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

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I was raised in a really bizarre combination of left-wing political values and right-wing religious values. My father was a staunch CCF/NDP/Tommy-Douglas-inspired Canadian socialist, and my mother was a Labour-Party-voting British immigrant. But both of them were also very traditional religious-fundamentalist types. (However, it should be noted that Tommy Douglas was a christian, and his religious beliefs informed his political beliefs.)

I stuck with the political values, but not the religious ones. I think the main reason I stuck with the political values was that once I left the shelter of my parents' home, I was poor, and at the time the NDP was the party supporting the poor. [The provincial NDP later turned on poor people and used them as scapegoats to try to win support from the more conservative voters, which makes me reluctant to support the provincial branch of their party. But they're still better than the alternative.] Realizing that my sexuality was not heterosexual led me to explore different religious systems, which eventually led me to the left-leaning church I support today.

Books and Values

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

For me, as a child and a teenager, books had the power to expand my sense of what was possible: they took me far outside the narrow confines of suburban London and my fundamentalist Christian family. I certainly took values from them. For instance, the story of Beowulf made a huge impression on me; I decided that the important thing was not survival, but always fighting back, however terrifying one's adversary. But when the values expressed in books didn't make sense in terms of my own experience, I rejected them. In my early teens I enjoyed John Buchan's adventure stories. But I rejected the explicit anti-semitism in some of those stories; growing up in north-west London, I came into contact with Jewish people all the time. My closest friend at school was half Jewish. Buchan's anti-semitism didn't even make me angry (though it does now); I dismissed it as simply stupid.

I was an angry, rebellious kid; one of my strengths, as I now think. At twelve I was arguing with my father over his sexist attitudes, which for him were enjoined by the Bible. Again, I think the deciding factor for me was that male superiority didn't make sense in terms of my own experience. I knew I was cleverer and more capable than most of the males I encountered!

I have no doubt that having a bolshie, critical outlook helped me survive the experience of recognising that I was gay, in what was then a pretty hostile cultural environment. Books helped; oddly enough, the passage from Sword at Sunset you cite was one of the first positive depictions of a gay relationship that I ever met with. This was back when I was about thirteen. I didn't begin to identify as gay until several years later.

On the other hand, coming out as gay reinforced my sense of being an outsider, made me more inclined to identify with outsiders and outsider figures, and more inclined to be critical of conventional social values and sceptical about what I was told by those who claimed to be authorities.

[rhondamatrix.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a question!

I'm not sure where the left-wing side of me comes from because while my folks aren't conservative Republicans they really aren't left-wingers either. They're just kinda cynical towards all politicians.

I definitely know where my bitter hatred of corporate America comes from ... when I was in sixth grade, Mobil Oil bought out the Montgomery Ward retail chain and proceeded to close the entire catalog division. My folks owned a MW catalog outlet which they had poured their entire life savings into, not to mention hours and hours of work every day, so much so that Mom actually wound up in the hospital. So with one swoosh of a pen or whatever, years of my parents' hard work went down the drain and we were basically destitute for the next four years. Not fun.

Spirituality, I have no idea. My views are so totally different from anyone in my family or even from R's. I'm really just kinda doing the whole freaky lone gunman thing with all that. My family were never church people. Dad grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist family, the kind that went to church four days a week, and Mom grew up strictly Catholic, and I think they just kinda burned out on church. I remember going to church when I was really little but stopping at around age four. I always liked the Bible as a story and read it a lot on my own, but not so much for spiritual purposes. Around age nine I started going to a Free Methodist church up the street from my house, but not because I felt any kind of devotion - I was just really bored and lonely and wanted some people to hang out with. So I got into the whole Youth for Christ thing with walkathons and rollerskating parties and all that, until about age 13. Not sure exactly why I stopped going, just got tired of it, I guess.

I think the thing that sets me apart from everyone else in terms of spirituality is that I really, truly, genuinely do not believe in a Higher Power or Creator. I wholeheartedly believe that the Earth did not come to be through any divine action but wholly from the beauty of scientific accident and the chaos of nature.

