Where Philosophy Started

Now that I’ve gone into my history a bit, I think it is a good time to talk about where my desire to be free began.

Sometime in high school I became enraged with my mom about the lack of freedom that she allowed me.  I started to rebel in hidden sorts of ways.  I started listening to music that my parents would disapprove of.  Most of it was punk rock but there was also some heavy metal.  I went from oldies to hard rock in just a couple of months.  I went to loving the music my parents loved to despising it.  I remember I liked the way the music made me feel.  I felt powerful for some reason.  I felt free.  Listening to the lyrics of those songs today, I begin to realize that music was my introduction to philosophy.  It was a crude form of philosophy to be sure, but it showed me that there was a world beyond my parents narrow view.  Many of the songs were filled with lyrics about freedom.  Freedom in this sense was “doing what you want”.  This struck so deep with me, because I really wasn’t able to do what I wanted.  I wanted to experience life.  I wanted to go out and socialize and find out who I was.  Unfortunately most of my experiences were second hand.  I listened jealously to my friends stories about staying out late.  Many of them were superficial stories about parties or getting into trouble, but they sounded so much more desirable than spending another tense evening with my family.

Eventually my music was taken away from me.  My mom walked into my room one day and pulled my headphones out of the jack on my stereo and started listening to the music I was listening to.  I turned off the power of the boom box and nervously asked her what she was doing.  She then began interrogating me about what I had been listening to and went to turn the stereo back on.  Ironically, the song that was playing was “Abuse me (more I like it)” by Silverchair.  Before she was able to turn it back on I confessed wildly about the “bad” lyrics of the songs and that I didn’t think she would understand.  She became enraged hearing my confession and tore the tape out of my boom box.  She grounded me for two weeks and had my dad listen to the tape to see what I had been listening to.  A week later he basically smirked and said, “that’s some angry, bad word filled music you listen to, but it’s not as bad as I thought”.  I can’t remember, but I think he actually gave me back the tape.  I felt absolutely horrible.  I felt betrayed by both my mom and dad.  Worst of all, I had lost my music and was again left with nothing.  I became depressed without my music.  Hopeless.

I quickly figured out ways to listen to my music without them knowing.  My friend listened to even harder music than I did so I would go to his house and listen there.  Rammstein, Metallica, Type O Negative and other metal bands started to become my favorites.  The songs I remember most were laced with the word freedom.  Most of them were about how freedom was restricted and how cruel the world was.  They reflected my life too well, and reflected the anger I felt even more.

I would also listen to the radio late at night which led to my discovery of a show called “Love Line”.  This was a show where a doctor (Dr. Drew Pinskey) and a comedian (Adam Corolla) would take calls from kids and teens and discuss their problems.  Mostly the questions were about sex but there were also a lot of questions about how to escape abusive parents.  I would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning almost every night listening intently to these stories and the advice given out.  Although the show wasn’t extremely intellectual, I do think I learned a lot about the world and how abuse was at the core of most of the problems in it.  This was a secret I was able to keep without my parents ever discovering.  I can not imagine what they would have done if they had have found out I was listening to that “smut”.

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When I got into college my politics and beliefs began to pull a 180.  I went from being my parents conservative little pet to a war hating liberal.  I even have my picture in some school newspaper somewhere carrying a casket at some sort of liberal protest.  I can’t even remember what the protest was about.  I went from believing and praying to god to hating religion.  I didn’t become fully atheistic until much later.  I was agnostic for most of my college career.

When my mom told me that she “didn’t want me bringing my liberal opinions into the house anymore” that is when my desire to flee became intense.  I began reading everything I could.  From Karl Marx to the Bible, I was searching wildly for the truth.  I would debate with anyone I could.  I had a friend who was a theology/philosophy major who taught me how to debate, or at least what I thought was debating.  What I found out later is he taught me how to be really good at manipulating others arguments.  He taught me how to frustrate people.

…but I will write another post about that.  That is when I became a moral relativist.  Or more accurately, a nihilist.

Tags: family, music, nihilism, philosophy, religion