What makes someone great? What makes one of us stand out? How are visionaries created?
The debate between nature and nurture has been ongoing for centuries. How did Steve Jobs build Apple? Was he born with a natural knack for computers, visionary thinking, and futuristic dreams? Were his parents the reason for his success (he was adopted)?
I think the question of nature versus nurture permeates society in a multifaceted manner. The dichotomy is not only situated in a world with success, but also thought about with discussions of poverty, crime, mental illness and even sexual orientation. This debate is, in one word: deep.
Success:
The post is only going to scratch the surface of a deep debate that divides families and countries alike. Focusing on success to start, I want to reference Andreessen Horowitz’s blog titled “Making Yourself a CEO.” Horowitz is deeply entrenched in the belief that CEOs are made not born; thus, it is through nurture that they run companies. His belief is that the role of a CEO is an unnatural one; thus, a CEO cannot be born swimming upstream because of human nature.
However, I think Horowitz discredits the nurture associated with “natural.” Rather than saying a CEO is nurtured into the successful business person, we could say that CEOs are born, but are nurtured, through social interaction, to find CEO tasks unnatural and thus difficult. I find it sad that in an educational setting, the dreamers are discounted as “quacks” and the brilliant are termed “nerds” or “losers.” Thus, who wants to stand out? Why be a leader when you will be called a “bitch,” or in the elementary school lingo “bossy pants?”
Crime:
Let us consider the failure of nurture with the famous example of Ted Kaczynski, or the Unabomber. Kaczynski entered Harvard at age 16 from a supportive family. After receiving his Ph.D. from Berkley at the age of 21 (not too shabby), he ultimately would flee into the solitude of the wilderness and began sending, what would total, 16 homemade bombs. Was it nature that made Kaczynski into a murderer and, one could say, a domestic terrorist? Upon his arrest and subsequent trial, he discredited being mentally ill and refused to use illness as a defense. What made a brilliant boy into a killer?
Poverty:
At my alma matter, Bowling Green State University, we had the author of the wonderful book The Other Wes Moore visit and speak. To me, the book was truly powerful. As a brief synopsis, two boys named Wes Moore grew up in Baltimore Maryland in the 1970s. Both were raised by a single mother. Both had encounters with the police from a young age. Both lived in neighborhoods where drugs were as common as sidewalks. One of the boys is currently serving a life sentence for shooting a police officer. The other is a successful author, public speaker, military veteran and Rhodes Scholar. These two fates couldn’t be further apart.
What was the cause of the drastic divergence in life? Was the removal of the successful Wes Moore from his neighborhood to mandate military school the rationale? It seems likely. The full removal of Moore from the nurturing drug ridden streets to a situation of complete discipline seemed to dictate his future. Is it true that the lack of removal from such a system doomed the current Moore in jail? Most likely not, as different choices could have been made. However, the poverty and dedication of supporting a family led to the logical conclusion of drugs as the main source of income, which far outpaced that of a minimum wage job. The drugs ultimately led to violence in a gateway-like scenario.
Final Thoughts:
I do not want to dive into the nature versus nurture debate within mental illness or sexual orientation due to my own personal shortfalls in knowledge and the overarching religious/personal medical genre in which I attempt to shy away from due to emotionally driven opinions. One must ask the questions though at one point.
Ultimately, I think the nature versus nurture argument is one that will never be fully answered. Psychologists and sociologists will continue to discuss these topics for eternity. Furthermore, it seems illogical for anyone to be able to adequately conclude which condition led to which outcome due to the simplistic rebuttal of “sample of one!”
There seems to be a mix in nature versus nurture, but there is also an overarching bias in the sense that the stories we hear are the ones that highlight immense successes or disastrous results. This bias in reporting of the nature versus nurture argument further exacerbates the lack of clarity.
Thus, I will conclude with my belief in the debate of nature versus nurture: it is probably a bit of both sprinkled with a bunch of randomness.
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