I have, for quite some time, been interested in and fascinated by the way we (as a culture) divide our influences into the categories of nature and nurture. There is a particularly interesting debate in gender and queer studies about how we come to be women/men or homo/heterosexuals. Few people can deny that our "nature" plays a major role in many aspects of our being, but many people still argue (as Locke did with his idea of the tabula rosa) that we are mostly blank slates waiting to be filled with information.
I my first questions come in the division line between "nature" and "nurture." It seems clear that an instinctual drive to eat is "nature" but is a drive to overeat also part of our "nature?" And what about child rearing: It seems clear that all homosexual people were at least borne by (a least a single moment of) heterosexual compulsion, so where is it that we see "nurture" influencing sexuality? But it is even more complicated, at least to me, than that. If I take LSD, the biological chemistry of my brain changes. Is that "nature" or "nurture?" Does "nature" somehow mean "instinctual" or does any signal produced by my body become natural? And what if I have my biology altered (surgeries, hormones, medications). Is that a cultural adaption?
But the real question for me, is why have we created this division for ourselves? Why is it important that while I may be born with a "female sex," that I can behave with a "masculine gender?" Is it our need to control our bodies? To believe that our brains, our rational thinking capabilities, outweigh the very vessel that (I believe) we actually are? Are we still hoping that "soul" will retain this rational bit, and move on when the body dies? While I can't be sure that something doesn't go on -- I have a hard time thinking that "I" (in the psychological use of the term -- the ego) do.
This is something I've been thinking about for years. But I'm brought back to it lately because of my new eating habits. It has been over three months since I've eaten (except one or two small slides) sugar or wheat. I've lost nearly 15 pounds, but more importantly, I feel different than I've felt in over 20 years. I don't really have mood swings (at least not in the way I had grown accustomed to having). In general, I feel satisfied, content, maybe even happy. I can't be 100% sure that it is the change in diet, but I am comfortable saying that the change in food has changed "me." Is this change a product of nature or nurture? My culture certainly puts sugar and wheat in ALMOST EVERYTHING, so one could argue that it is nurture. Yet, I know plenty of people who eat sugar and wheat, and they don't seem to be unhappy people. So maybe my nature is opposed to these foods. But even more interesting is the claim that "I" am somehow changed by this. I find -- and you have probably noticed the changes in my posts -- that I'm not as quick to anger, not as apt to over think the problems of the world, not as "thinking." One might argue that these are not positive changes.
Yet, life is easier. Life, in the culture that I am living, is more tolerable. And while it is interesting to ask if it is nature or nurture that prompted the change, I feel that the distinction is not really that important. It is.
God. I sound like a Buddhist.
