I was writing a response comment to WindKiller's comment on Responding to WindKiller's comment on "You Are So Fundamentally Wrong" (obviously we have a dialog going) and realized my short comment response was turning into a log post response, so here it is.
As I usually do, WindKiller's comments are in italics, my responses in normal text.
Hello again, 'Killer. The abused becomes the abuser?
Traumatized people will relive their trauma given the slightest opportunity (this is pretty well documented and I can provide a bibliography if you'd like). Individuals whose trauma has been demonstrated as abuse often will relive their personal trauma by re-enacting the abuse event(s). Does this always happen? No, and often enough that it's documented. This is how/when the abused becomes the abuser (a reasonable lay read is Men of Prey: scientists peer into the dark world of sex offenders).
Sounds like someone has taken a side on the nature v. nuture debate.
Not sure I'm taking sides so much as recognizing both play roles.
Aren't some people born predisposed to certain behaviors?
First I'd need to know how the word "behavior" is being used. Are we talking about things people can't avoid because neurophysiology dictates it (something I touched on in Guys Can’t Help Themselves)?
For example, one of my "behaviors" is that I enjoy hot, spicy foods. Given the option of something that will make my eyes water and clear my sinuses, I'll go for it foodwise. But that's a truly learned behavior.
However, what isn't learned is one's sensitivity to the different aromatics and volatiles that give certain foods their flavors and pungencies. That sensitivity is part of one's physiology. It's also quite doubtful that such a sensitivity could have evolved during recent times as food preparation hasn't been around long enough in a large enough population (or in an isolated enough population, for that matter) to cause such "selective" breeding to occur.
But are we talking basic neuromechanics? In that case, yes, some people are born predisposed to certain behaviors. I often state this during presentations as "...the human brain, barring organic trauma..." These "behaviors" range from blinking to sneezing to things the sympathetic nervous system causes us to do (unless you've studied how to control it) to ...
And this is where genetic predispositions make themselves known. Some "behaviors" are genetic traits. People demonstrating such behaviors can't control their behavior because again, neuromechanics prevails. The person demonstrating dementia behaviors due to Alzheimer's can't control that behavior (without drugs, anyway) and that behavior is due to genetic predispositions. Sad and true.
Bringing this back to my love of foods that would cause others internal distress, what if my penchant for such foods was based on a certain genetic sequence? For one, I would be a sport because humans haven't been around prepared foods long enough for that genetic sequence to have assumed dominance in the nucleotide sequence.
We are all born predisposed to certain behaviors. It is current societal and cultural norms, values and mores that decide which behaviors are acceptable and not.
Might that not include addictions...
Some addictions are genetic in origin, some are psychologic in origin.
...(I wish someone would write something about this)...
Your wish is my blog post. See Responding to WindKiller's comment on "What Tivo Guilt, etc., tells us about ourselves".
...and violent behaviors, including abusing and seeking out abusers or those who desire abuse?
There's been lots of studies on this subject. One of the best is Reiko Shinomiya's "A Consideration of the “Habitus” in Domestic Violence: Referring to the Theory of Pierre Bourdieu", one of a series of papers presented at the IWC 2007 and there are many others.
One of the personal hells that is recognized in such situations occurs when someone is self-aware enough to recognize they're engaging in such behavior yet do not have the resources to stop such behavior (anybody remember "The Terminal Man"?).
This question is probably one of those razor's edge things. Have humans been around long enough to have developed the genetic markers for seeking out abuse (taking that as an example) because that behavior provides some survival advantage to future generations? I doubt such is the case.
However, it is documented that a child who undergoes trauma from an early age suffers developmentally and will exhibit behaviors based on that trauma to the limit their physiology and psychopathology allow.
The sad case of human affairs, that such trauma exists in our world. Sigh.
And do remember that one culture's trauma is another culture's nurture. What is common in these instances is that no cultures (that I know of) violate neuro-physiology and -mechanics when nurturing their young. Doing so would be counter to insuring healthy future generations. To provide two examples of this, there are cultural groups that consider the imposed celibacy of Catholic clergy counterproductive to evolutionary goals because historically it removed the best and the brightest from the gene pool. Another example of removing traits from future generations are pregnant females who commit suicidal terrorist acts. Going on the theory that terrorist acts are not acceptable, these females are doing evolution a favor by removing the traits that led them to engage in self-destructive behaviors from future generations.
Can't wait to find out if anybody's reading this.
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Freakonomics had a passage discussing that predicting which children will do well in school, is best done by observing genetic parents. Children will generally perform scholastically to the standards of their genetic parents, and this includes children who are adopted and/or lose their parents at a young age.
I myself have a great number of similarities to my father, probably more than my siblings, and I've often wondered which similarities could be attributed to nature and which to nurture.
Posted by: Windkiller | January 15, 2009 1:59 PM | Permalink to Comment