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 | "Diamonds in the Schlock" | |
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| At a younger age, I delighted in spending Friday nights with a group of friends; sharing food, a flask or two of cider, and ideas about the world as we then saw it. A regular item in the free flow of ideas was the 'meaning of life' and all that that meant to us. A lot of those discussions revolved about the issue of what was then known as the 'Nurture versus Nature' dichotomy. One camp maintained that the dominant factor in determining our behaviour was our environment and the effect that it had in conditioning us to respond in predetermined ways to events around us. The opposing school held that genetics held the keys to our personalities: that our brains are hardwired, causing us to react in certain ways to messages that it received from the world at large. Although the discussions were stimulating, I found myself increasingly frustrated by them. Each session developed a boring sameness, with people adopting a position from which they would bombard their protagonists with strings of proofs, facts, and statistics culled from their latest source of authority. No one seemed to have much interest in actually doing anything about it. Never once did I hear anybody ask, "So how do we use this information to improve our lot in life? Where do we go from here?" |
| I have learned that once the die is cast and an action taken, there is no way to rewrite that particular scene. One has to learn to accept the consequences of that action, to learn to live with it, and go forward. Accept it, get over it, get on with it. Until we are able to accept any situation as it is, we have no means of controlling what comes next. As the supposedly most intelligent animal on the planet, we do and say some pretty stupid things. A particularly daft expression is, "I don't believe that this is happening to me!" In the past seven years, I have witnessed two separate occasions on which someone has suffered serious injury only seconds after uttering that strange remark. In both cases, they could have averted the worst consequences of the happening if they had accepted that the unfolding event did not depend upon their lack of belief. Each of the victims had time in which to back away from their impending disaster yet chose to spend the time in meaningless burbling. What drives me along a path that I have travelled for the past half century, is the desire to understand the human condition, what makes us as we are and what we can do to realise our potential. It is a quest that has taken me around the world eight times, living with peoples having a wide variation of belief systems and lifestyles. It became apparent that although different events can trigger different emotions in people from differing backgrounds, an emotion once engendered has the same basic effect on any individual. |
| Any emotion always causes a personality change in the person feeling that emotion; the stronger the emotion the greater the change. I soon became more interested in the underlying physiological changes than in the easily observed surface symptoms. In many ways the pattern of my search has always been that of three steps forward, one step back. In order to understand what I was learning I invariably had to learn to understand previous material. An interest in the workings of the mind necessitated an understanding of the brain, which led to physiology, which led to genetics and evolution, which roused an interest in palaeontology, and so on. I would be often reading basic primers in any two or three fields whilst at the same time trying to comprehend papers published by the leading exponents in the same fields. As I struggled to keep up with the latest findings in half a dozen areas I found that I had to go back in time, back through primitive cultures to the beginnings of our evolutionary journey. Once I had commenced my own personal search for understanding, I realised that it was going to be a lot more difficult and time consuming than I had anticipated. I began to feel that I had come in at the middle of a linear path of knowledge, as though I had started to learn the alphabet with the letter 'M' and had to learn the letters that came before, as well as seeing their relationship to the letters that came after. It wasn't that simple. It was as though every small group of three or for letters belonged to a different discipline, each acting as though they had no connection with the rest of the string; its adherents clutching 'their' letters to themselves and refusing to share 'their' knowledge with any outsider who hadn't gone through the rites of passage that each discipline demanded. Professors of 'mind studies' acted as though were delving into arcane lore's that had no common ground with the studies of those who centred on the physical brain. Even those who worked in the same domain were often in conflict with each other. |
| All too often the recommended text books stated the case from the established point of view, defended by the conservative old-guard whose arguments seemed to be mainly based on the principle that this is what I was taught and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. More recent books on a subject presented strong cases for the old knowledge to be revised, or even set aside, in the light of newer theories or findings. Nor did the internecine squabbling stop there. Just as likely as not, there would be a third faction who disagreed with both the conservatives and the radicals. When the experts condemn each other, it makes comprehension of the subject extremely hard for the lay person To the outsider the infighting appears to have more to do with egoism and the race to publish, than a dispassionate examination of the facts. Today, with the emergence of new, interdisciplinary fields of study such as Neurobiology, Socio-biology, Evolutionary Psychology, and PalaeoPsychoNeuroimmunology, it must be taken as read that all truths are provisional. Until the test of time gave credence to one school or the other all I could do was to apply Occam's Razor; accepting the simplest solution to any given problem until such time as more proof presented itself. During those periods, I would be observing the people around me, trying to correlate the theories being published with what was happening before my eyes. |
