What's Your Intelectual Ancestry

[€uroMeinke]

Forget DNA teesting, genetics, and your grandparents - what's your intellectual ancestry? What events, movements, and cultures of the past have shaped the way you think? Is it Platonic dialogues? The civil war? Watergate? the outfits of Jackie O?

I claim the caberet culture of Weimar Germany and the expat cafe culture of pre-war Paris. Throw in some 19th century continental romantic idealism and a huge slab ur-existentialst Nietzsche. Add a little post-partition era India/Pakistan for flavor and just a dash of Tao and Buddha. I also claim the expressionists, dadaists, and a few of the surreal. These are my true intellectual progenitors.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Erm, Doctor Demento, Wonderful World of Color, and Match Game?

[innerSpaceman]

Catskill Mountains schtick.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Valley Jew by way of Chicago and South Haven Jewish-owned resorts (a.ka., the Catskills of the Midwest (http://www.southhaven.org/press-detail.asp?pid=130)). My mom's family owned and operated one of the resorts and my mom submitted a few items that will be on display at that exhibit.

[Prudence]

Midwestern farmers -- think Prairie Home Companion.

Classic literature from all ages of man.

A dad who never once treated me like a girl.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I've also got Scottish transplant (thus the tea drinkin') and a healthy dose of public school culture (both as a graduate and offspring of two practitioners).

[scaeagles]

My highschool honors economics and government class - heavy on the capitalism and huge on the Constitution. This was reinforced by several political science courses with required readings of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Paine, and the like.

Edited to add:
One other "intellectually" shaping moment came at a Ronald Reagan reelection rally in Sacramento in 1984. Truly an inspiring man and speaker.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

I'd be the nice, sassy fun girl who sits at Dorothy Parker's circle and sleeps with all the men she's in love with, resulting in her writing some very nasty, caustic poetry about me, to which I respond with more mirth and laughter, though secretly I'd be miserable craving her love and approval. I'd have fabulous clothes. Stimulating conversations. I'd run the gambit from libertine to pristine. I'd convert to Catholocism and lapse back into sin.

And though Muriel Spark came along a little later, in my version of events she wouldn't come along at all, as *I* would be the group's Muriel Spark, and it would have been me who wrote Momento Mori. And Parker would have written me a glowing review. And I would have finally earned her friendship and respect, though I'd still be banging her beloveds behind her back.

Heh.

[Not Afraid]

Pre-Raphaelites, German Expressionists, Dadaist, Voltaire, Kerouc, Punk Rock, Eric Sate, Bach, Symbolists, Kinsey, Dr. Bob and Bill W., Buddah, Woody Allen, Vivian Westwood, Jean-Paul Gaultier and a heavy dose of Meinke. ;)

[Cadaverous Pallor]

All this makes me feel like I need to read more...and reread the stuff that I have read.

Jefferson, Paine, et al. Oh to be in on those times...

Hippie Idealism and Aspirations for Humanity. I'd say "from the late 60's" but you can find this kind of movement in any century, many times over. Specifically I'd have to say the movement of the Boomers, simply because it really is my heritage from my parents.

Bradbury, Asimov, and a billion other Sci-Fi writers from the last hundred years that kept me dreaming. Thinking about possibilities, both positive and negative, is important and inspiring to me. I ain't smart enough to say I'd be in on the discussions of real scientists.

The Discordian Church of the 70's for making me think outside the box, even if it is all bull****, which is the point. The "if it feels good, do it" mantra of that era rings very true with me these days.

Ayn Rand from the mid 20th century for forcing me to think inside the box, to accept the box, to really see the box. Equally as important to remember.

[CoasterMatt]

Mr. Rogers taught me to be nice to my neighbors

[Prudence]

How could I have forgotten?!!? John Stuart Mill and the joy that is utilitarianism.

Plato, Machiavelli, Boethius, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon....I love those guys.

[flippyshark]

Oh jeez, let me see...

In spiritual matters - The various gospel authors (canonical and otherwise), Kierkegaard, Robert Bultmann, John D. Crossan, John S. Spong, the Tao, Zen, any number of commentators, redactors and critics, and FWIW, a book that makes me think maybe religion is worth keeping - Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott.

In skeptical matters - Robert Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner, James Randi, Michael Shermer (also, and in the realm of sci-fi, speculation and intellectual inspiration, I gotta add Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Stephen J. Gould, Jane Goodall, Steve Hawking, I'm forgetting many others, which is a problem with questions like this.)

In aesthetic matters - W. A. Mozart, Frank Zappa, Expressionists (esp. van Gogh), Surrealists, Bunuel, Jodorowski, Kubrick, Samuel Barber, Uncle Walt, Charles Schultz, Herge, Kurt Weill, many punks, and the guy whose music my own compositions always come out sounding like, Mike Oldfield. There are a ridiculous number of things missing from this list, but, this third category is the most important one. (As a writer, I should throw in the two authors I seem to imitate most frequently, P.G. Wodehouse and Vladimir Nabokov.)

