What [u]did[/u] most shake your world view?
 

I'm not sure if this is really the right forum to be posting this question but it's (obvious) sister thread was posted here, so here I go. The other thread, What would most shake your world view," was almost an interesting one (to me) except that people were throwing out fantastic situations, most of which will never happen.

I thought it would be more interesting to hear some real examples of how one's world view has been shaken.

So, do any of you have anything to share?
Thank you...

Meeting homosexuals as friends.

In high school and early college, I didn't know anyone who was gay. Actually, I need to correct that: I didn't know that some of the people that I knew were gay. So, out of sheer ignorance, I was anti-gay. Not a gay-basher by any means, but the thought creeped me out for no good reason, and I didn't think about it any further.

As college went on, there were some editorial columnists in our school paper that were gay, and one of them was in my dorm. I got to know him, just as a guy in my dorm, nothing else. And I came to realize that I had been an idiot.

Not sure if that's really "earth-shaking", but probably as significant as I can get.

When I was almost killed.

When I was about 16, my mom & I were driving home from my aunt's
She was driving, I was sitting beside her in the passenger seat.
We were on a back highway of Upstate New York & Connecticut.
It was a beautiful day with sun and no weather.
When I glanced up, and saw something large coming down in the air.
I yelled to my mom to stop
And with a screeching halt, and a slight shift back in my seat.
A two yard long, 6 inch wide branch pierced the car window like a spear.
The branch put a large scratch on my face and made a hole in the seat between my legs.
A split second later I would have been dead...or at least severely maimed.

I kept that branch with me for a year.
It showed me that it can end anytime, with no reason nor rhyme.
No one to blame.

So make the best of it, and experience all you can.
Because sometimes the ride is over.

When my best friend committed suicide about two weeks before we were moving to Japan. I very literally sat in my living room for two days - day and night - contemplating my life.

It's a terrible thing to say, and I hate even thinking it, but that was probably the single event in my life that really opened my eyes and put me on "the right path".

Dedicating myself to learning the truth even if it cost me my life.

Well, not so much that action itself, but the actions and conclusions it eventually led me to.

Parenthood, my entire perspective changed the very moment my little girl (now 10 years old) entered this world.

the fight i had with depression changed my world veiw alot

Very good question! Mostly for self-reflexion though.

Allegory of the Cave, by Plato messed me up for a while. Coming to my own beliefs and the realization thereof. Almost anything involving pi/infinity/e/i/etc simply because I believe the universe is based on math and science and I see how they all related.

I wouldn't consider many things I've done really world-shaking, probably out of a self-defense-mechanism.

I woke up to my mom my mom yelling "Get up! Look at the TV! It's our world..."

I stumbled out of bed, glanced at the clock. It was early in the morning. About 7:00 I think.

I walked slowly to the living room and sat on the couch. The TV came into focus just in time for me to see the second plane crash into the WTC.

I sat staring at the TV for 24 hours. Didn't eat, didn't move. I was in shock, barely comprehending what was being said.

Then I cried.

I eventually signed up with the Army (ROTC at school), something I would never have considered before 9/11.

The day I told God that I could no longer be a Christian unless he replenished my faith. I was a 20 year old theology student and had been a dedicated Christian since I was 15 and Christianity was all that I knew about how to live. Suddenly, I was a 20 year old with the worldview of a 15 yearold and everything that I had based every decision on since jr high was predicated on something that was now a mythology. I had to grow up very fast and create a new identity and social circle for myself in the middle of trying to finish college.

My Mother's mental illness.
It explained alot, but shook my foundation.

Honorable mention:
Like someone said above, learning that a new friend was gay as a sophomore in high school. It was even less acceptable years ago.

finding out at age 13 that my dad had a whole shitload of porn on our computer. xxx variety. trans-gendered. and seeing dirty emails he was sending back and forth...

also at around 15 when my mom said if she had enough money on her own, she'd leave him. but basically, she was stuck with him. soo... they're pretty much my anti-models.

I've had three events.

Had an "almost died" experience in high school involving a Jacob's Ladder I'd built from an industrial transformer out of a furnace (2 million + volts, a whole lotta amps). It was pulled off the table and hit me in the chest. Tossed me against a wall double-quick and nearly killed me. Made me rethink a lot of things in my life. I decided that schoolwork was not the basis of my existence, that I needed to have a life outside school. Grades suffered, happiness flourished.

