this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
34 points (97.2% liked)

askchapo

23218 readers
102 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net
replaceable@hexbear.net
VILenin@hexbear.net
SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net
khizuo@hexbear.net
Wakmrow@hexbear.net
34
Will I ever stop having cringe takes? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 days ago by dil@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Bolshechick@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

On the one hand, yes I'm always reading more, trying to educate myself more, talking more about issues with other people, etc., and therfore I am always updating my beliefs and discarding old ones, some of which are cringe.

But on the other hand, my overall worldview has not changed for some time. I've been a Marxist Leninist for about a decade now. The beliefs I'm updating are smaller things (some important still, but nothing at all like what things were like when in a couple of years I went from libertarian (I was a child, in my defense) to ancom to ML.)

[–] GnomeGodsGnomeMasters@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, I’m in a similar boat. My general worldview has generally stayed the same since I was a child: every human deserves human rights. The vehicle by which I want to see that out, though, is what’s changed, as well as specifically what those rights ought to be.

I don’t know if this is true, because I’m definitely not a determinist by any stretch, but there is a part of me that believes that those core fundamental bits are fairly well solidified by the time we reach adulthood. Like, the framework stays the same, but what it looks like is what changes. Iunno I’m just rambling.