Are we born into our 'world view', or do we develop it on our own?

Great Debates
1

This board is an interesting study in ‘right’ vs. ‘left’. It seems to me that a person rather quickly falls into one camp or the other, to some degree.

For instance, take abortion for example:

As a ‘left winger’, you are ‘pro-choice’, it seems that you will also be anti-death penalty (ironic), pro-social program, anti-corporate, anti-gun, etc.

If you are a Right winger, you are pro-life, you will most likely have some degree of acceptance of the death penalty (once again, ironic), will be pro-corporate, anti-social program, pro-gun, etc.
Of course, these are gross generalizations, and by no means are all people perfect little right or left wingers. I think of it more as a sliding scale then an absolute.
Which brings me to…How do we get to where we are, politically?

I mean, we look at what is going on Isreal, for example. Half of us think Isreal should kick some ass, the other half think Isreal needs its ass kicked. Same event, but how do we see it so differently? Same goes for abortion, social programs, homosexual rights, etc.

We all have access to the pretty much the same information, but how we interpret it seems to fall, generally, into one of two camps on such an incredibly broad array of issues. (‘I don’t care’ is also an option, I guess, but that isn’t much of a position!)

2

I sort of agree with Karl Marx, who said, in his “18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”

We choose our beliefs and positions, but our choices are influenced by our prior experiences and circumstances.

3

Who said “Give me a child until he is seven, and he will be mine for the rest of his life”? (I suspect a Jesuit). (and, no, that is an honest, non-judgemental semi-remembrance)

anyway, a child’s “education” includes her/his ‘default’ view, but (at least some) people can re-program themselves. (IMNHO)

4

Also, maybe some of these things do sort of tend to go together. Like pro-corporate and anti-social programs make sense, but you’re right about the death penalty, abortion, and gun control ones. Maybe it’s just easier to subscribe to a default view and keep it, rather than taking a completely different slant on each issue as it arises? That is, maybe we think we’ve got our own opinions but really we just sort of take everything for granted.

5

I’m pro-choice, pro-corporate, pro-social program, anti-gun, and pro-death penalty (but only for the “irreparably criminal”). I don’t fall too strongly into either camp, do I?

6

Wow, I’m five for five with Max, though I recognize the practical difficulties in determining who is “irreperably criminal”. Must be a Canadian thing.

7

It’s not just a Canadian thing, because I’m also five for five with Max, and I’m a Californian.

I think it is remarkable how heavily we are influenced by the attitudes of our parents. Many people experience a period of rebellion, but by the time we get to be our parents’ age, we very frequently tend to fall into their way of thinking.

The Jesuit line about “give me a child until he is seven…” was the basis for the “Up” documentaries, which have revisited fourteen British people every seven years since they were seven years old. I recently watched the most recent installment, “42 Up”, and was really struck by how closely these 42-year-olds mirrored their seven-year-old selves.

Of course, environmental influences also play a huge role in determining world views, and I think that not enough credit is given to the “overall view of society”. Back when abortion was illegal in this country, I’m sure there were many people who thought it was wrong simply because society “as a whole” thought it was wrong. Now that it is legal and (more) widely available, many people are pro-choice because so many others agree with them. I’m very hopeful that gay rights will tread a similar path in this country, as women’s rights and race issues have previously done.

I’m also convinced that our attitudes toward authority and external influences are to a certain extent hard-wired into us. Thus someone who is a born rebel will probably never think exactly the same way as his parents, while someone who is a born conformist will always have views that resemble prevailing societal norms.

8

We develop our world view, definitely, and if we don’t we damn well should (unless we were born with the world’s most intelligent, well-read, well-travelled, open-minded and enlightened parents, carers and educators). Even then, I think one should learn these things for themselves.

The more I learn, the more my views change. Eg the death penalty. While morally I am not against it - I genuinely believe that serial killers like Ian Brady should be extinguished - I no longer have faith or confidence in humanity’s ability to wiled such a power correctly. From everything I read, hear, see - including in this forum - I now think we are incapable of putting in a just system of capital punishment and the costs will always outweigh the benefits.