| Dominating all were the questions: "How does this apply to me?" "Are we all separate islands or would empirical observation reveal patterns common to all." "Are we necessarily bound by the dictum - 'old too soon, wise too late' - or is there possibly some system by which we can steal a march on time?" I now know that there exists the knowledge to form such a system. Our minds can have an effect that ranges far beyond what was imagined only a few short years ago. Our minds receive stimuli from outside of ourselves, and the way in which we choose to interpret those stimuli affect our well being right down to the level of our immune systems. The key phrase is, 'how we choose to interpret'. So much of what we see, hear, and feel is interpreted in the light of how we have been taught to perceive events. Very early in life, we are conditioned to accept that certain events, people, and occurrences are bad while their opposites are inherently good. I have met so many people who 'instinctively' felt that poorly dressed people are not to be trusted whilst professional people - solicitors, doctors, politicians of the right party - always know what they are doing as they are 'better' people. This is a coarse example but the tentacles of this type of thinking run deep within all of us, and are hidden in many subtle ways. There are many of us who become very indignant if one questions their sense of justice and fair play, yet it is transparently obvious that their concept of justice stops at the boundaries of difference. They may abhor the violence in our society yet feel it is quite acceptable for a police officer to give a good thumping to a scruffy looking person suspected of law breaking. They give lip service to the idea of equal rights for all, yet express contempt for heterosexuals who want to extend that equality to the homosexual community. I have watched children playing in a room thick with tobacco smoke, being fed mouthfuls of alcohol by their parents as those parents ranted on about the evils of marijuana. They needed no facts to support their actions, they just 'knew' right from wrong. It is this acceptance of unquestioned beliefs that is not only damaging to our society but is the main reason why so few of us develop our innate potential to live our lives to the best. |
| Which brings us back to the 'Nurture v. Nature Dichotomy'. Thanks to quite recent investigation, this argument has been settled to the satisfaction of all but the most reactionary die-hards. The bare facts are as follows: From the earliest time in the womb, our genes determine certain personality traits. Postpartum, our personalities are modified by our environment. It must be emphasised that determinism does not equate with fatalism. Our genetic disposition predicates only our potential; it does not set it in concrete. Our environmental conditioning is worthy of some examination. Much to the dismay of many psychologists, it is now known that our parents have but a very small influence upon the shaping of our characters. (If you are in the habit of blaming your parents for making you the person that you are, then you owe them an apology). Our peer group moulds our personalities in the playground. This begs the question as to who determines the culture of the playground. Who conditions the children? The answer depends on your place, both in time and geography. British children at school during the 1940's were raised at a time when Europe was at war and the government's propaganda machinery worked full time to indoctrinate the potential cannon fodder. The war dominated all other thought, and children were taught in many overt and covert ways that there was nothing finer than to fight, and if needs be, die for their king and country. For children in Islamic or Catholic countries, it is religion that forms the wallpaper of their minds. At root, religion is hoist with its own petard. At its centre is an omnipotent god that made us in its image; thereby determining our character. But, if we are so fashioned, how can we be held to be responsible for own actions? A paradox that can only be fogged over by cant and twisted semantics. |
| Today, throughout the world, the international corporations bend young minds to fit them as consumer fodder. Any kid without the 'correct' designer labels is a nobody. Ask any parent about the influence of advertising upon their children's minds. It has very little to do with quality. VHS is the universal standard for videotapes, but BETA was a much better product. Unix is much more stable than MS-Windows, but Windows dominates the computer operating system market. As has been said, it's a pity that Microsoft's' programmers are not as good as its advertising agency. Advertising is propaganda, and truth is always the first casualty in a propaganda war. A sample of adverts on this week's television includes one that tries to sell us 'intelligent finance'. While another extols the virtue of a car with 'intelligent brakes'. I wonder, are the ad men and women so ignorant that they do not know the meaning of intelligence, or are they prepared to tell any lies for their money? Cynicism or stupidity? A current advertising campaign for BUPA [a health-care insurance company] states " ... even people of 80 years of age can grow new brain cells." What garbage they do talk. At any age, one can stimulate their existing brain cells to expand, but brain cells are like teeth in that we start with a certain number, and we end with less. Cynicism or stupidity? As we accept the myths of our social environment so do we act within the narrow boundaries of our beliefs about ourselves. So many of us live constricted lives in which day after day has the same dull flavour. It does not have to be like that! We have within us talents and capabilities that may never see the light of day unless we cultivate them with good judgement, and nourish them with enthusiasm. Our own attitude towards ourselves and the world around us, can be the making or breaking of us. Too many of us complain that there is no magic in our life, not knowing that the great magic is that we can change our attitudes and in doing so we can change our lives. It is called free will. |