...Elizabeth Warren, the head of Congressional oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. (Stay with me. This isn't about dry financial stuff; it's about that old chestnut, "Nature vs. Nurture." Huh?) Buried deep in the piece is this paragraph:
“I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people, what the security of owning a home means,” Ms. Warren said, her eyes welling. Even today, said Ms. Warren’s daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, her mother is so frugal that she eats shriveled grapes out of the fruit bowl.
Does Ms. Warren eat shriveled grapes because of her upbringing, or because she is simply wired that way? I would submit it's because of the latter.
My mother and mother-in-law came from similar backgrounds. They both grew up in modest circumstances during the Great Depression. Like a lot of other people, they participated in the great prosperity following World War II. But while my mother was (and still is) the type to eat those last shriveled grapes (me, too, by the way), my mother-in-law would gladly throw those grapes away in favor of fresh ones. Why? My mother always cited her background; they never had much and appreciated everything they had. It was a sin to waste anything, especially food. My mother-in-law would also cite her background to explain her reason for eschewing those nasty little shriveled grapes. You see, her family never had much and considered it a sin to waste anything, especially food. Well, since then her circumstances had changed dramatically. So much, in fact, that she never had to eat shriveled grapes again. She could afford to throw them away and buy some nice fresh ones. Isn't America a great country?
My point is that while my mother and mother-in-law grew up in similar circumstances (nurture), they reacted completely differently to the prospect of eating shriveled grapes. My contention is that they were just simply wired differently (nature), and would have had the same response to shriveled grapes regardless. The same is true for Ms. Warren and me. While she supposedly learned from her background not to waste grapes, I became reluctant to waste grapes even though I was raised in a house where we could afford to waste those grapes. Maybe she and I are just wired the same; maybe circumstances don't have anything to do with it.
It just seems that to isolate the similar backgrounds and to ignore the infinite number of variances in each of the subjects experiences in life since their similar upbringing (did they have a teacher who enlightened them to a different way to view the world or not? did they have a job or not? when did they meet their spouse? what was the relationship like? was there a moment of crisis when they could have taken one road or another and their free will led them in different directions?)is to stack the deck in favor of a predesignated conclusion.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the possible differences in those similar upbringings such as religion or ethnic heritage.
For example, I've heard that outside of Irish Catholic tradition people actually learn from their experiences rather than engaging in the kamikaze mission of repeating the same painful cycles of self-destructive behavior for their entire lives.
Not that I blame those nuts. They just weren't raised the right way!