were simple critics about the lack of inclusion of this religion but in 2020, two things happened : A teacher was decapitated for teaching children about the caricatures of Charlie Hebdo and showing it to them and A girl, Mila, was harrassed on a national scale for blaspheming on instagram or something. This started a big debate over the notion of blasphemy and I started to see a lot of hate and dangerous comments from Muslim (as well as from conservatist). And the time I was convinced that the left didn't reacted well and should have explained why blasphemy is a right. (I had very little knowledge on the notions of dominations and systemic oppressions at the time and I was stuck in an information bubble) .
This started to create the third far right belief :
- The belief that Islam and some muslims were dangerous for civilization.
This belief, contrary to most, was not really complete. Like I told you, I had already installed a lot of critical thinking tools.. so I knew even when this beliefs started, that it wasn't rationnal and that something was wrong. I knew that I was falling for my biases but I didn't know how to prevent it. This early anti-religion childhood belief was so deeply rooted that I had an inner conflict for around 1 years. But what I didn't understand, was the reason why the left was so tolerant with Islam despite those behavior I was seeing.
At this point, I had already deradicalized myself from meritocracy (because of my condition) but not really from liberalism. So I started to listen to this left and more radical feminists and what I thought was extremism at the time and I discovered the realities of oppressions (Patriarchy, Ableism, Transphobia & other LGBTQI+phobia, Systemic racism) this was interesting and this is what lead me to know what social sciences were. Luckily, I had no preconception of sociology, so I didn't have to question its legitimacy and the learning curve of the basic principles was fairly rapid.
I started to listen to an other side of the realm of critical thinkers (those who were taking sociology into account and didn't fall for blind scientism). And I started to listen more and more about the reasons why meritocracy is a problem (which aligned with my own journey at the time). And I started to learn about anti-capitalism and the reason why we do not attack blindly religious beliefs and religious people that are under oppression in society.
This made my fear of Islam vanish quasi instantly and the last liberals beliefs I had with them.
This was around 2022. Since then, each belief I have, I scrutinize with as most diligent care as possible. I know by instinct when I start to fall for a belief that has no basis in reality, I correct it right away.
As you can see, this path of deradicalization was also a path of radicalization. The radicalization toward leftism. I know for a fact that my radicalization is not over. But I also know for a fact that all my beliefs stand on concrete political and scientific ground.
I appear as strubborn not because I don't want to learn, but because I have very strong defenses. Precisely because I know that without those defenses, my mind would go wild at could accept pretty much anything.
This is also why you can convince me VERY EASILY as long as your argumentation is based on either concrete political and artistic ground or concrete scientific basis.
I do not fear self questionning. This journey made me love the feeling of being wrong.
So, if you want to convince me, its very easy.
Show me the science, show me the evidences.
