Maybe a different religion, or especially political beliefs seems to be a big deal-breaker. Do you still find it worthwhile to keep them in your life?
I do. I have e.g. Christian Conservative friends, and Atheist Liberal ones, etc. I enjoy each one for what they are. I mean, nobody is perfect! (like me 😁)
I don’t have any friends and I don’t think I would want any that have incompatible political beliefs.
I hope you find a friend, someway, somehow, of whatever belief system.:-)
Thank you!
I’m a boring middle aged man, so I don’t really have friends besides my D&D group, and it was a truly happy and relieving moment to find out after five years that we are at least on the same side of the 2 party system here in the US. We had all avoided any political topics studiously for five years.
We can disagree about pizza toppings, not that certain people don’t deserve rights. Get the fuck out of my life if you’re that type of asshole.
I hear that, yet one Christian MAGA friend I have is outright sympathetic to events (honorary almost liberal? actually a former one who turned Never-Hillary and never came back), while another STRONGLY atheist liberal I know acts pretty much identically to conservatives, just on the other side (authoritarian, gaslights people, even on matters of fact that are not known to them yet they judge readily based on their known lack of information regardless, without bothering to investigate).
It’s hard to paint people with such broad strokes: as much as it would simplify matters to do so, each person is unique.
Too bad we don’t get to vote in shades of grey. Sympathy doesn’t matter if you’re actively causing harm.
Yes, ultimately it is this 2-party system that is going to have killed our government.
Whereas religion seems nothing but various shades of grey!:-P
I am very liberal, most of my friends are very conservative. We have great discussions from our varying perspectives and beliefs. I have found what matters most in relationships, is a willingness for both sides to genuinely engage in respectful dialogue. Our beliefs might differ, but we respect eachother enough to look past these differences, and see eachother as human beings, doing the best we can to figure out life, and how to make it work for everyone. Deep down, we all want the same things… Safety, freedom, and equality for ourselves and those we love and care about. If a person does not want these things, it is quickly apparent to me, and time for me to move on.
I live by the maxim that you choose your quality by the company you keep, but I’ve struggled to add new friends over the years.
I had a friend who went from being a Marxist to being a Trump voter who rants about Jews. He used to talk about doing a Luigi, before there was one, and I could hang with that. He rotted somehow, seems like too much 4chan. I had to cut things off. Best friend for about twenty years. Worst part is, as a kid I didn’t like that I had friends who made fun of him behind his back and I stopped talking to them entirely. I cut him off a few years ago after one day he said that my baby was a suicide risk because they were mixed race.
Now I’ve only got two or three friends, and only one in the same country. It’s no good having integrity, sometimes.
You WILL - without question - become more like the people that you surround yourself with. I am glad that you chose integrity, but also wish that the cost for that could be lower. :-|
I am mentally drafting a letter to those friends I dropped in his defense. We were like eleven years old and stupidity is par for the course at that age. I hope they found the right path in life. I should have stayed and stood up to them.
There is little use blaming yourself for much of anything you’ve done in the past - you can’t go back and change any of it, and perhaps you’ve thought about it since much more than they have even:-). The only thing to do is decide what way seems best to move forward to.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think it’s important to immerse yourself with people who are different from you. But also if those people are giant pieces of shit then I have no problem cutting them out.
Plenty!
Depending on whether you want to count family in there, and I do have family that are friends too (as well as friends that are family), a lot
See, I’m fairly radical left. Not so far as to suck Lenin’s dick, but I could likely give a reach around to the one that is sucking it, if I stretch far enough.
So, here in the south, in the mountains, I have to drive to find leftists to shoot with.
That means most of my friends are what you would call liberals here in the US for sure, some that are more progressives. But people forget that there used to be “centrist” or “moderate” Republicans. Some of those are pretty damn open regarding civil rights, including even trans rights. My grandfather was like that; firmly in the free market, trickle down camp of economics (well, up until the last five years of his life, when he started leaning more moderate in that regard too), but hard core behind everyone having equal protection under the law, period.
That kind of Republican is called a RINO now. That’s the way my dad is, but even he voted libertarian for president last year, democrat for everything else. Southerners can be weird like that.
It’s the bible belt, So I have plenty of monotheist friends too, regardless of their political leanings. I have neopagan and wiccan folks that are close enough to friends that it counts for this.
My whole thing is about specifics. Bigotry is right out, I don’t put up with it. But actual political stuff, as in how the government should be operated, how funds should be allocated, that kind of thing? It’s more about why the hand the belief than what they believe. I can disagree with that kind of stuff and not dislike the person. I mean, I believe that when it comes to nothing minimizing corruption and maximizing human and civil rights, a democratically elected socialist government is going to be the best bet, but I’m not so arrogant as to assume I can’t be wrong. So how can I reject otherwise good people just because they don’t agree with that?
If someone is conservative, but limits that to their own lives, I got no beef. It’s when they start trying to enforce it on others that I can’t fuck with them. Unfortunately, when religious conservatives exist, and they’re also monotheistic, that’s the way they usually go. That sort of thinking precludes open mindedness to other ways of thinking, so it’s rare to find folks to be friends with like that.
Very well put. Trump, formerly a Democrat himself, has taken over the modern Republican party, but in the past it was different… heck, George Bush was a freaking progressive (poorly enacted, but still).
I think the Christian religion itself commands that it judge people internally (like pastors that diddle kids) while specifically NOT judging people externally - so this twisting of the commandments is the precise opposite of what either the Old Testament or the New are saying. The TLDR of the latter is: “Love one another - and what is love? Patient, Gentle, Kind, Humble, Not taking joy in others’ suffering, etc. Do to others what should be done, like as has already been done by Jesus to you (which notably includes first washing feet - who does that!? - aka service, and eventually culminating in outright self-sacrifice)”. It is so sad to see this message twisted and perverted like it has been, by pastors who have literally been caught diddling kids, and all that is done about it was to cover it up.
But not all Christians are that way - some even voted Democrat not in spite of their religious beliefs, but because of them. And not all conservatives are that way either, nor are all liberals not that way. Though sadly, many people are unethical these days (probably always have been?). And anyway, yeah I don’t think if someone is a “fiscal conservative” that a friendship would need to end based solely on that alone. Though perhaps a friendship would be ended based on lack of character and morality, related but not quite equal to their political affiliation, religious beliefs, etc.
I think it’s probably better that way. If you isolate yourself from people who are different it becomes easier to view them as “other” and be more willing to support harms to them.
Most people have different beliefs than me. So yeah. I don’t personally find any point to cutting people off just because I disagree with them although I think most people I bond with strongly tend to have similar views. I definitely have Christian friends though, despite being an atheist. No Trumpers, at least that will confess to it. But I wouldn’t exile them for it personally. I have a lot of questions for people whose views differ from mine because they puzzle me.
This seems a healthy way to live:-).
Yes I do and I’m glad. Occasionally we want to throttle each other, then we laugh.
