ThirstyFish

Nature or nurture? The debate goes on, especially as it relates to human behavior. Many scholars now agree that it is a bit of both, but most arguments are pretty weak. Take for example, the question of whether you are born a psychopath, or whether you become a psychopath.

One approach is the dual inheritance theory, in other words, "human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution". The theory has problems, mainly in that it doesn't stress enough the genetic and cultural evolutionary time-frames; Culture evolves rapidly, whereas genetic evolution is a slow process.

My understanding is that, human beings are born with the capacity for a wide range of behaviors. In itself, behavior is not good or bad, ethical or unethical, but various innate urges that determine behavior are very often contradictory. After we are born, these contradictions are irrationally and rationally "resolved" one-by-one, shaped by our senses, our interaction with the world, social learning and our past experiences. A vast majority of this process is unconscious. We develop unconscious assumptions about the world which recursively influence all our future assumptions. We have an innate yearning to be contradiction-free and consistent.

Everyone has the potential to totally suppress their empathy, to be a psychopath. But not many turn out to be psychopaths. But if social learning and our weighted unconscious assumptions come together in a peculiar way, then we might just end up as a psychopath. If we internalize the "love money, fuck people" meme, we might become the psychopath we are bitching about... Some memes are toxic, especially when they seemingly "resolve" inner-conflicts!