Where do our values come from, anyway?

[morgan_dhu]

Whan and how did you arrive at your essential political, ethical and religious/spiritual philosophies? Have you always tended in certain directions and simply found the influences that brought you to where you are today, or did someone or something teach you/influence you/make you think about these positions and values?

Last night, I was talking with my partner glaurung about some of the books and authors from my youth that I've been re-reading of late (details available on my book journal, bibliogramma. I noticed that a lot of them, quite unbeknownst to me at the time, were fairly radical in some ways - Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman, Suzette Haden Elgin's At The Seventh Level, Samuel Delany's work... in fact, the other night, I was re-reading Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset, published in 1963, and ran across a small passage in which her attempt at a historical King Arthur is looking around at his band of companions, sitting around socializing after a hard day's work of hunting down Saxons, and sees two of his warriors having a cuddle in the corner. His thoughts are basically - lots of warriors form such relationships while on campaign and away from women, but these two really seem to be in love, which is only going to make them better warriors because they won't want to fight poorly in front of their lover.

So I was sort of wondering if perhaps, it was all of this stuff I'd read as a child that had started me on the path to becoming a left-wing radical with some very strong feelings about social justice, a pagan animist with some very strong feelings about the unity of all things, and all of those other values that underpin who I am.

But then my partner pointed out that I'd also read everything Heinlein had ever written when I was a child, and a lot of books by other people, some fairly right-wing, militaristic, crypto-fascist, etc., and hadn't been particularly influenced by them, other than to think about what was wrong in their worldviews, from my perspective, anyway.

Having a working mother back in the early 60s when this was not really common for a white middleclass child may have had something to do with my becoming a feminist at a very early age, but my mother was far from being a radical in political terms. I was raised until the age of about 12 or 13 without any continuing religious influences, except for one grandmother who kept trying to put me into Bible classes, but I didn't see her often at all. Then my mother converted to Judaism, but I was old enough that she simply asked my to keep kosher in the house out of respect for her, so while I studied the basic principles with her, I wasn't being pressured to adopt any particular faith, which was a good thing because by then I'd already developed the basic structure of my own beliefs, which were not at all like those of Judaism or Christianity.

So what was it? 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.

And how about you?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You always have to do what is right.

And there, of course, is the rub. In the final analysis, you have to balance all the facts you have, the frameworks for making decisions you have, and then decide, hopefully with your gut and you mind in some form of agreement, based on your values, and knwoign that there will be consequences, whether you're right or wrong.

And people of good conscience and conviction often differ, even after they're thought it all out carefully, because their values differ. Witness our disagreement concerning Afghanistan. I believe that you are an honourable person who evaluated the situation based on your knowledge and values and formed your opinion accordingly in the belief that it was the best possible thing to do in the face of harm or injustice, and I'd hope you would grant me the same courtesy - a courtesy which I don't, unfortunately, grant to many of the people who actually made the decision.

(As an aside, I'd never argue that life was better for women under the Taliban - but I'm more likely to argue that political and economic pressure, and direct support to women's organisations on the ground, such as RAWA, might have done more good in the long run, since women's lives so far have not improved all that much in a great many parts of Afghanistan, and aren't likely to, IMO, since the mission was never actually about helping women, that was just the cover story used to sell it to liberals. I suspect that if a strong governemnt could pull itself together and take control of the country, and take on the job of hunting out what remains of the Taliban and any of Bin Laden's associates still in the area, The Powers That Be wouldn't give a rat's ass if that government continued to vicimise women and allow women to be victimised - as Karzai's goverment does, because he hasn't the power to make changes that no one there who has power wants.)

It's actually comthing I think about a lot - I *feel* that my decisions and opinions are as right as an imperfect person who is really trying in the face of imperfect information can manage, but I know that I can't really know that I'm right. But to do nothing is almost always wrong, at least in the kinds of situations I'm thinking about.

I sometimes envy the people who, at least so it seems, have the kinds of values and worldviews that can allow them to be certain of the rightness of their decisions and actions.