Nature Vs. Nurture

Nature V. Nurture
Though the headline says Nature V. Nurture, I want to make it clear that this is not a head on competition, like Ali V. Frasier, or even Roe V. Wade. Words cannot engage each other physically, like people can. If they could though, I’d say that Nurture would not stand a chance. Nurture is quite possibly the wussiest, wimpiest, girliest word there is. Nurture, in a WCW Smackdown, would get its butt handed to it by Exfoliate.
Although to be honest, Nature ain’t the Brian Urlacher of words either.
Anyway, it’s not a physical competition. It’s the age old question. How much of what we do is based on our inherent characteristics, and how much is based on what we take in from our environment?
When you start to think about it, it takes us far beyond explanations of what clothes we wear and what kind of temper we have. Everything that exists can be weighed on the coldly penetrating balance scale of Inherent Need against Circumstance.
History bequeathes us the wreckage of some phenomena that were thought to be nature’s command.
‘Twasn’t until 1776 that a nation succeeded in forming a People’s Government. Until then, nobility lay in giving your life for the honor of a random dude. We look back now and have no ***** clue how a world could have been that dumb. (Random odd opinion: I’d venture to suggest some innate need for a monarch-like figure, manifest today in the idolization of celebrity figures and the acceptance of Chassidic Rebbes. I’m probably crazy, but don’t you sleep better at night, knowing that if the world explodes, Angelina Jolie will also need to survive? And though we may be just a bunch of lame-ass rabble whom nobody cares about, surely somebody will be finding solutions for Madonna. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to piggy-back with her.)
While many countries had abolished slavery long before the U.S. did, it was generally understood that African Americans were inferior to white people. It wasn’t malicious, it was just obvious that this was nature’s structure. This belief was commonly held as late as the 1940s, when the National Basketball Association was founded.
Today, many political battles are fought over issues that would fit neatly on the NVN scale. The most obvious one, Homosexuality, is not even the most obvious one. Before you debate the rightness and wrongness of gayness, based on whether homosexuality is the result of instinct or environment, you need to figure out if right and wrong is instinct or environment.
Here are some examples that I ponder, wondering if the depth of our need for them is as inherent as it seems, or if centuries of conditioning has fooled us into them. And of course that leads to the obvious next question: How did they start?
(in no specific order)
1. Prayer
2. Religion in general
3. Sports
4. Government
5. Friendship
6. Value of aesthetics (esp. flowers and jewelry)
7. Fashion
8. Fashion
9. I don’t know it just seems so especially random I said it twice
So, dear barely existent readers, I now hand it to you. Can you possibly explain why people the world over, cultures that had no contact for thousands of years, imvariably hold up gold as the platinum standard of wealth? Could you, by acknowledging and re-acknowledging the superfluity of the institution, live without friends?
And a more stimulating question: Which present day givens are going down? Will people, in a hundred years, wear no shirts? Have no pets? Wear only one shoe? Walk on hands and knees?
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