Changes in my political and aesthetic worldview were already underway, but the thing that ended up doing a lot of the work was something I adopted for unrelated reasons: I stopped having (or at least expressing) opinions on things I hadn't experienced firsthand. The urge to have a take on everything can be strong, and once you have a take it might as well be a strong one, and in this way one can easily end up with opinions whose strength far outstrips one's experience or the merits. Deciding to stop had two positive outcomes: in the short term, I found less motivation to have opinions on things that didn't interest me (I have no opinions on any comic book movie since the first Avengers because I have seen none of them); in the longer term, it provides some fresh areas to revisit when I do feel like developing an opinion (I still do not like the Beatles, but I reconfirm that opinion after listening to them, not out of the air). It's a lot harder to be a reactionary when you have to confront the thing you're reacting against and consider it on its own terms.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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