Understanding Ourselves

Everyday people are communicating and understanding the environment around them. Wither it is saying hi to a total stranger or observing the flow of people in a busy city we are making a mind map of the world around us. For my first article I will talk about a theory of mine that answers the question, why are we the way we are?

Nature and Nurture, Hand in Hand

Have you ever wondered why a bully will hurt a classmate or why a fireman will risk his life to save someone? Well things like this happen because humans all have characteristics that invoke a particular action. In understanding why a human gains a particular set of characteristics we look at two basic ideas. The first idea is that humans are the way they are because of the genetics they have gotten. It has been said that these genetics will give humans tendencies to believe in a particular idea or act in a particular fashion. The second idea is that human characteristics are made from a set of given experiences. These experiences shaping a persons characteristics by influencing them to see their environment in a distinct way. Now both these ideas have been debated as an argument known as "nature vs. nurture" but do both these ideas have to be one or the other? Well through my understanding, I see both these ideas as both having to do with who we are. I personally see genetics as 30% whereas nurture 70% but for reasons of staying on point I'll leave my explanation out. Now with all this said there is one very important question that is sparked from this nature and nurture being together. Do we really have a free will? If everything we believe and do is the sole result of our characteristics and our characteristics are the sole result of our genetics and experiences then we are bound to do what we do. This becomes an even more interesting idea when we start to realize that we can't really blame people for being the way they are. For example, if Bob the bully is acting extremely mean to Jack and Jack hates him because of that, can you blame Bob for bullying him? What if Bob has been being mean because he has lived in a abusive household and takes his anger out on Jack? Shouldn't we help Bob out of a abusive household? What all this really seems to show is that we never truly get to choose our genetics or the way we grow up. We only believe in the idea of individuality because of the comfort we get from it and our ignorance of not knowing any better.