A few years later, I spent four hours on the phone with a good friend, talking him out of suicide in the middle of the night. It got so far that I heard him rack the slide on the gun. I started yelling anything I could just to get him to stop and think it over. I succeeded, or he did, depending on how you look at it. He's a surgeon now. I figure that I may have saved a whole lot of lives as every person he saves might've died if he'd commited suicide that night. It made me think about the consequences of my actions, and how small good can lead to very large good, just as easily as small evil can lead to great heartache.

The third event was the transition into parenthood. When my daughter was born, it was as if I was plunged into an ice-cold mountain stream. I saw the world with a new, and frightening clarity, realizing, for the firs time that I was not the single most important thing in the universe. I learned that to really honestly care about someone, you have to place them higher in the order of importance than yourself. It even deepened and improved the relationship with my wife.

There is anothe event, that I did not refer to above. I didn't list it becuase I didn't learn much of anything. It did shake my world though. When our son was born, he wasn't breathing. It took everything he had just to draw breath. The doctors weren't sure how it would turn out, and we didn't get to even hold him during the first three days of his life. It all turned out fine and he's unscathed and a happy, normal little boy, but I have never felt such shrieking, inconceivable terror and helplessness in my life. They say fear is the mindkiller, and I know what that means now. You don't really know fear until you're a parent.

Realising that death is nothing to be afraid of.

I certainly don't wish for it, as far from it as possible and I don't think I'm afraid of it, but it's never been at my door, so it may just me being somewhat idealist.

It happened to me, at first I was kinda homophobic but then I thought if they don't bother me then why should I bother them.

Also I think what was 'Shaking' was that I moved from Canada to the US. There both the same to me but I can notice the subtle differences.

Achieving happiness.

1. Realizing i didn't have to give up my intellect to have a faith...and that God would be part of my life no matter what i believed about miracles, heaven, hell or anything else for that matter.

2. The suicide attempt of a friend. My first confrontation with mental illness...it forshadowed many of my own experiences...and was one of the first times i had to grieve. We've gone separate ways, and i still miss her dearly.

3. Meeting Paul Wellstone. I had always admired his work, but being a part of his congressional office, meeting him, and seeing the real effect of ethical, populist politics was amazing. The get well phone call when i was in the hospital after a suicide attempt didn't hurt either...the man was truely the best kind of soul you could hope to meet.

It was the day I realized that there was more to life than religion. I grew up a Jehovah's Witness and under the thumb of my mother. My entire childhood was religion religion religion.

The day I told her off and started living my own life was the single greatest eye-opening experience I've ever had. It completely changed who I was. No longer was I this sad, shy, little "just sit down, listen and obey" person. I realized I was my own person. I didn't have to listen if I didn't like the message. I could form my own opinions and beliefs. I could live my life the way I wanted to. I could have fun, yet still be a responsible person.

It's been a great ride every since that day.

hrm.... a few things.

My mom's death.

Whoa, 12 yr old ripped in half. and it is not till now that i realize when i needed her later in life that it would become more challanging. but teaches me to rely on myself, a tactic i needed because i saw my mom fear dying alone and i dont want o live in fear like that.

9/11

i lived in NYC once. i was there once. and POOF no more. Ill admit, i was one of the people on the "lets kickass!" bandwagon cuz ill admit i was livid. but its been a few years, im in the midst of round 2 in college and ive grown and leanred a lot.

My son- he opened my eyes to things I never saw before.

Taking mushrooms for the first time in February of 1999. I knew no more than that they would 'be like smoking pot.' Hah! People obviously have different reactions to this (like most) drugs. My reaction was euphoria, giddiness, happiness, etc. for about 5 or 6 hours, and then..

I sat down in an easy chair for a quick breather and in the span of 60 seconds my entire life was flipped upside down. I realized that my desires for almost everything in my life were almost directly attributable in some way to my parents' views and that in a lot of ways I had never seen things clearly by myself, for myself. I suffered (went through? experienced? yes, maybe experienced) some weird symptoms mentally and physically for the next few months. Whenever in public I started to black out/lose consciousness for no apparent reason. What I finally learned (through a lot of reading and introspection) is that to some degree I was seeing everything for the first time, almost through the eyes of a child. The people I took to be my friends.. really weren't. The reasons I was in school.. weren't really *my* reasons. The way I viewed myself changed almost immediately. I could go on.. but I won't.


