Has reading made you more right wing or more left wing?

>Politics is literally about everything I don't care about, which is the petty issues of little people and how to handle them.

reading buffers me from moving too far left or right

Please do it and spare me your inanity.

it's made me more left wing economically and socially but it's made me less tolerant of a lot of contemporary art and literature.

overall it drove me to centrist anarchism

Neither. My bitterness, self-hatred, and dissatisfaction with mt surroundings has pushed me towards the right and communism.

In all seriousness, you'll hit a philosophical dead end if you hold onto the notion that nothing is of concern compared to the massive scale of the cosmos. The insignificance of humanity on the universal scale says nothing about its importance to yourself, or to each of us. We are all part of an intricate system, dear friend. The fact that we all come from dust should not invalidate us, rather it should give us a deeper understanding of the oneness of nature.
I know you're busy being edgy, but I hope this sticks with you, user. I'm by no means an expert on anything, but there's one perspective on life, at least.

You just know I had to do it to em

I'm struggling in the same spot as you. I know the state must someday be abolished, but I can't decide 1. how that abolition should be brought about, and 2. if a utopia must necessarily be free from the idea of ownership.
Is capitalism necessarily evil, or have we corrupted it? Or has it corrupted us, and once we achieve communal harmony, we may participate in voluntary exchanges of commodities? And, most important, is a truly stateless, classless, non-capitalist society possible? How do you enforce communalism without a state? I imagine these thoughts keep you up at night as well.

The political isn't cosmic. It's not even the social. I'm very concerned with the cosmic and even the social.

The social is the cosmic concentrated on humanity and the political is the social concentrated on the stupid and useless. "How do we prevent all these retards from causing a social collapse?" is the primary question of politics. And it's basically as boring as it sounds. Necessary to some degree but still very boring.

Neither, I'm not a brainlet who lets authors from other times sway his political opinion. (Much less the contemporary political authors who are practically braindead.)

The Greeks educated me in rhetoric, dialectic, and aesthetics. No one involved in current politics can even be compared to them.

/thread

You just know I had to do it to em

Politics is the arrangement of human society. In your view, how should society be structured? Even if you respond "not at all," that still warrants an explanation.

based

Utopias are impossible. And some form of capitalism (free interchange) is necessary for "truly free" society.

Ted?

It's made me more respecting of rights and privileges that should be afforded to a nation's citizenry, and I don't mean that as right or left.

However, reading did make me aware of cultural marxism, which I laughed off for a long time until I began seeing pre-existing stories or narrative works being twisted to fit the sympathies of a political agenda.
Reading intersectional Andrea Dworkin gender studies bullshit didn't help.

But at the same time, I'm not rightwing. I disavow any political affiliations, shit's just too loaded. If you sign up with either side you have to drink ALL of their kool aid.

It has made me more apolitical and cynical of the worls more than anything. More often than ever I see myself agreeing with ideas that I would have never thought as appealing, although I think that part of that is because I browse Veeky Forums.

Reading has not made me more political in any way because I'm not going to ler no fucking spooks to get in my way of enlightment.

>Politics is the arrangement of human society.
In order to prevent the lower rungs of it from swallowing the whole. That's what 99% of political discussion is about, at least.

>In your view, how should society be structured?
The politicians should seek to do exactly what I am saying. Society must be structured so that there can be individuals who don't need to pay attention to the lower rungs and their issues, politics in general. It gets in the way of higher matters.

You know how Robespierre ended up, right?

I went from an atheist ancap to a Catholic distributist traditionalist.

The usual: more open to opposing views but with less inherent leaning.
I find that reading about politics has turned me from the kind of person who wants to debate just to btfo a punk with my strawman army into the kind that thinks hard about a concept for days before hoping someone will prove me wrong so I can learn more

Yas queen :D
youtu.be/suZdYkZ_feM?t=3m44s

Yus :D
youtube.com/watch?v=azKNngXBICs

There's no such thing as a centrist. A centrist is right-wing as anyone right to the consolidated leftist tenets is. Right is defined in relation to left.

It's made me more open to having a strong state to cope with things, rather than leaving it up to the free market. It hasn't changed my fundamental beliefs socially, that everyone should have the same opportunities, rights and responsibilities, but it has made me understand more conservative ideologies more deeply.

Now.

Before.

It made me realize that the left/right dichotomy is stupid and meaningless, and that people who use the term generally know little about politics.

...

I sound like a faggot whenever I try to talk about myself on Veeky Forums, be warned.

The more I read, the less the left-right dichotomy retains its hold over me - in many situations it can certainly be a useful metric, but it's really bloated. The hold it has over people's minds is disproportionate to how well it lets them apprehend reality. One of the worst spooks of our time. Locks you into some shitty primitive team sports idea of the world and the people in it. The more local it is, the more useful; but the more you try to expand your scope, the more fuzzy and incoherent the definitions of left and right become.

