On Jan 20, 12:32 pm, Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
> As I grow I find that my mind works more like my uncle Pat's did, I
> have the same ideas that I heard him talk about, mixed in with a
> sprinkling of uncle Micks homour and outragouense and a fair bit of my
> mothers hippyness. Indeed even now I offten hear that side of my
> family say things like 'ohh he's is just like Pat was, do you
> remember? Or 'He looks just like Pat'
>
> So genetic then? Not much choice there at all. In the nature vs
> nurture debate I come down right in the middle myself, yet I feel that
> my stance has plenty of room to shift one way or t'other.
Big subject, which might distract us too much from your original
question (although of course it's relevant and interesting). I'll just
say that when I consider my daughter's personality, I see that she has
'inherited' much from both her parents because of the actual living
reality of the family in which she grew up ('nurture' - or the lack of
it!), but she has also in a more literal sense inherited what I
believe are probably unalterable biological characteristics from both
of her parents (her mother's charm, and my sensitivity, but both in
altered forms and new combinations); and in her looks, I think I see
something of my mother, an aunt, and at least one of my cousins, even
though she does not look very much like either me or her mother (but
she's definitely mine - no paternity test needed!).
And in exactly the same way, I see both my parents in myself, I see
other aspects of the whole family in myself (extremely vividly, in
fact, this being an aspect of the mental disturbance that I keep going
on about), and I am aware of both kinds of 'inheritance', I sometimes
have difficulty telling one kind from the other, I sometimes struggle
against both (this being hopeless and self-defeating in the case of
biological inheritance, yet still actually possible), and I sometimes
acquiesce to both (this struggle being a duty in the case of cultural
inheritance, but a duty often shirked).
Perhaps that was too waffly, but part of the point of it was that it
is not always easy to distinguish one sort of 'inheritance' from the
other (which sort of returns us to the Niebuhr question again). And of
course, either kind of 'inheritance' can be seen as determining our
destiny. Nevertheless, I believe that neither kind does, and even
both kinds together don't.
(Such an 'I believe', by the way, is not meant as a final statement of
unquestioning dogmatic faith, just a statement about who I am at the
moment, although there is a will behind it - which does sort of return
us to your original question, almost by accident.)
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