EPTI can still remember when I first experimented with radical belief. At the young age of 13.
I was never the popular kid, nor was I the kid that everyone disliked. I stuck to my own type, the kind that ranked games rather than girls.
Me and my friends had it all figured out. We were the smart kids, we knew it all. Everyone else? Idiots, the perfect excuse why we wouldn't go out and party, the perfect excuse to stay at home on a Saturday.
Looking back, I think it was a fear of rejection, masked as perceived intelligence. My grades were good, but they didn't reveal any hidden brilliance, just a lazy kid that thought he could shrug his way through education, an attitude that would catch up with him at higher education.
No, I never did much when it came to school, like so many I took pride in how little I could do. Surely, there was no greater testament to my brilliance than the fact that I never did my homework and could still get a passing grade.
There was only one class that got me excited, the one class where I would open the books outside of class, not because I was told to, but because I wanted to.
History.
History, even now, is one of my favorite subjects. Though I no longer study it in the organized fashion of school, I still enjoy to sit down with a good history book, as much as a good book of fiction.
My favorite period, back then, was World War 2 (it was ancient Egypt when I was a kid), and being a Dutch student, I was in luck, because there is nothing we like to talk about more than World War 2.
World War 2 has the big tanks, the massive battles, the world altering political movements going head to head, and back then, a clear story of good versus evil. We were good, the Nazis were evil, and though the reality might not be exactly that simple, the narrative holds up.
Now, we all know who won WW2, but in my youth, the USSR was gone. I was too young to remember the threat of communism. When I learned about history, the Sovjet Union was as much a relic of the past as Nazi-Germany.
The distinct difference though, was the attention that the USSR received, compared to Nazi-Germany. We all knew about the concentration camps, but not everyone knew about the gulags.
And there I was, young 13 year old me, faced with a regime that, propaganda wise, was as exciting as Nazi-Germany, but without being synonymous with evil.
I was enthralled from the first lesson, and I desperately wanted to know more about communism. I began reading every book that I could find and understand, which weren't all that many at the time, but I managed to get what I thought was a decent feel for the communist doctrine.
For the next three years, I was a devout communist. It made sense to me. Wasn't it fair if everyone got at least a somewhat equal share of the pie? Why could some people have so much whilst others had so little?
If anything remains of those days, it was my belief that effeciency doesn't justify everything. People would tell me that communism didn't work, because if everyone was paid the same, there was not motivation to drive people. I always rejected their complaints in the same way. Sure, they might have a point, the system might be less effective, but did that matter? No, I believed that we needed to be communists because it was moral, not because it was effective.
Looking back, I still like to think that my communism was fueled by desire to help people, but perhaps that might be the bias of nostalgia.
After I turned sixteen, my interests in communism went on the decline.
I know that I read more about the horrors of communism, and its various failures, but more than anything, I think it was simply the result of a mind in development. Hormones don't just make you want to fuck everything that moves, but apparently it also cures communism.
I swung to the other end of the spectrum, arriving at what bordered on fascism. The government's task wasn't to perfectly divide the wealth, it was to take care of the people in the most effective way.
The state had to run like a clock, and the only way to achieve such perfection was through forcefully making people do what was needed, because people were too egotistical to make it work otherwise. The state had to fix the inherent flaw of humanity.
Fascism lost my interest after about a year. I can still remember exactly why. For as hardline as my beliefs were, they were still grounded in a belief that it was in some way about taking care of people. When I began to understand the militarism within fascism, I quickly lost interest. After all, what was more wasteful than war? And if so, how could I support a system that was so inherently militaristic.
I tried to seperate the two, but eventually I just gave up entirely.
I drifted back to another extreme again. Libertarianism.
How wrong had I been all this time. People could perfectly handle their own affairs, it was the government that kept screwing everything up.
This was in a period where I rapidly switched political beliefs, waking up a libertarian one day, a socialist the next. My brief dance with Libertarianism came to a swift end when I decided to go to a Libertarian meeting.
Even to this day, I can honestly say, that I have never met a Libertarian that can in any way be described as a likeable human being. With libertarianism it was the people that chased me away.
I continued to bounce from one end of the spectrum to the other, the only constant being that I liked to be on the fringe. Having some centrist democratic position was just too boring, I liked my political beliefs with some flair.
But the years mellowed me out, eventually landing me on exactly that middle-of-the-road democratic position. The west had it all figured out, we were there, this was the end of the road, as good as it could get.
There I would have remained, had it not been for a videogame to snap me from my lull. Along came Bioshock, and its antagonist Andrew Ryan and his pseudo-Objectivist beliefs.
I was sold, here was a belief I had never heard of, so unique, so distinctly not like anything else, whilst at the same time being distinctly western.
I started reading into objectivist literature, and even bought the Fountainhead and Atlas shrugged, as a good Objectivist would. Reason was my guide, and it was my job to make sure everyone knew that, my job to enlighten the world to the error of their ways.
Objectivism and Libertianism, if the two systems have anything in common (and they have a lot) it is the fact that their following are largely composed of unlikeable people. Objectivism eventually ended with a dispute over the people, more so than the content.
But Bioshock and Objectivism still had a profound impact, they revived my interests in politics, my desire to be out on the fringe, but not go so far as to believe in something so idiotic that it can't be protected with valid arguments.
These days I don't ascribe to any particular political view, having learned my lesson with blindly accepting entire doctrines.
All that remains is a firm belief in the individual, and the conviction that humans deserves the right to express themselves, be it through opinions or through ownership over their work.
From this somewhat philosphical starting point, I build most of my political views. Everything from freedom of speech to capitalism is balanced upon the simple fact that the individual exists, whilst the collective does not.
Looking back, I don't regret any beliefs I had or expressed. It was a rough ride, but every part told me something about the person that I was, or still am. No doubt, if I met the old me, I would rant and rave at how wrong he is, but I would have missed out on a lot if I hadn't traveled the road to reach the destination.
Every week, still, I sit at bars and talk politics with random people, something which in Leiden (a student city) can be a pretty diverse affair. On a regular basis I attend discussions, enjoying the realization that the vast majority of the people in the audience disagree with what I believe. I still enjoy sitting on the fringe of any discussion, when you still have to work to convince people.
Politics isn't just how we run society, it tells us something about ourselves, but of course it doesn't tell us everything about ourselves.
I could have looked at my life through a variety of lenses. I could have looked back at the video games I played, the friends I had, the parties I eventually went to, the relationships I had. But I didn't, I looked back on my life through a political lense, perhaps a tribute to how important politics is to me.
I found my niche, my little worldview that I can defend endlessly, and just as close to my heart as politics is the debate with which it comes. Sitting in those bars, talking about how the world should be, rather than how it is.
I don't hope everyone sees the world the way I do. I hope that until the day that the reaper taps me on the shoulder, I can keep talking politics.
