The illustration above lists a few of the beliefs I held at various stages of life. While I was never an insistent or even confident believer — I’ve always been more of a fence-straddler — I did think in certainties, especially as a young man, and was convinced that the world’s complexities could be parsed, understood, and reordered.
I also thought that the Cultural Revolution in China was a fine idea that might produce a truly transformed society in which everyone would wear the same outfit and feel good about it; that “enlightenment” is an actually attainable and enduring state of being; that dialectical materialism is a profound philosophical concept that I just didn’t quite grasp (keep trying!); that homosexuality has psychological trauma at its root; that nurture far outweighs nature in shaping human beings; that capitalism is the central cause of human suffering and alienation.
That last belief, in particular, took me years to uncoil from around my brain, but eventually, the abominable reality of alternatives to capitalism trumped my many excuses for them. Bullet-to-the-head USSR; genocidal Kampuchea; you-pretend-to-pay-we-pretend-to-work Eastern Europe; can’t-leave-the-island Cuba; dictatorial China; the implosion of Venezuela — the failure of the socialist dream to birth even one humane non-capitalist system has been the great tragedy of our lifetimes. The failure of the American left, moreover, to reckon with that tragedy is the main reason, in my humble opinion, that we’ve been out to sea since the 1990s. Freedom versus take-care-of-everyone: To me, it’s a true dilemma that most people on the left wrongly consider to be an absolutely false dichotomy.
But never mind! I’m not here to debate socialism or libertarianism or Scandinavian social democracy or rightwing treachery or leftwing obstinacy. I’m here to ask YOU, my fellow oldsters, what beliefs YOU used to hold that fell apart or lost their oomph — and what caused that to happen. Within a culture that is now aswirl with conspiracy theories, deep fakes, triumphalist religious ideas, outright lies, and worse, I think this might be a useful exercise to undertake. So: What have you changed your mind about? What writers or leaders or artists or friends or experiences catalyzed those changes? Did disillusionment make you wiser? Weaker? Stronger? More or less liberal? More or less loving? Hm? Whaddya think?
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Please note that the new issue, #13, of ALTE: Getting Old Together, is now posted for your perusal at our website.
But WOMEN in power might be a lot different than WOMAN in power.
First, Phyllis Schafley, then Margaret Thatcher, then Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elise Stefanik etc.