When I was at junior school (Church of England but not particularly religious) we learnt in “Current Affairs” how the Jews got their homeland back, after thousands of years of persecution. I remember thinking how good that was - how just and righteous, given Biblical history - and how irritating and horrible the Palestinians were for trying to spoil it for them, when they never should have been there in the first place. I remember genuinely feeling hatred at these people who wouldn’t leave the Jews alone to enjoy being in their land again.

I don’t think that now.

When I was in the UK I could never understand how or why people made snide remarks about Britain’s Empire. Now, meeting people from India and Pakistan, while I can see some benefit we might have brought them, I am also aware of the terrible damage and harm done.

When I was in the UK I used to think how great it was that we had a “special relationship” with the US and how much more important that was than Europe. I am still hugely Euroskeptic on a lot of issues, but I no longer think that. In fact, I have more admiration for France/Germany/Scandinavia on a lot of foreign policy issues (though not all) than I do the UK.

Most of all, as a journalist, I can see more and more clearly the lies we are all fed daily by our political and religious and corporate leaders. And even more sadly - seeing the fixed, indoctrinated, narrow mindsets of many here and elsewhere - I doubt even the ability of peer-to-peer information dissemination and debate - such as the internet - to overcome humanity’s brainwashing.

So I am still learning and and I am still trying to learn. And as part of this I have had to learn and accept that not everyone else is, and they never will.

9

When you only have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

Similarly, when the only meaningful division drawn in political views is “left-right”, it’s not exactly surprising that everyone “rather quickly” lands on one side or the other.

I’m not so sure that left-right is the only meaningful division.

10

Read a random selection of gobear’s posts, and consider whether you want to re-evaluate that position. (I personally tend to be significantly and consistently “liberal” in my political views, but I think my religious viewpoints are not among the majority ones among either liberals or conservatives.)

11

Continuing on that slight tangent hoping that it’s not really a hijack. Although cases like the sample that Polycarp offers for perusal are in existence at the SDMB, there is also a tendency towards rash classification along the lines the OP tries to argue. I for one am amazed at how many times I have been called a Socialist and leftist and European liberal in the short time I have been posting here. Ironic, since the fact is that I am neither of the three. On a US scale I would probably be considered centrist while on a EU scale I am considered a moderate conservative with tendencies towards libertarianism. If I describe myself I’d say I am a Moderate Conservative Federalist Monarchist (Yeah I know it sounds whacko, but I have a sound and solid argument for it - trust me). Not even people that have read every single one of my posts on politics might guess any of all that. Even offline I’d be hard to pinpoint and people are often enough shocked if I start political discourse given that I look more like an artsy intellectual lefty than anything else (well, except on the golf course, at the opera and at formal dinners of course).

My point other than making a fool out of myself by publicly flying the flag of my somewhat schizophrenic and unorthodox political belongings? The SDMB is not a good means for classification because of the abstract and incomplete level the debate is being held at. It is only easy to discern someone’s political belongings when they actually do fit into one of the polar camps. Or phrased differently appearances are not everything and the narrowed down format of discourse on a message board could lead to hasty conclusions. I think it’s rather sad that many members let themselves be caught up in this classification game all too often, and more so when it is wielded as a rhetoric club again and again.

As for the rest of the OP I’ll use myself as an example in attempt to create a response to the OP. Take as background the above explanation of my political belongings with the added explanation that I have transcended from anarchism in my teens through a short period of libertarianism into being a long term moderate conservative. I want to think that it’s thanks to a very open minded upbringing and the constant exposure to various cultures that I have been blessed with the capacity to re-evaluate my position so drastically. I’d also say that there was a fair amount of maturing and growing up involved. If I try to be objective, the fact is also that I have pretty much landed with opinions and beliefs that fit with my social and cultural background albeit somewhat strange and open minded for the background in question. So maybe my re-evaluating myself wasn’t so free from influence as I would like to believe. This could also be tested on my brother, known on SDMB as ethnicallynot who tries since two decades to be left wing, but when pressed on a number of issues will display strangely conservative opinions that I would say he has inherited. Now in his thirties he admits more and more that it’s not working out to be as far left as he originally wanted to. We simply can’t escape.

I’m not saying we are robots here though. I for instance believe myself to have retained a capacity to tolerate other people’s views and re-evaluate my detailed opinions through the years, but that might be because I had a remarkable parent who told me to always question everything and encouraged me to be curious about the world.

Hmm. Did I just manage to do some political witnessing?

Sparc