False Dichotomy and False Promises
For the entire, this realization struck me the most:
People think that nature and nurture must be on other ends, that they’re dichotomy. Perhaps, it’s a false dichotomy to treat the nature-nurture debate in a unidimensional way.
My inspiration for this idea came from Brannon’s Gender: Psychological Perspective. He presented two ways on how we see masculinity and femininity in chapter seven. Instead of treating them as if they oppose one another, why not create separate categories for the nature-nurture construct?
So, instead of nurture vs. nature. It’s going to be like this: we separate them into two categories. They have their scales moving left and right or up and down. Measure to what extent do you think nature affects you. The same goes for nurture.
I can say that we can control how we nurture ourselves but not in genetics (nature). While genetics set the range or extent of our biological capacity, the way we respond from our experiences dictates the range — the high and the low of us.
This idea helps me to combat the logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy.
If we oppose two things right at an early age, we have a chance to be critical of them. Good vs. bad. Right vs. wrong. I’m so open to changes. It got to this point that I tried to mingle with the wrong crowd. My indecisiveness led me to wear masks in ways I can’t imagine.
My environment saturated me with different experiences that my development went to a halt. I blamed my physique and why it’s so fast to metabolize. My mind rationalized to defend my fragile ego due to lack of weight.
Harvard University’s Brain Architecture came up with an idea. They use an analogy. What if we compare how the brain works and what’s with human effort à la law of supply and demand:
The way our brains respond to the environment goes down in time. At the same time, the more we have to exert effort on our end as we grow old.
I’ll use the bio-physical process here. During my adolescence to early adulthood, I got stuck to stimuli. It’s like I froze on that time frame that my ability to effort went missing. I did nothing. Maybe it has something to do with my near-death experience way back in grade six. I drown in waterfalls.
My early adulthood now is in the process of decluttering experiences. It’s like unloading nurture in favor of something else. If we keep on telling the nature-nurture divide, maybe I’m going to let my energy go to nature. That’s the point.
I attribute it to nature when I feel like I’m one with the environment. When I learned about dynamic systems theory, it gave me a spin. It’s wrong to think that there’s a single reason for my clutters in the past and how it affects me.
Some combinations act as the whole more than its parts. The way my body works (physical). The way I think (cognitive). The way I regulate my value judgments about myself and others (socioemotional). If we’re like a scientist, these three elements must have the same unit of measurement, or else we're clinging on a false promise at the end.
So, developmental psychology helped me to think twice before jumping right to a conclusion. What if I’m separating the past clutter from its temporal and spatial conditions. It’s possible to put it out of context and try to fit it. I shove it to the wrong box at the wrong place and time out of desperation.
Our brains start to degenerate as we age. But, we shouldn’t be afraid that we dissipate in time. The second law of thermodynamics explains it. We scatter into randomness. All the more that we struggle to be orderly, but we will reach a point that we can’t anymore. How the story of humanity develops goes this way. We test the limits until we can’t. That’s a good promise. Others will benefit from it until time knows when.
Our ego transcends beyond. We let go of it to be with the wholeness if we sum the experiences — the environment of everyone. The more we age, the more we get it. Life is pointless if we remove it from an environment.
Until then, we get stuck on a realization: that we’re one with the entire.
