When I started this blog last March, I thought I might muse a lot about my favorite subject … ME! But there are so many daily topics that seemed to demand attention that I kept getting distracted. One can never overestimate the capacity of our fellow beings to keep doing outrageously stupid things. For example, take the current clown show going on as Republicans try to elect a new Speaker. The best they can do is nominate a thug who has not sponsored a single piece of successful legislation in his rather long career. But I shall not be distracted this time.

I’ve always been fascinated by what shapes who we become. How did I, or any of us, become the adults we are? Not having children of my own, I rely on insights from friends who share vignettes about their offspring. For example, I’ve listened to liberal parents lament about the one child who grew to become a Trump Republican. They just shake their heads and wonder how such a tragedy came to be. That would have been my greatest fear if I had made the mistake of becoming a parent. I dreaded the possibility of siring a child who grew up to be a Republican. I could accept virtually any other outcome except that one. That is the one sin I could forgive in myself.

On a less apocalyptic note, I’ve noticed siblings with very different vocational aspirations, personalities, ambitions, and so forth. It is difficult to imagine they came from the same biological material or that they experienced similar environmental inputs. The process though which nurture and nature interact indeed remains a deep mystery.

I have no siblings. My parents took one look at me and said … ‘we ain’t making that mistake a second time.’ The world has thanked them ever since. 😊 Still, I wonder why I turned out the way I did. My puzzlement focuses on one aspect of my core personality … my liberal, if not quasi-radical, beliefs and disposition.

This mystery arises from three points. First, I was raised in a homogeneous culture and was exposed to little, if any, competing thought. Second, I was immersed in a Catholic, working class culture which undoubtedly found my budding beliefs to be anathema. And finally, there were signs of harboring strange beliefs very early on, surely before I was exposed to alternative views of the world. When I was a kid, no one was harboring the thoughts and feelings that were crowding into my head. What was going on?

There were many early moments which now strike me as informative, yet distinctly odd. I recall being perhaps 12 years old. The couple that owned the flat my parents rented were being visited by their daughter and her husband from Virginia. As I was listening to the adults talk, the visitors expressed outrage that the Supreme Court would racially integrate their schools. For some reason, I piped up and gave an emotional defense of that action. Where did that come from? No one in my world favored civil rights, or at least expressed any interest in the condition of minorities. I don’t recall even meeting a black person until high school when a Black gal also worked in the Public Library with me. Hell, prejudice was so widespread in my immediate culture that we had a pecking order among white ethnic Catholic groups. The Irish were on top and then down through the Polish and other ethnic groups until you got to the Italians. I now hate to even consider where my tribe placed conventional minorities. Prejudice was ingrained as a way of life. Yet, somehow, I instinctively was appalled at the very thought.

Around this age, I recall thinking a lot about how much we had in America and how little other peoples had (post-war hardships were yet visible). I recall wondering why we didn’t share more of our abundance with others. More amazingly, I thought hard about how arbitrary national boundaries were, to my mind at least. We needed one government for the entire globe. Of that, I was certain. I was ecstatic when Europe began to merge into what became the European Union. I even recall joining, or trying to join, something called the World Federalist Society, a one world government advocacy group. They likely were a Communist front organization, but that message resonated with me. It still does.

I was in public schools until the 9th grade. Then I went to a Catholic, all boys, high school. While being taught by religious brothers was not attractive to me (they would whack you if you misbehaved and your parents would whack you a second time if they found out about it), it was just about the best Catholic (if not all) school academically in Central Massachusetts. There were no electives, just rigorous academic courses.

However, we did have religion classes for all four years. Even though I took my religion very seriously, I would argue (silently) with what was being spoonfed to us about what we were supposed to believe. The Catholic birth control arguments struck me as totally arbitrary and ridiculous as did the notion that children not exposed to our specific religious tradition would end up in a place called limbo (a convenient invention). I could never accommodate a God that arbitrary and capricious that He would sentence innocent individuals with zero chance of redemption to some form of second-class eternity. What was with that? That struck me as totally indefensible given the message of love Christ advanced. I should have realized right then that my days in a Catholic seminary would be few. They were.

It was as if a Rebel within me was waiting to break out, only waiting for the right moment to do so. That moment came when I left the Seminary and matriculated at Clark University, a secular school in my hometown that was labeled a den of Communists and atheists by the local Catholics. I loved it. I loved the freedom of thought, the questioning, the diversity of opinion. Within weeks (or was it days) I emerged from my Catholic, working class cocoon. I never looked back.

Now, if I hadn’t taken that route (seminary and then Clark), how would I have turned out? 😳 I would have gone directly from my Catholic high school to a very good, but traditional, Catholic college … Holy Cross. Would I still have emerged as an anti-war activist, and leftist leader, had I gone that expected route. Would I still have become a lifelong Progressive, as I pretty much did? I can not say with certainty, but the journey surely would have been more difficult.

It was as if I was waiting to rebel. But why? How were the seeds implanted in me. I’ve scoured my brain for a rational explanation. One comes to mind, though it is far from convincing. My father was less prejudiced than anyone else I knew back then. He was no liberal but, on occasion, he would comment on things that bothered him.

I recall we were in Cape May, New Jersey … an upscale place on the shore where some named acts would perform. I was perhaps 9 or 10 years old, so this might have occurred in the early 50s. A black singer of some repute was appearing at this local upscale resort, as was displayed on the marquee. I still recall my father saying something like … “that is a shame. This entertainer is the headline act, but he is not permitted to stay at this resort.” I can not recall if he ever elaborated. His disaproving tone, however, spoke volumes to me.

No matter how many times I go over the same ground, I come back to the same place. Sure, I can recall a comment or two from my dad. But that hardly explains how early and how dramatically I veered away from the culture in which I had been encased from birth. It was as if I were hard wired to be whom I became. I was destined to rebel.

I’m not sure I like that conclusion. It suggests that there is little we can do to alter the divisive cultural divides that separate us from one another. You are what you are. Period! Moreover, genetic hard wiring seems inconsistent with the spacial distribution of political patterns which suggests that nurturing plays a stronger role. Why are conservatives and liberals disproportionately found in separate enclaves unless a good deal of residential self selection is going on.

That’s the problem with anecdotal evidence. You cannot extrapolate very far. No matter. I became a liberal, progressive, leftist, woke type or whatever label you prefer. I am so glad I did, no matter the cause. It means I have a conscience and a soul. I’ll take that any day.

If you want more, I have an entire memoir loosely devoted to my early years. A Clueless Rebel. Available at Amazon.com.