There is an important point raised by the research discussed in this article, We Are What We Experience. I’ll quote a good part of this short article because of its importance, regardless of how well or poorly this particular study stands up to efforts to verify or explicate its results:
Our life experiences — the ups and downs, and everything in between — shape us, stay with us and influence our emotional set point as adults, according to a new study led by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. The study suggests that, in addition to our genes, our life experiences are important influences on our levels of anxiety and depression.
“In this time of emphasis on genes for this and that trait, it is important to remember that our environmental experiences also make important contributions to who we are as people,” said principal investigator Kenneth Kendler, M.D., director of the VCU Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.
Kendler, professor of psychiatry, and human and molecular genetics in the VCU School of Medicine, and an international team of researchers from VCU and other universities, analyzed nine data sets of more than 12,000 identical twins with symptoms of depression and/or anxiety through the lifespan.
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According to Kendler, statistical models, developed by his colleague Charles Gardner, Ph.D., a research associate in the VCU Department of Psychiatry, were used to observe how components of individual variation changed over time. The team observed that as the twins moved from childhood into late adult life, they increasingly diverged in their predicted levels of symptoms, but after that point, stopped further diverging. Further, they noted that environmental experiences contribute substantially to stable and predictable inter-individual differences in levels of anxiety and depression by mid-life in adults.
There are undoubtedly some genetic problems, as well as some types of physical damage, so constraining as to nearly predetermine a bad outcome for the victims. Most genetic conditions, whether directly problems or conducive to developing problems, should better be regarded as constraints on a human organism which shapes itself as it responds to its environment, becoming something flabby and lacking in moral order if it responds reluctantly and weakly — responds passively in a manner of speaking. Kenneth Minogue once said, “There’s a lot of ruin in a country,” and I could say in a similar way that there is a lot of ruin in a human being, that is, a human being can be very badly damaged and still have a lot of potential for rich and good developments of various sorts. When I speak of good in this context, I mean good that is active, that leads to objectively good results in the communities of that damaged human being. (Those good results might be vague or even doubtful as are the good results of many of our human actions, but intelligent analysis will typically let us know when the actions of a human being have truly tended to the good.)
I confess: I’m one of those men that Adam Smith had feared would develop in the prosperous, commercial societies he was seeing arise and was glorifying in many ways. I’m genial — but capable of impolite behavior when my self-respect or moral beliefs are irritated. I’m also a bit short on the toughness necessary for a true moral character — but I’m toughening up enough that I’m at least willing to force moral decisions on my part by painting myself into corners. I don’t think I’m naturally one of these hollow-chested men, as we modern men were labeled by C.S. Lewis. In many ways, I’m a bit like the tough and gruff — but self-sacrificing — Scotsmen from the older generations in my mother’s family. I also have the sort of perseverance found in my father’s family where many of the men gave themselves, as many men did, to work such as lead-mining for the good of their families knowing they would earn better incomes than most workers and would end their lives relatively early as they struggled for each breath. That perseverance is a form of courage though a bit different than the impulsive courage found in adventurers and warriors. Despite a good inheritance of potentially tough moral character, I was shaped to to be a consumer of what was offered by the modern corporations and governments rather than a man trying to choose a good life and making do with what could be honestly gained in that particular life. As Wendell Berry said somewhere, frugality isn’t about saving money, it’s about self-respect. It’s also not about living poorly for the sake of being poor, it’s about living a balanced life which can accept some luxurious goods when they can be a part of a morally well-ordered life.
Clearly, I’ve formed an idea of a good life, though the details would still have to be set according to particular opportunities and problems which I’ll be confronting in the years left to me in this mortal realm. It’s just as clear that I live in a certain environment: I live in a state of well-fed poverty in my sister’s house in a small-town in New England populated by some convinced the Constitution, or perhaps the Bible, says their invincibly ignorant opinions are as good as the opinions of one who at least tries to get some background knowledge and then to form his ways of thought according to the works of the acknowledged great thinkers of the West. Modern men have a right to their opinions but no responsibility to find out anything about the objects of those opinions. In the context of this discussion, this is a problem because those modern men are responding to a false understanding of their environments or the environments of those in, say, Afghanistan. Modern men are mostly responding to a dream-world bearing only a superficial resemblance to reality.
When genial Americans, as one good example, respond to a world in which they can think of themselves as virtuous because they pay their taxes and keep a nice-looking lawn, then they are able to put off any confrontations with reality. They live in an American television series, a plastic world but one apparently desirable to those whose fears outweigh any desires they might have for freedom beyond that of watching dirty movies or choosing from a vast array of brands of toothpaste.
We shape ourselves by our experiences but those experiences aren’t entirely objective. They are always experiences lived in our understanding of reality and that understanding, at its best, is being enriched and made more complete as man learns more about himself and his world. Some of us might hope to make our experiences as objective as we can by responding to the world as it corresponds to the best understanding available to us. Others seem not to even realize that we are creatures set in particular contexts. Perhaps some realize this to be true but willfully act as if a context is what we believe it to be based upon false information pushed into us by public schools and television shows and advertisements and so forth.