The two things I took out of the situation (albeit, indrectly to my story) that I do like to share with people are :

- I'm not sure the person I would have become sans-mushrooms is someone that I (me, here, now) would necessarily respect, appreciate, or like. Not really a cheery idea but an important thought nontheless.

- We all are able to control our own actions and our reactions to people/things/events. Any more than that is an unrealistic expectation. Therefore let everything else happen as it may and do try to take care of your own stuff without worrying about the rest.

Seeing Paris Hilton and the chicks from Rich Girls.....

Was the final proof the world needed that Social Darwinism is full of shit :D

First time traveling abroad - was amazed to find that the world is small and round, the sky is blue, people are people, kids laugh and play, markets operate, etc. from here to the ends of the earth. The world became a variation on a theme.

Mom....Dad.....Living Room Floor....Coming home early from Prom Night (lousy date).....AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

I'm sure you get the picture.

world view
 

Reading the Celestine Prophecy series,created a new "reality" thru my life once I actually understood the implications.

Probably losing religion and embracing science and logic.

Last post really reminded me of a quote from Ranier Marie Rilke's "letters to a young poet"....this is way off topic and not an attempt to be argumentative, i just like this quote (and i'm not even religious) - so i thought i'd share...

"And if it frightens and torments you to think of childhood and of the simplicity and silence that accompanies it, because you can no longer believe in God, who appears in it everywhere, when ask yourself, dear Mr. Kappus, whether you have really lost God. Isn't it much truer to say that you have never yet possessed him? For when could that have been? Do you think that a child can hold him, him whom grown men bear only with great effort and whose weight crushes the old? Do you suppose that someone who really has him could lose him like a little stone? Or don't you think that someone who once had him could only be lost by him? - But if you realize that he did not exist in your childhood, and did not exist previously, if you suspect that Christ was deluded by his yearning and Muhammad deceived by his pride - and if you are terrified to feel that even now he does not exist, even at this moment when we are talking about him - what justifies you then, if he never existed, in missing him like someone who has passed away and in searching for him as though he were lost? "

hehe It's so tempting to edit my last post so that your post doesn't make any sense, matthew. :lol:

1. Bill Hicks

2. Isolation

finally starting to realize that I shouldn't give a fuck what other people think and trying to be myself all the more.
realizing that groups of people even just "friends" are really support groups to make themselves feel better. I tried hanging out with a group of cool people for a while. Drug free they were, and also closed minded confined average people. I learned that the fewer people you are good friends with, the closer you can be to them.

I guess more recently it was the fact that I freed my mind. I killed my conscience. I think as me, not as some voice in my head determining right from wrong. and that sadly, life seems to be a big popularity contest. anything politically related is all popularity based and what money goes where ? ranting is a new thing, facing the facts that groups of people are stupider and that mathmatics rule over anything. No matter how boring equations and graphs are, mathmatics hold true to every aspect of life from the shape of an orange in nature to the most complex machine built by humans. and I also have realized that our existence is that of a parasite, to consume as much as possible as fast we can and enjoy doing it. thats my philosophy on life. i am a christian, but at the same time I keep realizing things. and I realize how wrong the world is, but I realize there isn't shit I can do about it. so then I realized that I might as well do as I please and half assedly conform to the rules of society and keep moving my digits and numbers around as we people of the world are, numbers. eventually I might write my theorem on how people are numbers and governments just play their numbers like chips on craps, but I'll get to that later.

when i learned as a kid that my dad had gone to a Christian college to become a minister, and now was an agnostic. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how someone can go from such an extreme as wanting to become a religious figure, to just not caring.

When I learned how many of my people the japanese have killed in WWII

Walking down a hill of hundreds of kids praying when i worked at a local summer camp.

Amazing. nothing else to say about it other then it made me redeticate myself to God.

