What do you think makes you the way you are?
Are your thoughts nature or nurture?
Do you think the chemicals in your brain, create your thoughts, and therefore, your personality?
many of the meds that many people on this site are on, can cause emotional and personality changes, by simply changing the chemical make up of the brain. Does this lead you to think that the way you act, your ability to learn and adapt are all just the chemical make up of your brain.
For example, people with debilitating ADD into adulthood have been seen to have several problems with the dopamine in their brain. Leading to impulsive behaviour, memory and attention problems and a general feeling of lack. These affects lead to greater risk of suicide, depression ect. However, that impulsiv-ness and inattention becomes/ is their personality.
So is the way people act, is individuality just brain chemicals?
6 comments
Well I read The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee! It explained we all laid dormant in Adam’s testicles until we were brought to life. Like the Russian dolls. Which was a pretty interesting parts. It explained your mother provided the genes in you that provide your nurture and your father the nature. I don’t want my chemical makeup to be disturbed. When I realized that is what medication did, I quickly tapered off them. I wouldn’t take medication for all the money and girls in the world. I do my best with natural resources that only nature can provide.
What makes me the way i am?
There is a universe.
It operated according to certain laws.
Amidst these occurrences the process of life was formed on the planet we reside upon.
Individual life forms die, the information carried in their genes continues if they reproduce
At a certain place and time a human was born with a unique genetic makeup
these genes interacted with their environment producing a unique individual which i am
Thoughts are like farts. They are not that important in defining who you are.
Yes, they can distort your perception of reality, trap you in a spiral and drain your energy.
Aside from solving practical problems with the intellect, they are pretty much useless.
“What do you think makes you the way you are?”
It is that thing, which is beyond my volition and beyond anything I can control.
“Are your thoughts nature or nurture?”
How does answering that question improve your quality of life?
“Do you think the chemicals in your brain, create your thoughts, and therefore, your personality?”
No.
Personality is a mask that you wear in society to get what you want out of it.
You want to see who somebody is, get them tipsy enough that their cerebral cortex shuts down/ becomes inhibited.
” So is the way people act, is individuality just brain chemicals? ”
“many of the meds that many people on this site are on, can cause emotional and personality changes”
distortion -> alienation
Trapped in a web of symbols.
Bad genetics. Both sides of the family have a history of undiagnosed mental illness and alcoholism. Mostly average, slightly below average looking people other than a couple women. Just happened to inherit the worst of the traits.
Well it is being said more and more now that we have an amazing potential to alter our neurology due to the plasticity of the brain. But I guess most people would agree it was a mixture of lots of factors. Environment, upbringing, physical health, rewarding employment, opportunities, a place within society. I think a lot of people with devlopmental conditions like ADD, autism, or even with mental health conditions, feel slaves to their neurology half the time. I think that’s what makes things that autism or even psychopathy so terrible because these + society, greatly guide your whole personality and it is easy to feel so helpless and detached from ‘you’. Your body and brain only seems to be capable of so much. No one is totally powerless to carve out some individuality or not hold any responsbility but it does create real identity issues.
And self esteem is widely agreed to be influenced by lots of external factors. And if you can’t get ANY hold on it, that in turn, leads you to see the world and yourself through a certain lens which basically dictates the outcomes.
The self-help craze, which has existed since the 80s, makes a hell of a lot of money out of claiming people can take full control of ‘their failings’ with often just a couple of case studies to back up a lot of their assertions and promises about their programs. They can definitely be very helpful but I think that focus on individual responsility is unfair and stops the world progressing for the better too make life better for people with any kinds of disadvantages.
I guess believing we have enough power to direct our lives gives us the most chance of regaining some control.
The interplay of nature and nurture.