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What has influenced your way of thinking the most?

What influenced your political outlook the most?

  • Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Disney, Metro-Goldwin-Mayer, FOX, CNN

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • A speech by Obama or Bush

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Books

    Votes: 10 58.8%

  • College

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • The pen is blue!

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • Total voters
    17
I would have to say my former, and current teachers. I've been really lucky and have had amazing teachers who have taught me to think critically, analytically, and for myself. I'm very grateful for them.
 
I think this is a bit of asking a fish what color is the water. Some of the things that influence us the most are so subtle we don`t even notice them ourselves but they seem obvious to others. Yes there are things we can point at and say yes this had a profound effect upon me but there are so many others that we just do not percieve.
 
I'm with YS, some of my teachers have greatly influenced me by having me think critically and question everything. They never pushed an ideology on my and were very professional, but they did help me develop when it comes to analyzing the issues and proposed solutions.
 
Overall, I'd say the manner of my upbringing helped to influence my political thought, but also independent researchers such as Andrew Gavin Marshall, Paul Craig Roberts, and Michel Chossudovsky and others have definitely had an impact on me.

Edit: I say that the greatest lesson I've learned from those three researchers I just mentioned was to always look at situations from different perspectives and to only be beholden to one thing: getting as close to the truth as possible (as full truth is virtually unattainable).
 
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Living and working in numerous countries on 5 continents. The more of the world I saw the more my beliefs changed.
 
Of the options you provided: college. My alma mater rendered me incapable of accepting information without examination. It also gave me such a multifaceted understanding of reality that really solidified my views on human potential and "grey area" that form the foundations of political opinions.

However, I would also have to equally credit my mother, who always encouraged me to have empathy and who forced me to see and acknowledge parts of the world that were not in my immediate environment. She also, by accident I think, taught me to trust myself, particularly with regard to the conclusions I draw about the world even when there is strong pressure to abandon them.
 
I meant more like what influenced your political thinking, not everything in general. Wish I could edit the title. Another ****ed up poll by me.
 
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Matt Foley said:
I meant more like what influenced your political thinking, not everything in general. Wish I could edit the title. Another ****ed up poll by me.
Click to expand...

My answer is still the same.
 
My parents, especially my mum, who gave me my sense of humour. Wilbur Smith, even though he's a historical fiction writer, I've devoured his books ever since I was about 10, so they've left a mark. Communism, though I'm no longer a communist, it gave me a lens through which to view the world, and shattering that lens expanded my view to a great degree. My year 12 history teacher, through her I developed my sense of nationalism. And a **** load more.
 
Experience has taught me the most. All my opinions haven't completely changed but matured, grown in depth and fairness of application over time. Because things are not always black and white, sometimes they're grey and it's not just the destination but also the journey.
 
Matt Foley said:
I meant more like what influenced your political thinking, not everything in general. Wish I could edit the title. Another ****ed up poll by me.
Click to expand...

Observation, Fear, and enough imagination to envision likely results.

Thus, my fall from following the "New Conservative" mindset.

I may not be a Liberal, but am most certainly not into Hatred.
 
My granddaddy was incredibly political; he was a Republican politician from South Carolina that used to go quail hunting with the likes of Strom Thurmond, and ran for state senate a few times. I stayed Republican all the way up until 2003 (when I graduated HS) then I kind of didn't care for a few years. When I lived on my own, along with a lot of reading I slowly became more moderate and democrat. Now that I have a family I am slightly more socially conservative.
 
I would have to say Rush. I thought I was a lib because I really didn't pay much attention to politics and always heard Dem's are for the working man and reps are for the rich. Being a working man I thought I must be Dem. One day I stumbled onto some guy named Rush on the radio and it was like a light bulb turned on, I agreed with this guy. It was in that era around 20 years ago that I started paying attention to politics and discovered I was basically conservative and definitely not democrat.
 
I would have to say my father. He is a brilliant man with a gifted IQ (just shy of genius) and probably the smartest man I have known in any significant way. While we do not agree on every single issue experience has taught me to heavily consider his views as I have found them to be right much much more then they are wrong.
 
