nature and/or nurture
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.
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.
posted by perrykat at
1:37 PM
1 Comments:
What's particularly interesting to me is that this you wrote this before my blog.
Anyway, I love your examples with choice of food, drugs, etc... conscious choices (nurture) to change your biochemistry (nature).
Nature/nurture is a particularly sloppy categorization. I do think there are useful distinctions to be drawn, but they aren't binary.
(a) feelings that come from what we are. call these "drives" or such. food. sleep. sex. we may be able to modify these, but they are essentially of the body/reptilian brain and are not products of our conscious thinking. Abstinent priests? Okay, but it's not the same thing as asking them not to buy the latest consumer goods.
(b) feelings based on what we do. Our choices of when and what to eat, when to sleep and in what environment, etc, affect how we experience the world. They modify our biochemistry in much the way that taking antihistamines makes us sleepy.
(c) feelings based on what we think. In addition to "body" inputs like food, medicines, rest, injury, etc, our feelings are also affected by the social/cultural/mental context of our imagination. What makes us sad by injured children, amused by Borat, or aroused by garter belts, is mental and (to varying degrees) cultural.
So if you feel tired and grumpy, is that nature or nurture? Well, the need for sleep is nature. The sleepiness from staying out all night is biological consequence. The staying out all night to blow off stress (or not be the first to ditch friends) is nurture - that is, it's a product of how you think about things in a way that needing sleep is not.
I'm not sure all the reasons that we create these divisions, but I think a large part of it is "Dancing Nancies" ... how much of the existences we can imagine are available to us, and what obstacles stand in our way.
The optimistic me sees the awareness of these distinctions as an enormously positive thing, recognition that if some peoples are in poverty, or women somewhere are subservient, or a class of people is uneducated, that all these things... the "way things are" ... is not an inevitability, but rather is to a large degree a product of the way people think and/or act.
Using the gender example that you'll have thought about much more than me, I'd say recognizing a nurture component means that by raising people to believe different things they may end up feeling different things. Other things women experience differently may require more than a change in thinking, they may require a change in (men's or women's) behavior. And some things may be innate ("biological clock"?), and thus trying to get people to think and act differently will be ineffective.
At least, that's why I think people create the divisions. To better understand possibilities, to imagine.
As for the desire for immortality, it isn't obvious to me why categorizing gender (or other personality effects) as "of" the mind rather than body makes immortality more or less likely. Of course, I'm entirely the wrong person to speak about that... I also don't think stickers in Kansas textbooks make it more likely the world is 4000 years old.
Great post.
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