The break-up with my now ex-girlfriend led me on a long, broken path that has made me a much different person that I would have been had we somehow stayed together. I am the person I should have been then, or at least pretty close.

I learned that you can have really crappy things happen to you, but eventually there's something to be gained from it. I came back up to the SF Bay Area, a place she did not want to live in, and got a job doing something that had never interested me before--journalism. I also lost almost forty pounds and have kept it off since I began last summer. I'm a lot more aware of to what degree people can hide their desires and motivations, aware of a much broader scope and depth of human nature, and I know exactly what kind of person I want to be with this time around.

My world view has been constantly evolving since I left my abusive boyfriend at 18. Since then there have been several major turning point where my view of god, my purpose in life, and my view of the world as a whole has been changed.

First, I began to rely on others less for my own sanity and emotional stability. My family in my later teen years was falling apart almost. My mother became more controlling, or perhaps I just saw it more, my brother became violent, and my father followed his suicidal tendencies with frequent repitition.

Second, when I decided to go back to college after a year and a half out. I knew that my purpose was to work with children in ANY capacity and that if I didn't pursue an education to help with that then I would not ever be completely satisfied.

Third, When my daughter was born. She was a light into my world, a wonderful priviledge to raise, and a heavy responsibility. Also going through childbirth and c-section taught me how strong I really was.

Fourth, My view of god and friends changed greatly when hubby came so close to death that the Dr's could not even make any hopeful statements for a while.

Last - a choice I made. The choice to try out swinging with hubby. It has been a very formative and strengthening factor in my marriage with hubby.

Seriously, hearing my parents have sex when I was a kid. Shook my world to the core.

In the past year I've experienced drugs, sex, depression and fear like never before. Was cool though.

I have held off on responding to this thread for a long time... it is so hard to narrow life down to one pivotal moment.

Thinking back, it was probably when I was 7-years-old in a Bible camp that my babysitter forced me to go to. It consisted of 2 ladies talking about the Bible in over-simplified terms and using visual aids to help hit the message home. At one point they had a picture of a wide, windy path and a straight, narrow path. Along the straight path was very little; along the windy path there were all kinds of things. I was asked "which path looks easier?"

The answer was so obvious... I had a very linear mind then (I've gotten way more abstract with age. I thought, "The purpose of a path is to take you from where you are to where you're going... the narrow path is the easiest path to accomplish this goal"

So I said as such, and one of the ladies freaked out on me. She yelled at me, accused me of being a liar (and I think a sinner too) and went on to tell me that with windy path was easier. I was totally lost. I wouldn't agree with her, even though she kept yelling at me and made me cry.

It was from that point onward that I started to seriously question religion and the proclaimed authority that people say they have.

I guess Marxism/communism

I would say my studies of eastern religions and my rejection of the west. No miracles, no creator gods, just the search for inner peace.

When I decided that I would become a dedicated Unitarian Universalist... changed so much of my views on life and the world.

Battling depression shook up everything.

I believe I have two that would qualify for this situation.

The first being wjen I realised I can't care about tragic situations in the news no matter how disgusting or tragic i really feel unnafected. I am just so incredibly desensitized unless I have made an emotional commtiment to something involved in the story. The last thing I remember affecting me was when a mother sold her twelve year old daughter for sex to a forty year old man and watched it happen. It reviled me but stories involving death and chaos I do not care about. I realise the tragedy and disgust that occurs with it.

My second is a near death experience. It's just so shocking to realise you actually are mortal. It is a real eye opener to realise that if you had dided there would be so many things unexperienced. It would be all wasted by one single twist of fate. It was a boat crash by the way. Near head on collision. I had a retainer at the time and it pierced through my lower lip resulting in a very annoying qwirk to my smile.

The most profound experience that shook my world view took place in a pub in Ottawa...

A good friend and I were drinking coffee after coffee and talking long into the night as we frequently did. We got onto the topic of space and how space travel is actually accomplished (he was an amateur astronomer when he was a kid).

As we talk more and delved into how planets react to each other and so on... my mind suddenly went... SNAP!

For the first time ever I had the overwhelming realization of just how small and insignificant I was (let alone our planet or solar system) in the grand scheme of things. The words I am using to desicribe this cannot grasp the moment and the feelings I went through at the time.

