Nature Vs Nurture Essay About Yourself

[Tracee Hsiang]

LinkedInand 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Learn more in our Cookie Policy.

This is one of a few essays that are neither on tech nor on Startup(Bharat). But this is one aspect of life that I would like to improve. I have found myself and others making these subconscious mistakes. But starting I would like to point fingers at myself, first. And I wish with time - we as a society stop making these subconscious mistakes!

Before I summarise all three books. I would like to start this essay with a story. This is a 200% true story, and the incident of this story left me thinking - about how many mistakes I might have committed in the past subconsciously.

It was the day of my sister's wedding anniversary. Frankly, I was formally not invited - but still found myself in the middle of the small party. Of course, everyone was surprised, but I was greeted warmly by the rest of the attendees. I walked straight to my brother-in-law, shook hands, and wished him a Happy Wedding anniversary. Adjacent to him, my sister standing - we hugged each other. And I walk around the table to sit in front, feeling happy.

On the fundamental level - this universe is following the same evolution. Everything that you are seeing around you is built with a few fundamental components. And combination and recombination of these fundamental components create all these facades around us. :) And I am being super serious - let me explain this in the most-possible simplest language.

One of the reasons the Digital World took a fraction of time compared to the Physical world to have, almost, the same level of scale and dominance because - the entire digital world consists of just two components - 0 and 1. I think you would agree as well :) One of the reasons the Physical world took 4.54 billion years of evolution to the current stage is that - it has atoms of 118 fundamental elements. And initially, it has very little help from Nurture :) We as a species took around 3.8 billion years, starting from single-cell species to evolve as a current complex human structure - 20,000 Genes. Since species are still evolving, the evolution duration is going to be the highest because of the highest number of fundamental components - we humans have probably the lowest knowledge and understanding about - genes, cells, DNA etc. And of course, language complexity is directly proportional to the number of alphabets. English is easier than Hindi because English has only 26 alphabets.

But with all the above examples the evolution process is the same. This means that natural selection might have found the most optimized method of building an autonomous complex system - after multiple trials and errors. Subconsciously we humans also followed the same building principles. Nice!

But after a time, we followed natural selection only because that was the most optimized available method. However, we decided there is no way we can only rely on Nature and therefore we started building the type of nurture (environment) - we wanted to have. Because ultimately, we wanted to have freedom from nature - or at least some control. In fact, in the absence of the nurture (environment) that we built - we all can agree, the possibility of Humans being the most intelligent species in the known world would have been impossible. In fact, me writing this essay and you reading, if you are reading, is possible because we nurture an independent environment, not completely, independent from nature.

Here, you can ask yourself - did we (humans) let control our nurture just because we all were the byproduct of nature, no right? [Please hold the answer to this question in your conscious mind - we would need it).

The only problem was, it was not a respectable job. Let me explain the context. My village was divided into two parts. Government Jobs and Jamindar Vs the rest of the villagers. And the latter has been dominated by the former, until a few years back. That also includes buying ration from Kirana Store and not paying the money. And Baniya is not something that you want to be in my village. On the hierarchy ladder - government jobs were at the top. At this point in time - nurture was totally dominated by nature (How?).

My dad was conscious from the day-1 about us ( we and my brothers). He wanted us to study and do a government job. But only for the purpose of learning and exposure - he used to allow me to run his Kirana Store for a few hours per day. And what I am going to write next, you might find this manufactured but this is 500% true.

When villagers used to tell me: Hey Baniya, I used to feel bad ( I remember vividly, I can even identify those people with faces and names). And my instant answer used to be No, I will study, and I will do Naukari (Sarkari and Private). The next sentence I could hear from them that Baniya ka Beta Baniya (The son of a Baniya is by default Baniya). I had no answers. According to them, humans are byproducts of nature.

According to my nature, I should have been a Pandit but thanks to my dad's nurture I could have been a Baniya. But folks here I am writing an essay on a topic that many humans would avoid touching. And I am also sure the company that I am building shall have the largest impact on the 1.2 billion Bhartiya. All of these were/are/will be possible because I say F**k You to those who said my Nurture would be based on my nature.

If you can recall, I started this essay with my personal story. I wanted to make sure to tell everyone what kind of hypocrite I am. When someone tried to control my nurture based on my nature - I felt bad, I felt threatened, I felt someone was controlling my freedom. And subconsciously, I have been making the same mistakes. Unknowingly, we all are part of the problem. Committing the same mistake subconsciously every single day.

Recently I was going through some old photos of my dad, Kurt Katch. He was an actor who escaped the Nazis and immigrated to the U.S. in 1937 with my mom (and two suitcases). Neither spoke English (but they did speak five other languages!) and once they left their families they never saw them again. All of their relatives perished in the Holocaust.

My dad died at age 65 when I was just 12 years old, so I never knew him when I (and he) got older. But a gander at these old photos are telling. Indeed, the physical resemblance is unmistakable. We are about the same age, 45, in this photo. I always have wondered if the dramatically different turns our respective lives took had an effect on our personalities, social intelligence, IQ, and other traits that made us who we are (and were).

While scientists have studied physical, behavioral, and intellectual inheritance throughout human history, the systematic investigation of the inheritance for most human traits formally began with Sir Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin, in the 1869 book Hereditary Genius and in other writings.

Devising research to study the nature/nurture issue is complicated. It requires innovative approaches and new technological methods that can isolate and distinguish the cause-and-effect of human traits due to genetic or environmental influences. The two major approaches involve studying twins that have been raised together or who were separated at birth (or during early childhood). The second approach involves identifying how different genes correlate to specific traits, or how environmental influences (effects of circumstances of life and experience) affect how genes express. As noted above, this field of study is termed epigenetics.

Researchers worldwide have established twin registries where scientists systematically identify twin births and follow their development and life circumstances until death. The Swedish Twin Registry, founded in 1959 at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, contains information on 194,000 twins born since 1886. This largest twin registry in the world has made important strides regarding cardiovascular disease, cancer, and aging. The Twins UK Registry, which launched a database for studying arthritis, includes more than 14,000 twins, aged 16-100 years, throughout the United Kingdom.

By studying twins separated in infancy and raised apart, scientists can answer the question: To what extent do cognitive and psychological differences between people result from nature and/or nurture?

Research from the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research (The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart) includes more than 137 pairs of separated identical and fraternal twins and triplets who participated in a battery of medical and psychological tests. Over the years, identical twins reared apart developed personalities and interests that showed about the same degree of resemblance as identical twins raised together.

Gene expression is the process by which the instructions in DNA are converted into a functional product, such as a protein. When the information stored in DNA converts into instructions for making proteins or other molecules, it is called gene expression and represents a tightly regulated process that allows a cell to respond to its changing environment. It acts as both an on/off switch to control when proteins are made, and also a volume control that increases/decreases the number of proteins made.

Fortunately, not all epigenetic changes are permanent. Some epigenetic changes can be added or removed in response to changes in behavior or environment. In fact, epigenetic changes often occur in smokers vs. non-smokers. After quitting smoking, former smokers can begin to have increased DNA activity in certain genes. Eventually, they can reach levels similar to those of non-smokers.

The nature-nurture debate has been cast as a contest between the idea that some characteristics are caused primarily by genetic factors and other characteristics are caused primarily by experiential factors. This premise is outdated and is not supported by current research. We now know that genes do not act independently of their contexts. Instead, genes do what they do because of their contexts.

3a8082e126