But this makes me sound like I actually have an intellectual life. I don't. I'm a complete goofball.

Oh yeah, Jaws. How could I forget Jaws!?

[Prudence]

Damn you guys are making me remember stuff.

Ray Bradbury opened up a new world for me. James Tiptree, Jr, turned that world on its ear. "The Screwfly Solution" is one of the top 5 literary works ever. I remember reading it while sitting on the kitchen floor of my apartment up in Bellingham. It terrified me to the core of my being.

Shakespeare, of course. Aristophanes. Camus and Kafka. Zamyatin. Ben Johnson. John Webster.

[Kevy Baby]

Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, Berkeley Breathed, and Garry Trudeau.


...and a heavy dose of Meinke. ;)Karl (http://www.nada.kth.se/~karlm/) or Peter (http://www.eckerd.edu/academics/cra/writing/peter_meinke.htm)?

[wendybeth]

I don't know about intellectual impact, but I tend to gravitate to the Neoclassic period, in literature and philosophical essays. Hell, I'm all over the place. Virtually every person, place and epoch mentioned has had an impact on my psyche. I love the smut comedy of Aristophanes, and the witty mischief of Voltaire. Dave Barry (sorry, KB) is right up there as well. Like I said- all over the place.:rolleyes:

[Tref]

Holy mackerel! There are some pretty heavy names being bandied about in this thread. Admittedly, folks, I'd be straight out lying if I named so much as one philosopher much less two or three. Is it any wonder I don't hang with this crowd? -- Whew! I probably shouldn't have wasted so many golden hours reading Mad magazine.

Fact is, I was going to say something coy, like: everything I ever learned I learned from the everything I ever learned I learned in kindergarten poster.

But instead, I'll just say my papa and my poor mama. And Boethius.

[MickeyD]

Yogi Berra.

I'm as deep as a puddle in this crowd.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Fact is, I was going to say something coy, like: everything I ever learned I learned from the everything I ever learned I learned in kindergarten poster.


Good LORD you crack me up.

Sweet Jesus, that is funny.

I also identify with the Goonies. So, yeah. I'm the Goonie at Dorothy Parker's round table.

I guess it's all about what school of thought or philosophy or lifestyle appeals to you most, and helps design who you are. Being totally honest, your answer is the best answer. Or some version of it: "Everything I ever learned is from something I, well, learned." Heh. It can't just be experience though, because we create all kinds of false memories and blackout other things and don't retain everything. So maybe it's what we retain that defines us, and the rest is fodder for our dreams and nigtmares.

I'd like to be the goofball art lady who sits around with a bunch of seriously stylish and serious minded intellectuals, while I simultaneously enjoy their compnay and despair from it, thinking they're far too into their own brains for their own good, so why don't I just go over to where that cute drunky carpenter is sitting by the bar and buzz the night with him a while....but not before I gossip viciously about this and that outfit with my vicious circle counterparts. And then, later with the carpenter, post naked tussle and pre the morning after, we'll go off on some sort of Goonie like adventure. And we'll never say die.

You know, that *does* sound like me. Cool.

[Matterhorn Fan]

But this makes me sound like I actually have an intellectual life. I don't. I'm a complete goofball.You're an intellectual goofball, silly.

[Not Afraid]

Or a silly intellectual goofball. ;)

[flippyshark]

That's it!

[AllyOops!]

My dreams, wishes & tastes are shaped by the culture of Paris.

Hilton, not France.

;)

[Boss Radio]

I owe much, if not nearly all of my worldview to television:
Sherwood Schwartz looms godlike and omniscient in my subconscious - Garry Marshall as well...
Rod Serling.
Chuck Jones.
Groucho Marx.
Jay Ward.
Walt Disney.
Frank Capra.
Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.
Gabe Kaplan.
Shaggy.
Monty Python.

From the literary world:

Ray Bradbury.
Isaac Asimov.
Theodore Sturgeon.
Stan Lee.

And lastly... my idol, my hero, my mentor...Bugs Bunny.

[SzczerbiakManiac]

In no particular order: Looney Tunes
Games shows of the 70s and 80s
Most notably Match Game and The Price is Right.
The side-splitting genius that was Best Brains
My ex-boyfriend once described me as a living, breathing, MST3K quote.
Gene Roddenberry
James Randi
Dr. Demento
Mad Magazine (which was literally prescribed for me by a psychiatrist when I was a child—I kid you not)
Christopher Durang
Mercedes Lackey
Stand-up comics
I learned everything I know about heterosexual relationships from stand-up comics.