I think I can pinpoint the “troubles” with my mind to books I read in my younger years. My classmates way back when we were in the 10 to 14 year old bracket, were enthused with Robert Louis Stevenson and his Treasure Island or Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and the brave ones were dipping into the Tolkien sagas.
Leave it to the weirdo to read A Brave New World followed by 1984.
Formative years were pretty much formed. After that, Herman Hesse was child’s play.
What I got from all that was this: People are capable of doing amazingly good things and yet I am not surprised when they perform the most dark of cruelties.
It is not that the glass is half empty or half full, it is the asshole with the slingshot that will fuck up the Zen.
I was around 9 or 10 when I read Brave New World and 1984; read Stranger in a Strange Land and Anthem at 11. By the time I hit my teens I was sort of a loner, as you can guess.