It did two things. It gave me a sense of insignificance in the face if the vast, vertiginous expanse of the universe but it also did the opposite. It made me realize that life is a wonder to be enjoyed and savoured. That petty things that bother me from day to day are just that... petty. I am small they are smaller. I'm not sure if that makes sense to others but sure makes sense to me.

I lose sight of this from time to time but when every I remember that moment I take comfort.

I have too many epiphanies to list.

each event that shook my world taught me some valuable lessons or at least reminded me of "the mission"

That people believed in god. My entire view of how humans work together was completely destroyed by that, luckily I was 5 and it didn't have much to shake, but I viewed it then as a utility tool of society and now I still hold that same view, it's just got a lot more content behind it now.

The whole era of the Vietnam war. I think most kids grew up assuming that if an adult said it, it was gospel. The Vietnam War, for my generation, caused my friends and I to realize that adults lie, or are clueless, and couldn't be depended upon.

I'd have to say the that day my best friend of about ten years, best of buddies since elementary school and all that hallmark crap, looked at me and told me, to my face, that I was going to hell. Not believing in hell, his statement didn't really bother me to much, but it was the first time that I realized that my "normal" world view might not have been so normal after all. Still friends with the guy, but he weirds me out a little. I mean...he doesn't believe in dinosaurs, and _I'm_ the strange one?

The day I watched my father die. The day I truly felt mortal, and realized that we are all here for such a short, undetermined amount of time.

That's all it took to shake my world.

July of '94...
A night out with friends, went out for pizza and a drive into the country; a car accident that could have taken any/all of our lives.
Eleven shards of glass that cut through my right arm but missed all the nerves; severe head trauma and short-term memory loss that I completely recovered from; three inflamed discs in my neck that cause me pain but no impairment; two days of being unconscience, my family not knowing if I'd live and how much damage had been done. Ten years later...having NO memory of the most significant and life-altering experience of my life.

My car accident, where I was lucky enough to come out alive, only with a missing ear.

The realization and the acceptance that I am in complete control of everything.

Not long ago, I finally came to understand that I am in complete control of everything, and I do mean everything, that happens in my life.

It shook me to my core to finally understand that I and I alone am responsible for all of this...

Things that have shaken my world view:

1. The death of my grandfather. My mother's father, it was a fairly big news item in the local media, since he was a local judge, and doctor for the poor & kids. It made me realize that life can end, no matter how much you do, but the more good you do, the more you're missed.

2. Once night, my friends and I were on our way to a Harkin for President rally in new hampshire. We were on a mountain road, and it was snowing, and the car swerved, into oncoming traffic. we his an oncoming car, which SAVED our lives, since the next stop was 150 feet down the other side of the road, down the mountain. To this day, the bizzare irony of getting saved by being in a car accident hasn't been lost on me, but at the same time, the fact that I did survive kinda left me with a "what your doing os ok" kind of vibe thing....don't know if it's a good thing, or maybe I should ahd a more "every day is the last day of your life" kind of vibe, but, that's all I got of it.

No longer doing things for other people. Selfishness can actually save people sometimes.

I had a similiar experienc to this one, result wise. I didnt almost die.. but... it yielded the same results.

I've come to the realization that my life could've been much better, and i've sortof wasted a lot of it. The first time i really stopped denying it was at the doctors office- I was there for having a pretty much constant string of headaches for a week or so, and my doctor basically diagnosed it 2 ways. The first thing that might've been causing them was my diet and my hydration, the second was some disease that was nearly life threatening, something that would most definetely shorten my lifespan greatly. During his explanation of the problem, I actually had the thought that i could now begin living life to the fullest. Its almost like I felt i needed an excuse to live boldly and without constraints. I decided that if i did have this disease, i wouldnt be sad, infact i felt as if it would liberate me into happiness. Odd. This is when i realized how much better life could be, and that i dont need an excuse to live differently. I'm not there yet... but I'm finding my way...

That, college, and my own cancer scare.

I got hit by a car crossing the street on the way to school. Pretty much eliminated any illusions of immortality I might have had. Made me an existentialist for life. :confused: :crazy:

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Read it, it will knock your worldview on its ass.

It is an amazing book.

What shaked my world view the most would be when I got incarcerated for 160 days.