A Re-introduction...after drifting off about 3.5 years ago.

[recovering conservative]

Hi everyone! I was reminded of my FG membership last time back in the fall when I received a happy birthday email, and thought at the time about coming back...but never got around to it.

I sorted drifted away in the fall of 2010 for reasons I'm still not sure about...except that I was busy at the time, and wasn't finding threads that interested me.

This past fall, I was planning on coming back because I was becoming more and more frustrated and disinterested in the political forums I had been posting on. And since I'm not dedicated enough to be a blogger and haven't been participating in any forums lately, now seems to be the right time to give it another shot.

First order of business I think, will be to decide whether to request a user name change, since I am no longer "recovering" from conservatism...I've pretty much left right wing politics and economic ideas in the trashcan, and abandoned everything connected to capitalist economic ideas as well. What to choose as an alternative name? I'm not really sure. My old one was causing a lot of confusion last time I was active here, as many people thought 'recovering conservative' meant something like alcoholic conservative in a 12 step program. FWIW, I was inspired to choose RC at the time because I have an alcoholic older brother who was back in AA for the umpteenth time back then, and my radical shift in thinking left me wondering 'what was I thinking when I was an active campaigner and supporter of conservative causes!'

So I'm not even entertaining more moderate forms of liberalism and socialism anymore. No.1 reason would be that any economic theory depending on continuous, exponential growth is incompatible with living in a finite world with finite resources. More recently I've tried to figure out what talk of "Degrowth" or "Steady State" economic theories are all about, and I'm inclined to side with the neoliberals and libertarians in their assessment that 'zero growth' is fundamentally incompatible with real world market economics.

So how does the world become 'Ecosocialist' at the 11th hour? Damned if I know! Especially since socialist ideas were in wider circulation 40 years ago, and capitalism is even more aggressive and ruthless than it was back then - not allowing any alternatives to capitalism to be discussed in mainstream and most publicly supported media as well. Talk of socialism and marxism is pretty much on the fringes of alternative media today.

In other news, I noticed that my last posts were during a time that I likely came across as a fanatical atheist! I was strongly influenced by humanism, and since then, I've lost interest in atheist alternatives to religion and religious beliefs. I no longer consider myself a humanist because of its faith in technological progress and Eurocentric cultural supremacism...values of the Enlightenment etc.. And religion is less the enemy and in need of eradication if you don't feel you have something better to replace it with!

I better stop here for now...I think I've covered everything in more detail than necessary and will have to talk about the issues mentioned in their various forum categories, and see if there's any interest.

[Bruv]

Welcome back.

The only response I can come up with is..............................hhhheeavy !

[LarsMac]

Well, welcome back. Some interesting ideas worth talking about.

As for name change, how about just, "recovering" ?

[jones jones]

Welcome back ... FG is in dire need of new/old blood!

[LarsMac]

jones jones;1456616 wrote: Welcome back ... FG is in dire need of new/old blood!


Or old new blood.

[FourPart]

LarsMac;1456618 wrote: Or old new blood.
That pretty much describes me.

[Týr]

If you ask oscar she'll tell you how to do the name change. She might even donate enough "points" to let you do it.

[recovering conservative]

Bruv;1456611 wrote: Welcome back.

The only response I can come up with is..............................hhhheeavy !


Thanks! Don't worry, I just wanted to give a brief outline on some of the heavy reading I've done recently. I'm not going to unload it all at once, because everything dealing with environment seems to be going in the wrong direction. Some of my favourite links that give the straight dope on pressing issues like accelerating rates of atmospheric CO2 and increasing methane levels get so depressing, I find myself avoiding clicking on them for days at a time, because I know that new posts aren't going to be good news stories.

[recovering conservative]

LarsMac;1456613 wrote: Well, welcome back. Some interesting ideas worth talking about.

As for name change, how about just, "recovering" ?


Thanks! I was thinking of R.C. or something similar that's open ended, but "recovering" might be suitable...if I'm actually recovering of course!

[recovering conservative]

jones jones;1456616 wrote: Welcome back ... FG is in dire need of new/old blood!


Thanks. I get the impression that things have been quiet around here of late. Which is certainly better than the last two political discussion forums I was on, which have turned toxic as every issue was treated as ideological warfare, rather than any effort to introduce new ideas.

I like the concept of a general interest forum, where there are alternatives when you want to take a break from politics etc..

[recovering conservative]

Týr;1456654 wrote: If you ask oscar she'll tell you how to do the name change. She might even donate enough "points" to let you do it.


Thanks for letting me know how to go about it. I don't know if changing user name is my most pressing concern, but I think my aversion to having to explain it kept me away from here.

[gmc]

How about calling yourself traveller? since you sem to be on a journey of discovery

[recovering conservative]

Traveller sounds good! Except that just presented a new dilemma for me: how to spell the word. My spell check went haywire on the spelling with two LL's. I thought it was spelled "traveler," and when I checked, it seems that this is another word where we Canadians have adopted American spelling. Oh well!