I was going to say I've become more morally conservative, but that's not really true. In fact I'm probably liberal, in what I'll entertain and enjoy and not be repulsed by, far beyond the acceptable bounds of liberalism, let alone conservatism. I'd then try and say I've become less of a moralist, but that's not completely true either. I've allowed myself to become more sensitive to human (and non-human) suffering, and to strange and alien experiences and ideas.
Probably the thing that makes me consider myself more of a "moral conservative" is my relative openness to illiberal ideas: a negative view of the sexual revolution, discomfort with abortion, decreasing value of human and animal life, materialism and so on. I loathe the mindset that makes people read Schopenhauer, see his criticism of press freedom and go "UGH!!" It's natural to disagree, but to treat any idea as heresy that needs to be immediately regurgitated is utterly banal.
I have criticisms of Catholic metaphysics, doctrine, and institution, even a veritable anti-Christianity, but no deep-seated repugnance for the existence of the Church or its participation in the world. I value it, but not in just a "muh useful relijun.." utilitarian way. I think a "return to religion" at this point is a false consolation. Seed sewn on bad soil. Perhaps that's just a historical determinist delusion on my part though, perhaps, from the detached view of the sociologist, society really can "regress" back into an age of unself-conscious mysticism. But ultimately the problem is assuming that such a thing would be an improvement anyway. Since you were born either into the post-death of God world or before it, it's impossible for any of us to compare the merits of the two with the power of lived experience.

The illiberalism of the liberated mind. Is it simply a failure to see properly that makes us think the "spiritual aristocrat", for all his brutal criticism of the status quo, of the old moralities and dogmas, seems outwardly reactionary? When I look at intellectual discourse, whatever their political orientation, it seems like liberal minds dissatisfied with political liberalism. A thirst for non-Whig liberation.

My view of the world is morally skeptical and more or less sympathetic to 'postmodernism'. Maybe mine is a pessimistic, rather than an idealistic, conservatism.

>I'm so smart I realised the left right scale is a broad generalisation and nuances exist
Ask me how I know you're american

Aussie actually. The OP topic specifically mentions it. Shithead cunt.

oh okay sorry

I'm not American

...

>red-pilled on psychology (mainly from Freud)
This better be bait.

what even is left and right?

I don't really know what unironic human extinction falls under

I was a typical "socialist" soyboy liberal atheist when I was a teenager. Now I'm a conservative traditionalist constitutional monarchist Christian. Not American by the way. I fully support the constitution and the Emperor of my country.

This place is bad.

it doesn't

>constitutional
>traditionalist
These do not go together you soyboy memer

Centre right neoliberal.

it helped me to see the truth, my opinions changed radically and it definitely brought me to right wing with some exceptions, there are still many many question marks that I'm trying to figure out but... I try to be cautious of what I read and what I believe, because not everything we learn today means truth, therefore, if you want to know the truth you must study some events from multiple sides, not just one. Remember that history is always written by victors and that doesn't mean it's always true and I'm not talking only about ww2 and ww1, even today we have this problem, the force of propaganda is so storng that most people will fail to discover the real truth.

Are you me? It gets better after uni. That place is Hell's embassy. Stop drinking and smoking. Get out of the West if you can. Canada is not a good move.

I believe in the necessity of the complete annihilation of all sapience nor do I believe in the validity of a future AI-dominated hypercapitalism following the very, very imminent ecological collapse and its consequences.

>I believe
>nor do I
which is it bitch

Yes, that sentence was a mess. The first statement is what I believe, the second was to clarify how it differs from Land.

Constitutions are ancient. The rule of law is ancient. Republicanism is cancer, though.

It made me realize most conservatives are usually retards who suffer from a dunning-kruger induced regressive bias. So I guess you could say that it made me become more left leaning.

was always a lefty, i'm more right wing now. i am not against left wing goals or visions of the future but i reject most of their assumptions and their foundations now, i think nothing of lasting existence can be built from left wing (or liberal for that matter) principles, and every time that the left wing (or liberalism) has been successful in anything it has been using so to speak "right wing fuel" to propel left wing (or liberal) goals, which means that it's not a self-sustainable force and at some point it runs out of fuel.

what about traditionalists then

He said how has reading affected you not watching John Oliver

>The only philosopher that has influenced me to the left, however, has been Zizek in that we will need a strong state to deal with certain problems that if left to the free market will eventually decimate the world.
it's fine that you got that from Zizek, but it fits also reactionary ideology

It also fits common sense

Traditionalists/reactionaries are usually good thinkers because they at least have a coherent worldview.
I don't even know who that is.

chartism?

not leftist common sense

Best response.

>Best response.
>not having an opinion
agnostics are the worst

I used to be an extreme lolbertarian after reading all of Ayn Rand. I took a break from reading in order to focus on uni for a while. Ended up lifting a lot and taking the iron pill. Now, I'm a staunch traditionalist into reading about permaculture farming and homesteading. I'm a statistics major so I enjoy reading studies as well. I'm about to tackle on the meme that is The Bell Curve, mainly from a statistician point of view to see if it is really as misleading as lefties say it is. I'm not religious anymore but I enjoy European pagan stuff. If I were to take a political compass test I would be around (-.5,6) on the graph, whereas I used to be (8,-2) when I was really into literature.

