this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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askchapo

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Will I ever stop having cringe takes? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 days ago by dil@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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Over the past few years, I've been sliding left ideologically, and as I move further left my old positions seem cringy.

That's expected when you change your worldview and realize you were parroting (e.g.) CIA propaganda, but it's left me feeling a bit ungrounded. I'm worried that in another year I'll look back and think my current views are dumb. Tbh, they almost certainly are.

Does this go away eventually? Or are y'all constantly refining your understanding, so you always dislike your views from a year ago?

Also:

If folks leave, where do they go from here? Are they just picking their preferred flavor of communism/anarchism? Are there other categories of leftism that they're heading to? I'm sure some backslide, but I mean heading somewhere new - like I didn't know people actually liked DPRK until I heard about "tankies." I saw a group that doesn't believe in objective reality?

I'm not really expecting to look at anything new and not be a Marxist, but I'd like to know what's out there to be sure.

I just wanna pick one goddamn worldview, never change it, and still be right about everything all the time. Is that so much to ask?

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[–] Salah@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago

I don’t really feel cringe about my previous positions. They were based on the education I had at that time which was liberal indoctrination, and I don’t fault myself for it and am happy I learned more.

There are so many things still unclear to me, I don’t know my political ideology and there are some parts about the organizing I do that I’m unsure of. But I keep doing it to the best of my ability because committed organizers are rare and doing something while making mistakes and learning from them is better than doing nothing.

In my opinion the best way to learn is by putting theory to practice because then you start to notice the gaps in the theory you read and know what to look for for future learning. You can join an org even if you aren’t sure if you fully agree with its methods and ideology. You can always leave if it turns out that it doesn’t suit you. No org is perfect but you should have some feeling that you are able to actually build something through it.