Nature vs. Nurture: What makes a man?

181

What makes a man? Is it his genetic composition that made him who he is or the influence of his environment on him as a result of his interaction with it? Is man a product of his inborn traits or a product of his upbringing? Or is it how he was born or where he was born that matter in his personality development?
Nature is influenced by genetic factors because each person inherited a certain degree of genetic traits from his parents. It is the genetic trait that influences individual differences and make each person unique in his own way. This means are behaviours are internally influenced since many traits are inborn. That is why sometimes children behave like their parents. They even do some things that people never taught them because they are born that way. This means nature comprise of all the internal factors that influence a man.
Nurture on the other hand is the influence of external factors on a person’s personality. These factors include environment, experience and learning. For me, the formative years of a man’s life are important in the making of a man. The people we spent time with and the way they live their lives often influence us. One way or another, we reflect our background, culturally or religiously or otherwise because the society influences us. At birth, a child knows nothing and fears nothing. But as he begins to grow, he starts absorbing his environment and imitating some of the people that surrounded him while he was growing up. His life is filled with learning and experience due to the interaction with the environment. No matter what his genetic composition his, that couldn’t be separated from his environment.
By interacting with his environment, he starts to behave in a certain way. That means as he grows, his environment plays a role in his development. He learns to speak and walk by imitating others. When he is fond of his parents, he was merely responding to the love and affection he was shown by them. His cognitive development is also linked to his environment and the level of civilization that exists in such an environment.
For me, both nature and nurture affect influences us. For how a genetic trait is expressed is often dependent on the environment. Our genetic trait influences how we interact with the environment. The language we speak and the religion we practice is due to nurture but proficiency in the language and the level of religiosity are often due to nature. Loving to read and comprehending what one reads are not the same. People read the same thing but understand them differently. People express their inborn traits when the right environmental factors triggered those factors. Although the environment influences what they react to, I believe it is the gene that determines how they react.
When people start exhibiting things that are not naturally known of them as a result of interaction with the environment, people say they have changed. But I call that a revelation of the true self. For me, people don’t change, they only get revealed. You could have a container for a year and never know its content until the day you put pressure on it. That day, its true content will be revealed. When people are under pressure or they are under the situation under which they feel at ease, their real self are revealed not that they have changed. So, for me, a thief is not a thief because he steals. Rather, he steals because he is a thief. When people change from being timid to being bold, it is because that’s who they should be and not because they have changed. When people do certain things and blame on other people, it is not often the truth. Nature has just revealed them because the environment presented a situation under which they could be who they really are. Thus, although we have the tendency to exhibit certain traits, it is the environment that triggers and reveals such traits. Without interaction with the environment, inborn traits might never get revealed.
This ability to get revealed after interaction with the environment is regarded as the process of maturation. Many of these revealed capabilities or acts are not observable at birth but only emerged later in life. Yet, many people could live their lives without ever getting revealed if they are not faced the tight circumstances for their revelation. That is why I also believe that no matter the traits we are born with, the influence of the environment in activating them cannot be undermined. Look at Stevie Wonder, Helen Keller, and Cobhams Asuquo. All three are blind people. Yet, they are not limited by their lack of sight because they defeated it. They might be naturally blind but they are revealed people because they are the best of who they are. The way is see it, blindness is not only lack of sight but also when a person thinks that all he knows is all there is to know for there is more to all the things he thought he knew and there is more to all he has ever seen.
If either Stevie Wonder or Cobhams Asuquo had been born in different places and raised under different circumstances, they might have grown as adults that sulk about their disabilities. There are many people who were born blind or lost their eyesight due to health conditions who then live in self-rejection as a result of their seemingly disabilities. Many of the blind beggars lining up the street could have turned out differently if they are exposed to the right environmental factors that make them an asset instead of a liability. That is why all psychopathic people are not often violent although they have the natural tendency to be. The way people are born and the way they are raised go hand in hand. In fact, they could be term comrade-in-arms in the way they shape us. If they had been raised where violence is a norm, it would have triggered them into being violent. Thus the propensity to do something or be something is largely due to environmental factors.
So, to answer the question of what makes a man is difficult, whether it nature or nurture, is difficult. That it is the same way it is hard to say how much nature and nurture influences us. But I believe nature and nurture are inseparable as they influence us differently and have different roles to play in determining who we are. Even psychologists now concerned themselves with how both nature and nurture influence people and not which of the two makes a man.