Decades of living has influenced my way of thinking the most. I have been blessed with a mind capable of observing consequences of certain societal and political actions, and determining whether I believe those consequences were beneficial or detrimental to society, my country and the world in general.

I've determined that strict dogma of any kind is detrimental because it creates a hive mentality, incapable of objective observation by seeing only what it has been taught to see, and ignoring all the rest. Religious dogma, partisian dogma, capitalist dogma, socialist dogma... all pockets of brainwashing that views any contradicting opinion, any compromise or blending of purist thought, as a threat that must be exterminated. This completely stagnates one's ability to envision a reality beyond their own ideological box.

A mind really is a terrible thing to waste.
 
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Matt Foley said:
What has influenced your way of thinking the most?
Click to expand...
My parent's divorce when I was 5, and their behavior towards eachother and in their personal lives proceeding since.

Where is that in your poll?

For example:
~Abortion, pro-choice is trying to justify mothers tossing out their children, just like my sisters and I were tossed out like trash.

~SSM: pro-ssm is saying either mothers or fathers aren't important, when they were very important to me and their absence was dearly missed. Aslo, pro-ssm is saying that as a father, I am not important to my children, which is a personal offence.

~Guns: anti-gun is saying we should not be allowed to defend ourselves from perverts, like a boyfriend my mother had who was a pedophile and was caught naked in my sister's room watching her sleep. pro-gun-controle is also saying that we should exist at the whim of evil people, just like various adults who drank all the time and were the reason I carried a high-powered pellet gun to highschool and searched my house room-to-room every single day when I came home. Thank God I had it, too, because I needed it.....

~Taxes: Liberals are saying that we shouldn't get to keep what we earn, just like my stepmother would 'confiscate' my allowance for truly petty things after I did the extra chores to earn the money and had plans for it.

***
Yes I listen to Limbaugh, but mostly for familiar background noise because it reminds me of when I worked for my father in my middle-school days.
 
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Media or current politicians having the greatest influence would be quite sad. There are too many models of political theory and implementation that existed before our lifetimes, well before Obama or Bush, so in a way i guess books. Teenage years were kind of suspended until college, so I was in for quite a shock all at once. Surrounded by people who believed passionately in what they were doing, this was a critical time. Still, i hope my opinions are malleable enough even now that life experience, so long as it's grounded in logic, will continue to shape them.


Jerry said:
~SSM: pro-ssm is saying either mothers or fathers aren't important, when they were very important to me and their absence was dearly missed. Aslo, pro-ssm is saying that as a father, I am not important to my children, which is a personal offence.
Click to expand...

I would never say such a thing and I find it offensive you assume so. I simply, like many others, believe 2 fathers can parent effectively, especially when we're talking about kids who had neither. I'm sure it sucks terribly to lose a parent, but that's not what SSM is about. As far as adopting, it's about replacing a void with stability, something I would think conservatives approve of. Many married couples, gay or straight, never have kids also.
 
The pen is blue.

No talking points by any media or political figure has stuck with me for any significant amount of time.

College hasn't been much of an eye-opener either for me so far, but perhaps that's because I started college after spending some time in the world, not before. The college culture really isn't doing anything for me. Sometimes it feels like actual classes are what I put up with so I can do the only thing I feel I'm getting something out of, which is running the paper.

Book have had an influence on me - and some a major influence - but I wouldn't say they have influenced my way of thinking the most.

My experiences with people have had the most influence on me. They're the things that stick with me and that I spend the most time considering and trying to make sense of. I learned how to think critically not from school, but from my father, and I can't even really remember when we had that particular lesson plan because I was so extremely young. Everything else I learned in practice. Some of it I feel I failed miserably at, but even within that there's something to learn if you can just manage to live through it. So far so good.
 
I didnt vote in the poll, there was no reasonable answer for me to choose.

Life has influenced me, what ive personally experienced and have seen during my life.
 
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