So what influenced YOU???

[The Straight Story]

From porn to violent video games to church to talk radio to books...to whatever - what made you make the decisions you have in life?

Or have you escaped such influence (while some say others could not)?

Are you capable of overcoming the influence of nightly news shows/tv shows that suck, et al? If so - how did you do it while others did not?

Do you own a weapon (gun, knife, fists...), and if so have you used it to harm others? If not - why not? We live in a violent society we hear and if you have been able to refrain why haven't others?

Do you think that most people other than yourself can decipher right from wrong, see bias in news organizations, and so on?

What is it that influences people to do terrible things while so many others exposed to the same things don't?

[gateley]

1. Drugs. nt

[cliffordu]

2. beat me to it...ya bastid!!!

:hi:

[fla nocount]

3. Mom. n/t

[MadMaddie]

4. My Parents and my Grandmother....

I try to live my life by trying to do the moral right thing. I made the choice to pick up books from the time I was in elementery school till this very day.

I intentionally try to experience things that are new and different and I can either chalk up positive experiences or I say I tried it and didn't like it.

One other thing I was brought up a Baptist church, I went to aLutheran college and one of the most important classes I ever took was a comparitive religous course that examined the origins of various religions. The class opened my eyes and raised my awareness concerning religion.

I believe that some human beings are truely evil and I believe that there are people that suppress the ugliness that lies within them. On the other hand there are evil people that embrace their evilness and revil in it and not all the counseling in the world will cure them.

[ingac70]

5. When I was 4 years old...

My fave TV show was "Sanford and Son", and I would fake a heart attack and scream "this is the big one!" just like Fred whenever my mom tried to make me clean my room. She laughed the first couple of times, but after a while the funny wore off.

I'd say that is the last time any type media compelled me to behave a certain way.

I own guns and have never harmed, or thought to harm.

An adult who violently acts on what he sees/hears/read is either crazy or retarded.

[Muttocracy]

6. My mom's love of the natural world. The conservative place of my birth I fled

and the northern liberal towns where I've spent my adult life. Very smart, very liberal people I've hung out with and worked with as an adult.

[JerseygirlCT]

7. Can't answer the last one, sorry.

My parents, first. My schooling (which included faith as I was in Catholic school 1-12), in many ways. My close friends, especially my husband. Lots and lots of reading over my lifetime.

No weapons. No way.

I think I'm mostly capable of overcoming. I think being open to listening to a variety of sources helps with that. When I get to het up over DU stuff, my husband tends to talk me down, for instance.

I think most people can decipher right and wrong when it comes to their own actions. I think the influence of the MSM is too insidious for many to decipher, however. I think there's an instinctive trust of people in authority by many people.

[asdjrocky]

8. Two words-

The Ramones. That of course led to my love affair with sniffing glue, and girls named Shena.

[noamnety]

9. Can I add another question into the mix?

Yours focus on decisions more than attitudes.

How about "what's influenced your self-image and attitudes about your own body?"

[Journeyman]

10. "I have been influenced by my father telling me my back would become crooked. . .

because of my maniacal desire to masturbate. . . by reading "Gloryosky, Zero!" in Little Annie Rooney . . . by listening to Uncle Don and Clifford Brown . . . by smelling the burnt shell powder at Anzio and Salerno . . . torching for my ex-wife . . . giving money to Moondog as he played the unturned pails around the corner from Hanson's at 51st and Broadway . . . getting hot looking at Popeye and Toots and Casper and Chris Crustie years ago . . . hearing stories about a pill they can put in the gas tank with water but the "big companies" won't let it happen -- the same big companies that have the tire that lasts forever -- and the Viper's favorite fantasy: "Marijuana could be legal, but the big liquor companies won't let it happen" . . . Irvine Berlin didn't write all those songs, he's got a guy locked in the closet . . . James Dean is really alive in a sanatorium . . . and Hitler is waiting to book me for six weeks in Argentina . . .

It's an absurd question.

I am influenced by every second of my waking hour."


~ Lenny Bruce (How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, 1966)

[dysfunctional press]

11. what part of me...?

my parents probably did the most to fuck up my self-worth...
the lutheran church/school system did the most to influence my eventual embrace of atheism...
richard nixon gerald ford george h.w. bush newt gingrich ronald reagan did the most to influence my political bent...
the '69 cubs did the most to turn me off of baseball, and most sports.

and then there were the drugs...my pill-poppin' granny probably had the biggest impact on me turning to them, and they in turn probably had the biggest overall impact on my...enlightenment.

[applegrove]

12. My father and his empathy.