Mandy Ackermann

September 17, 2002

Last Reflections on Reflection

An old man closes his eyes to the surrounding hospital room. He does his best to ignore the chirping and the clicks coming from the jungle of machinery around his bed. Accepting the fact that his body is breaking down, slowly dying, the man uses his last moments to reflect on what his life was all about. His impending death inspires him to meditate on how it all really happened. What made him the person he was, the person he had become? He did not believe that his life, his love, nor his “self”, was a matter of biological circumstance. But what he could not ignore was his underlying fear that this was really the end. The mind dies along with the body, so where does that leave the “self”, the soul? Didn’t it mean something that he was considering all of this, or were consciousness and self all just an idea to comfort those who refuse to believe that we are just a body and a brain? These are questions we don’t often consider until we step back from our day to day lives and really take a look, so without waiting for our deathbeds, let’s take a step back.

The debate of nature versus nurture has been a part of humanity for centuries. At present it has been brought to a head by a surge of propaganda following a group of people called “evolutionary psychologists”, or genetic determinists (Wolfe, 1996 p.10). The pendulum on this debate has swung since the 1950’s when Freud and Skinner were the vanguards of behavioral psychology with their ideas of oedipal sex drives and “operant conditioning”. They provided the nurture side of the “nature vs. nurture” debate, believing that social conditioning was the basis for all human behavior (Wolfe, 1996 p.7). With new technological advancements, the debate becomes even more complicated and the answers are harder to find. Studies of language acquisition provide that speaking and language communication are innate behaviors in humans, not an entirely learned process as many behavioral psychologists have proposed hither-to fore. Also studies and observation of the hormone testosterone have furthered the argument that biology controls our everyday behavior.

With all the faith the America has in science, it is hard not to follow blindly the evidence that seems overwhelmingly to support the influences of genetics on our personality and our ideals. But it is important not to ignore what our family, our friends, our culture, and our environment have contributed. Looking at ourselves and at cultures outside of our own it is evident that “nurture” does sway and shape us as humans.

Edward O. Wilson created a revolution of sorts with advances in the field of sociobiology (which he conveniently created himself). Included in his work is his theory that the human brain is like an unexposed negative of film, and it can either be exposed well or exposed poorly, but the individual’s behavior, ideals, and personality are pretty much set from the beginning (Wolfe, 1996, p.2). Wilson backs this theory with studies of prison inmates in which a select few young males consistently caused all the problems, because they are genetically pre-disposed to violent behavior (Wolfe, 1996, p.5) He also mentions the idea of a “gay gene” that determines sexual orientation of an individual, not necessarily early childhood conditions (the case Freud would claim to be true.) All of these examples support a genetic determinist, or “nature” view, and ultimately suggest that self and consciousness are mere ideas that we’ve created, while in reality we are just “a pack of neurons”.

Another convincing argument for the “nature” side of the debate is in the form of a hormone, testosterone. Studies and observations on this “he hormone” (courtesy of Andrew Sullivan) testify to the fact that the drug has an enormous effect on human behavior, more specifically in males, but in females as well. It’s not only the driving force behind puberty, but it also affects many of the daily behaviors of males, including risk, lust, violence, infidelity, and even athletic ability (Sullivan, 2000, p.162-163). The thought the pheromones and hormones can affect a personality that much is astounding. This evidence suggests that our own thought process has nothing to do with our behavior or personality. It suggests that we have no self control or free will in the issues that confront us every day. Society tends to shy away from this idea in fear that it forces them to come to a realization that they have no control or choice in these matters. Especially considering ideas of faith and religion, it is obvious why society has not explored these ideas up until this age of “neo-Darwinists” (Wolfe, 1996, p.2).

To some these arguments may seem reason enough to convince you of the omnipotence of genetics, but there is yet more to support that “nature” is the true power behind human development. Steven Pinker is one researcher that is gaining momentum with his theories on human knowledge acquisition. He contradicts previous belief on the subject through claiming that language acquisition is an “instinct” (Pinker, 1994, p.18). Language is not something that is taught through teachers and schooling, or even parents, more so it is the innate ability of children to strive to communicate. Even as small infants, children attempt to make noise and create words, although they still have not acquired any language skills from the world around them. It is their instinct to try to speak, and they learn the language that is spoken to them by surrounding adults with astounding speed and accuracy, and without making basic grammar mistakes. Children are provided with the ability to use “a universal grammar, that tells them how to distill the syntactic patterns out of the speech of their parents (Pinker, 1994, p.22).” With this theory we are shown that something so uniquely human, and so culturally influenced as a language, is just another biological instinct.

“Nurture” seems like a David to the Goliath of mother “nature” in this debate, but it is also readily apparent that environment and culture greatly influence the behavioral output of every individual. Freud has a great deal of competition in neuroscience and genetics, but he was not totally off his rocker in believing that social conditioning exists. One example comes from the Etoro tribe in Papua New Guinea. Heterosexual activity in this tribe is taboo, and discouraged, only to be practiced for the purposes of reproduction. Homosexual activity is believed to be essential for male growth, and as a right of passage, young males are inseminated by older males in the tribe. This provides a concrete example that sexuality can be influenced by culture and environment and not through hormones (Kottak, 2001, p.97). The people of the Etoro tribe are humans just like everyone else with the same biological mechanisms, and yet through social conditioning their biological makeup is overridden and they behave differently then their film “negative” predicts they behave.

Sullivan also admits that despite testosterone’s apparent influence on behavior, there has been no direct study correlating crime and testosterone rates (Sullivan, 2000, p.162). In addition to the lack of statistical proof of the correlation of testosterone and crime (or infidelity, or unnecessary risk taking), it would be ignorant to assume that environment has no effect whatsoever on how people react to situations. After all, it is in fact the environment that provides the situation in the first place. There is also the idea of self control, assuming a person is predisposed to risk taking (high-testosterone rates) does not mean that they will act on their impulse. On the contrary, if a person has all the biological potential to become successful does not mean that they will achieve that potential, because there is no prediction tool that can foresee the tribulations the individual might encounter in their lifetime.

So maybe life is not determined by one thing or the other, maybe it is determined by both. Behavior, ideals, and personality can stem from genetics and physiology, and then shaped and developed by environment, culture, and parenting. This conclusion drawn, the real importance lies in what all of this really means to us as individuals. The idea of “self” is achieved by taking all of these factors and lifting them to the next level in your own mind. It means using your consciousness to realize what has brought you to the point where you are in your life. Consciousness, feeling, and “self” exist because we are able to conceive of them and apply them to our everyday, “nurture” and “nature” determined lives. This is what makes us uniquely human, our “self”, and consequently our ability to portray the idea of self to one another (ironically through another uniquely human attribute, language).

And so the old man saw the world around him begin to fade. To any other eye the room would seen chaotic with doctors and nurses running about, a million chemical reactions going on in their brains signaling each movement and thought, all coming together in an attempt to keep the old man alive. But to him, everything had become frighteningly clear. He would never know the answer to life’s questions. He was lost as to whether he had made his life what it was, or if it had merely been a genetic plan. There was no answer and his only means of discovering the truth, his “self”, was slipping further and further away.

Works Cited

Sullivan, Andrew (2000). The He Hormone. The New York Time, 155-170.

Wolfe, Tom (1996). Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died. Forbes Magazine, 1-12.

Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Kottak, (2001). Gender. In Kottak, Cultural Anthropology, Ninth Edition (pp. 97-98). The McGraw Hill Companies.