What made me initially susceptible to a left-wing/socialist and at the same distinctly spiritual and mystical set of perspectives on the world I live in? Sometimes it seems to me as though I have always felt this way, and that I uncovered my core beliefs rather than developed them, as I would read or hear one thing that said to me "yes, of course, that just feels right" and then read or hear something else and feel that there was something basically wrong about it - and that the rest was simply refining my feelings of "rightness" and "wrongness" with evidence and reason.

My friend P. was asking me the other day where I got my intense drive for justice. I told her about being raised in a radical lefty household. But she said, and I think she's probably right, that that didn't seem enough to account for it. I suspect I went through the same process of refinement of my feelings of rightness and wrongness that you did.

I also suspect that reading comic books in the late sixties had something to do with it too. There was a strong theme of one powerful hero fighting for justice against seemingly overwhelming odds, and winning. I always wanted to be that hero. The point here, though, is that the comic books not only showed him (or sometimes her) fighting for justice, but they showed him winning. It's never as easy as the comic books showed, but I had it deep within me that it is at least possible.