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

Re: radicalization

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comments.

It is indeed a fascinating topic, the processes that lead us to who we are, and the question of what triggers radicalisation in some people, while others exposed to similar circumstances remain content with the status quo.

I have no doubt that reading is a part of it, at least for some of us - I guess what bemuses me about my own early radicalisation is why the radical books had so much more of an effect on me than the books that supported a mainstream, or even a strong conservative or fascist perspective - because they were part of what I read, too. Reading exposes us to ideas outside of the ones current in our immediate environment - but then, there's the question of what causes us to accept or reject them, and that's the crux of the matter.

I'm would be interested in hearing more about the oral history of radicalisation you mentioned - have you collected any accounts at this point?

By the way, please forgive me if this question seems inappropriate, but I'm curious as to what brought you to read my journal, and comment on this entry, at this time.

Re: radicalization

[lauraquilter.livejournal.com]

would like to respond more but i'm out the door! very quickly, then:

(a) i have collected some, but not officially; in other words, i didn't do release forms, i didn't organize & prepare, my recordings are a mess. so, in interviews, really i need to re-do what i've done. however, it's one of my official Goals for 2007 to get my ass in gear on this project, and get it officially Under Way.

(b) i've seen your journal before, no doubt via various feminist sf meanderings. today i came to it via a comment on ide cyan's LJ (since erased), and was just ... well ... procrastinating a more pressing task by puttering about on the internet and looking through interesting journals. this one caught my eye and i figured it wasn't *too* old (only two months) to respond.

best,

laura

Re: radicalization

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the project. If there's anything I can do to help out - let me know. I think it's important to understand the radicalisation process, and what you're envisioning sounds like a good way into that.

Re (b) - I'd wondered about the timing. I'm glad you chose to comment - I'm pleased to "meet" you.