These four people appear to be the only actual readers in this thread

Centrism simply shows how complacent you are with the status quo. The elite is actively working towards reducing the number of people on the planet, with automation/technological progress in one hand and neoliberalism policies in the other (In western countries at least). Being a centrist means you value your life's worth to be less important than the elite's. Centrism is being weak willed and having no self worth. Centrists would rather have 'economic stability' and 'security' than freedom. Centrism is 'comfy'. Centrism is when you gave up affirming your life and individuality for the good of the system. The system is an inhumane system that will inevitably be better off without humans. It has no value for the individual at all.

This, reading made me less political and I realized all ideologies are just looking at the world in a certain perspective that is always somewhat subjective/speculative/flawed. But overall I'd say that classical liberal/conservative/libertarian are the safest and least subject to flaws so I gravitate towards those rather than the ridiculous mental masturbating that goes on in far left with marxism, critical theory, and post-structuralism or the authoritative nature of the far-right.

ITT:

>read books
>realize you're retarded compared to great thinkers
>realize everyone else is retarded too
>give up having an opinion at all

Pretty much this

I went from anarcho-communist to reactionary constitutional monarchist - in the modern Liechtenstein mold or England shortly after the glorious revolution.

Unless democracy is retrained by hereditary monarchy/nobility, it will eventually lead to a nation run by and for a select group of sociopathic politicians -- as we see today.

>The elite is actively working towards reducing the number of people on the planet
How?

Through neoliberalism. Sexual 'liberation' and competition in every aspect of social interactions and life. Maybe environmental distasters, wars, nuclear warfare etc... Vaccines and antibiotics are helping create superstrains of organisms that will wipe half the population in future decades. Why the fuck would the elite keep us alive when machines will be able to do our work? Why would the system allocate ressources for useless members? Why would we have machines working to feed us? UBI is the most naive idea in the world. Why would we keep useless humans alive, who take up spaces food, have needs greater than being oiled up and plugged in? We won't. Humans are becoming useless, obsolete.

Reading has made me more open, and probably less political, even apolitical overall. I always make a point to ignore political discussion. Most people would say I am right-wing, yet I offer help to local left-wing parties because the people involved are my friends. It's not about being on a "team". I can't imagine not helping my friend because of political, or ideological differences.

To answer your question I don't think being a centrist is bad. But I do think most so-called "centrists" just want to avoid taking a stance on anything. Yet when pressured they become easily offended, especially when you question current political dogmas. Questioning the merits of democracy is a good way to get most normies flustered, for example.

kek

I'm now completely apolitical outside of late 18th and early 19th century French politics. I got into a fist fight because one of my so called friends dared to call himself a Legitimist.

What does it mean to you, in 2018, to 'believe in' the end of history?

It has made me completely uninterested in what happens in political life, now all I want is seat with a comfy book in a countryside house, learn how to shoot and keep everyone else out if they ever come to bother me

At first it made me more right wing, I used to be a turbo leftist
Now I dont really care

same desu; in my early 20s I was pretty left-wing, became more and more right-wing untill I realized that politics is inherently a plebeian affaire

That right wing turn happened around 18-19 for me

I don't have my own opinions, I have fictional characters that I think about who I give well developed opinions to over a range of ideological and philosophical spectrums. Political opinions are totally worthless anyway, and this is more fun.

I've become a bit more racist, in a "you don't need to believe in tribalism, tribalism believes in you" kind of way. I fear that a future in which my monoethnic country becomes a multi-ethnic one is not a happy future, neither for the the majority of natives nor for the minorities that are coming in. Even if other "tribes" behave exactly as my "tribe" there will be friction and it will not end well.

Made me more moderate. Made me think politics aren't so important as I thought.

I'm a centrist, fuck you

>shirt and short pants
somebody shot that guy

The only thing that has made me racist in even a little way, is learning those four fucking japanese kids that tortured that girl to death for a month only got 8 fucking years. One of them got off scott free.

Why are the japanese such cold, unfeeling monsters? I haven't been able to enjoy anything japanese since then, not completely. Everytime I read something about japan I like, there's always a little voice in my head that sneers: too bad they're soulless, racist fucks.

I went from being a libertarian degenerate agnostic to an Orthodox Christian monarchist. I try to focus on reading more theological and historical events than I do read politics. If i do, it's mostly some manifesto on the evils of the world as a whole.

Politics anger me to the point of no return. Those who are most qualified to lead are not charismatic enough too grab people’s attention and those who should be kept away from a position of power with a fence around them get to sit in the biggest of chairs because people like that they make the funny hahas

Being more right-wing has made me read more, but my views have been largely unchanged. Am I doing it wrong?

>I went from being a libertarian degenerate agnostic to an Orthodox Christian monarchist
>Americans

As a teen I was a catholic with left leanings; that eventually led to full blown psychosis. Today I would describe myself as platonic of center.

Went from far right to far left. Was already sliding away from Hitlerist fascism when I went ML.

I also now cant stand Anglos.

I was raised conservative and reading has definitely made me more sympathetic to leftists and understanding of left wing positions but I'm still basically a conservative.

Though in practice I'm pretty apolitical. Nothing gets me fired up enough to vote.