Saturday, December 10, 2011

Nature or Nurture?

It's an age-old question: Which affects a person more: Biology, that is to say the genes and characteristics inherited from one's forebears; or environment, the mores and values in which the individual is immersed from birth until adulthood?

Bubblehead Les sends in a story that's brought this age-old conundrum to the forefront of my mind:

Police: 2 Mich. kids used toy gun to steal snacks
WARREN, Mich. – Police say two Detroit-area youngsters used a toy gun to rob five of their schoolmates of candy and chips.

The five victims were walking home earlier this week from Lincoln Elementary in Warren, north of Detroit, when one of the boys pulled the plastic gun on them, police said.
The two children involved are 8 and 10. My kids are 8 and 10. We worry about our daughter talking back to us, or our son spending too much time on video games. I can't imagine having to worry about them robbing their schoolmates at gunpoint. Yes, it was a toy gun, but remember, if you walk into a bank with your finger in your pocket imitating a firearm, that's armed robbery. The young children they were robbing didn't know it was a toy.

Armed robbery before middle school. It's a pretty solid checkmark in the "nurture" category; I'm pretty certain there's no gene for "petty theft" or "strongarm robbery". They've mapped the entire human genome, and as far as I can tell no one has discovered an allele for lawlessness; no one has mapped which chromosome pair contains the Bad Gene. Good people that become parents can easily raise children with no moral compass; again, it comes back to environment and nurture.

In any case, my heart goes out to those two kids. If they're resorting to this sort of thing now, at this early stage in their lives, it's not hard to predict the arc their lives are going to take. Perhaps an intervention now will send a strong enough message to turn things around before they make choices that really change their future - or the future of others.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go hug my kids again...

That is all.

9 comments:

Eck! said...

Ah, morons! IF the victums had been educated about guns and understood them it would have been a leaning moment for the plastic wielding punk
wannabes. But since they live in a gun free zone where all guns are bad they don't know and therefor didn't kick the miscreants in the shins giving them the first lesson that crime doesn't pay and it can be damn painful for the criminal.

Ok, was that too much sarcasm?

Eck!

Unknown said...

Those kids would be better off raised by wolves. Of course there's a inborn component in the *potential* for attitudes and behaviors, but this was LEARNED behavior. Somebody (or a whole lot of somebodies) taught them that this is "acceptable."

Wolf cubs would know better.

wolfwalker said...

Armed robbery before middle school. It's a pretty solid checkmark in the "nurture" category;

Not necessarily. There are, in fact, some kids who seem to be "born bad." The parents do everything right, but for some reason the kid's brain just doesn't "get" the concepts of right and wrong, morality, ethics, etc. What they want is right simply because they want it. Some sources call them 'sociopaths.' Others call them 'malignant narcissists.' There are, thankfully, very few of them, but they do exist.

justcook said...

You should read about the "Milgram Experiment" done in the early 60s. Two people were brought in to help particapte in a "learning study" one person would be wired to a machine that would emmit an electric shock if he answered wrong. Each time he answered wrong the voltage would be increased. Starting at 15 volts. At 150 volts the subject getting the shocks would start to complain and say they wanted to stop they could not take anymore and they had heart trouble. The one asking the questions and giving the shocks is setting in a room with a lab tech who tells them to keep going.
Its interesting reading you shoulod look it over heres a link to a short piece about it.http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm

Paul, Dammit! said...

You know, apropos of something, I read this very quickly, and then thought "Where was this, Detroit?" On my 2nd passthrough, imagine my surprise that I wasn't far off. My SWAG is in the 'nurture' camp, too. Sort of.

Stretch said...

Here's to both of them being removed from the gene pool prior to breeding thus ending both the nature and nurture loop.

Anonymous said...

"it's not hard to predict the arc their lives are going to take"

Future union bosses, a little community organizing, and right into politics

Bubblehead Les. said...

So I know I'm an old Fart, but when I was that age, I played Cowboy and Indians, or War Games killing Nazi's, the Japanese or whoever. It has to be environmental. But what's scary is that seems to be the cultural Norm for that section of Society.

Part of being Civilized is that one follows Laws that others have laid out as to benefit the entire Society,whether we like them or not, or whether those Laws may actually be detrimental to us (i.e., "No Guns Allowed"). Barbarians follow only those Laws that benefit themselves and their Family/Tribe/ Clan.

Since this trend is probably NOT confined to Detroit (see the news story where the kids threw the Shopping Cart off a Roof in NYC), and I have lots of stories about 15/16/17 year old "Kids" shooting people in Cleveland (just for personal reference), I can only draw 2 conclusions:

A) If you live near a City, the Barbarians have already taken hold of it, and are supported and abetted by the Political elites for their own Power Games, and

B) Since these Barbarians tend to run in Packs, I'd carry more than just a 5 shot J-Frame with no reloads.

Oh. FWIW, Barbarians come in all kinds of Sizes, Shapes, Colors, and Genders, so don't throw the Race Card at me.

Mikael said...

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/16/6085.long

It's certainly not anywhere near the whole answer. Personally I suspect nurture has more to do with it than nature, but I'd consider this kind of a multiplier.