from childhood my dad gave some consciousness. he was a Vietnam vet who was drafted against his will and was resentful of his experiences. He wasn’t necessarily versed in theory but he was as a result pretty fiercely anti war. He struggled with ptsd and health effects from agent orange exposure for the rest of his life. The second point stuck with me and with early Internet access I researched that very young. PTSD is kind of inherent to warfare but a poorly tested ecological weapon that is essentially chemical warfare because of how much cancer, birth defects, etc it causes? And then dropping propaganda on the country to claim it was safe even though scientists were protesting its use domestically? Starting to form the opinion the US is maybe a shithead state and not the “good guys”

High school was 9/11 and Iraq/Afghanistan which was a lot of firsts. Going into this was more of a traditional 90s counterculture “fuck the system” anarchist queer kid. The context of the times was different though; had friends who were shitheads. A lot more was tolerated then. 9/11 was shocking but also what prompted some of us to start researching what could’ve prompted such an attack and the history of imperialism. This led to lots of tension and some friend group fracturing as many buried their heads in the sand believing the attacks were out of spite (the gwb “they hate our freedom” narrative).

This is also around the time I became vegan, although admittedly I stopped for a brief period in my late 20s. That was around 16? Iirc. This was wholly for welfare reasons so i consider that politically informed

As an aside I remember my dad genuinely researching places to send me as the Iraq war started. I was about to turn 18 and he was terrified of another conscription. I had 2 friends from high school enlist and they were killed, I don’t know how to feel about it. I am sad they were exploited and destroyed for imperialist machinations so that they could pay for college, I guess. I am far more sad somewhere between 600,000-1,000,000 Iraqis were murdered.

Shaped from there, lots of reading, went to college and formed new social groups, internet matured, etc this is like 2005 era and when I start getting into reading various philosophers, the classic college freshman ones like Nietzsche and Sartre, then a ton more. Eventually that came into Marx and Engels, etc.

I struggled throughout life defining political concept. Anarchy felt wrong because especially the more i learned about logic and thought about it the state seemed inevitable but i also despise hierarchy. I do believe capitalism is inherently and deeply flawed and i do think communism is a superior model but it is still flawed because it ultimately relies on creating a system wherein some people are more important than others which opens the doors for corruption and avarice, which are part of human nature. I believe this is necessary though, at least for the foreseeable future, because while technology and automation could enable people to self govern we are not at a point where such technology can be deployed in a trustworthy state and protected from malicious actors. in the meantime literally any collaborative model would be a vast improvement. Why fight each other when we can work together? But with this last point I suppose I am preaching to the choir