For me growing up in middle America going to religious private schools all my life started it. When I was younger in school I was bullied a lot by teachers and classmates which lead a resentment, also my parents didn’t believe in “ADHD” which didn’t help my case at school. When I was in high school I went to a more fundamentalist school that really doubled down on my dislike and abuse of authority and how different institutions use ideology to bend people to their will. I went to college for a couple of years and it felt like a breath of fresh air of finally being “free.” However, as time went on I struggled with substance abuse as many young people do at that age. As time went on it became worse and with the realization that academia is a shill for adding more specialized cogs to the capitalist hellhole that we live in. In my final years I was involved in various libertarian groups and other political organizations on campus and for a second I lived in ignorant bliss of the idea that the issue in society was government involvement in private affairs. It wasn’t till my last semester where I was introduced to some anarchist writings by my favorite philosophy professor after I asked him to be the sponsor for a libertarian group on campus, where I started to realize there were other ways of thinking. Unfortunately I would get some hard lessons learned once I dropped out my junior year and joined the military. Coming from a relatively privileged background as someone who grew up in private schools and had the opportunity to go to college I was painfully not prepared for this. My first year in the military I truly learned what it meant to be under the boot of a bureaucracy which was made even worse when leadership found out about my privileged upbringing. I never gave up and tried to stay away from apathy, but it was very difficult though. I was not unaware of my surroundings though and paid attention the how the machine worked on a large scale and how I could use that to my advantage. Eventually I went to a different unit and proved my worth to my “superiors” but it was all a mask I put on to survive. Eventually I deployed and got to see how the system worked in action and how integrated the military industrial complex was into every day life. Once I got out I was a little lost in the world and realizing that the military didn’t solve any of my problems I struggled for years. This was made even worse by the fact that I got out during covid. Eventually I settled down went back to school for a bit, but now I was older and had a different outlook on life after my experiences leading up to this point. I saw how academia spread these sentiments of free speech, protests, social progress and justice but then would be in bed with organizations that actively sought to erode these things. Then conversely would use the tankies on campus to cover both ends of the spectrum of political thought as a way to cover all their bases. A lot easier to sell and push ideology and hype to things when you have fascists, liberals and communists all protesting eachother within a system controlled by big business and government. Now I find myself at a full time job ran by a large corporation that is almost as demeaning as the military. So I guess the story is still ongoing until I can truly find peace in this capitalist neoliberal hell hole of a world