However, I do not see myself as an atheist either. I do believe there is another dimension, call it heaven if you want (I don't), a spiritual dimension where we all go when we die. I believe that spirits are all around us at all times, watching over us. Not angels with wings and harps and all that, just spirits. Maybe family, maybe friends, maybe strangers who are just attracted to our energy.

I believe that every spirit has the freedom to choice whether to remain on the spirit realm or to come back and try again. I believe that all of us have lived before, numerous times, and that the "unknown" part of our brains is past life memories that only a few of us have figured out how to access but all of us can get to if we really try. The goal of coming back for another existence is to try to resolve stuff that ended badly before, to apply lessons we didn't know before. (Of course, not being able to access specific past memories makes this more of a challenge). I read in a book by Linda Goodman that there is a hierarchy to the zodiac wherein people born under Aries are the youngest souls and so on up the signs to Pisces, which are the oldest souls. I don't know if that's true or not but it's an interesting theory.

I believe that we can communicate with the spirit world and that they can communicate with us because I've seen it happen with other people, although I've never been able to do it myself.

Finally, getting back to my original point, what turns me off about pretty much every organized spirituality, including R's, is that there is a Higher Power, a Creator, a God, a Goddess, someone or something that oversees it all, made it all happen, and is basically running the show. I believe that in the spirit realm, we are all one, we are all equal, nobody is better than anyone else, and there is no need for any power of any kind. There is no need for a hierarchy because there is no personal conflict. It is serenity. It is Being.

Like I said, I'm a freak.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

Wow... what a question.

For me, the question of values is like an archaeological dig, in which one goes down through the layers.

My parents are a little more left wing than myself and we don't always agree about current events, particularly overseas. Usually, we do though. Both are Labor voters. Their values (as opposed to their circumstances) tend to be staunchly working class. For example, shoes are functional and to be worn not until they are shabby but until totally worn out and non-functional. Their generation of the family was skeptical of the worth of education but have had a change of heart since mine demonstrated it - a change of belief without change of values.

The headmaster of my school used to day that a function of a school was to remove children from the influence of their parents. (He said a lot that we didn't take seriously enough at the time.) School attempted to put a middle class gloss on us and succeeded to some extent. In dealing with my nieces and their choices in life, I keep harking back to one of his favourite passages, the Parable of the Talents (Mt xxv:14-30).

Later the Army built on this. It is your privilege to lead because you have special knowledge. I retain an abiding belief in the value of discipline (particularly self-discipline) and compulsion.

I didn't read a lot of books as a child. I taught myself to read so I could read comic books. I loved the marvel superheroes of the late 1960s. The dedicated Mr Fantastic, the noble Thor, the angsty Spider-Man.

At high school I read a sci-fi by the authors of the day, like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert and Usula LeGuin. (These are not the main ones read, just the main ones remembered.) For some reason, over time I tended to favour books by female authors. I read a lot more history books, mostly on military topics. In those days there were few Australian publications, so most were British. As opposed to the comic books, I doubt that these had much impact.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

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.

That's what consciousness-raising is, isn't it? The synthesis of theory and experience.

[victoriacatlady.livejournal.com]

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.

radicalization

[lauraquilter.livejournal.com]

so glad you posted this -- i often ponder this question and have for years been plotting an oral history project on radicalization, to address just this question.

for me, i was raised by a fairly conservative southern family, with a strong dose of fundamentalism in my teen years on my father's side.

and yet from an early age i had certain values that were not in line with my family's -- i was opposed to the death penalty from the moment i understood it existed; opposed foreign anti-communist intervention without understanding anything about communism (if it's bad, people will figure it out; if it's good, then they have a right to do it); supportive of queer rights while dealing with my own internalized homophobia ("i'm glad *i'm* not a lesbian but people should be able to do what they want").

i didn't get any of those views from my family ... reading is the only source i can come up with.

laura