My struggle with the Nature and Nurture Dichotomy.
Today is my mother’s birthday - it really is. She was born on 3 May 1945, so we all know what year that was looking at history. When my brother and I were kids, she would often tell us how proud she was about the fact that the war had already been over for five days when she was born. I thought that she had been really lucky that she did not have to witness any of that gruelsome war, unlike her much older siblings.
Little did I know back then that even I would still, in many ways, be affected by this war, but that is a completely different story, and one I might deal with another time.
What I would like to talk about now is the Dichotomy of #Nature and #Nurture. I first learned about what a dichotomy is, and this one in particular, when I was at university in the 1990s, studying for my first degree. My background is in Philology, Applied Linguistics, to be exact. So, when talking about the Nature and Nurture Dichotomy in this discipline, you learn about the existence of Universals of Language, or read about research carried out on twins and how their language acquisition processes turn out te be the same — or not — due to sharing the same set of genes.
Ever since being confronted with the above, I have wondered to what extent my education or my genes have shaped certain preferences throughout my life.
Take food, for example. I am a meat eater. I was brought up as one, because my parents loved meat back when I was a kid, and they still love it today. Us kids would get the odd meat-less dish, like spaghetti with tomato sauce, pancakes, or potato fritter, but mainly it would be dishes containing a rather large amount of meat and other animal derivatives.
Nowadays, many people have turned vegetarian, or vegan even. While I really admire the efforts to do so, I could not imagine living without animal products for the rest of my days. However, I have been trying and I will keep trying to reduce the amount of animal produce we consume.
Exploring my cravings for meat — Nature or Nurture?
The question I ask myself is whether it isNature or Nurture sitting on top of my carriage holding the reigns to steer the cravings I experience for a nice medium beef steak, fried or cooked sausages (not made of tofu, PLEASE!), or Spanish Serrano Ham?
If it is Nature, then how come vegans can survive on a diet stripped of anything that had te be killed or exploited to be eaten? Sure, many doctors warn about the pitfalls of veganism. There are plenty of cases of people turning vegan and getting it all wrong — the balancing of the essential nutrients, I mean. But there is also a growing number of vegans who are demonstrating convincingly that it is possible, and most of them are probably healthier individuals than us meat eaters.
Maybe the explanation can be found at the other end of the Dichotomy — Nurture. If vegetarians and vegans had mainly stopped eating meat because of not wanting to hurt or exploit animals, that would explain it, wouldn’t it? But how come I cannot do it? Maybe it is because I do not really WANT to stop eating meat — true enough. Meat dishes just taste SO good, but vegan products are getting very good, too. Although, you should not compare them with “the real thing”, if you want them to stand a chance, as far as my experience goes.
I will dive into the point I have just made more deeply. When I see pictures of cute animals, like lambs, calves, chicks, or the likes of them, then yes, I do feel pity thinking that we also eat these animals. And for that to happen, they have to be killed. My motivation for not eating so much meat is actually more to be found in not agreeing with how we keep the animals we eat, and not the fact that we eat them.
Even when I was a little kid, I thought it a very natural thing to watch my dad with the recently killed chickens in my grandfather’s backyard. My mother wouldn’t let us watch him kill them, because we were kids, she said. I think I would have watched it, anyway, quite gladly. I ate those chickens (roast chicken is my favourite dish, actually), and I also ate the rabbits that I had been petting in that same garden — also killed by my father — and I also ate the pigeons (usually in pidgeon soup, VERY yummy) that my grandfather used to keep as pets — also killed by my father.
The things I got to see back then should have been enough to put me off eating meat for life, according to a much cited argument amongst vegans and vegetarians, but they did not. Is the inevitable conclusion here that it is Nature and instinct responsible for my cravings, after all? You tell me! Especially, if you are a vegetarian, or a vegan, please.
I now need to go and prepare today’s tea: vegan burgers! I am trying out a new brand I have bought. Currently I am working my way through what is on offer at the supermarkets in terms of burgers. Great strategy, don’t you think? So, at least today and in the coming weeks my very conscious and very much nurtured efforts to contribute to reducing emissions from farting cattle needed for my burger patties have once again won over the underlying dreams of their juicy, fat-dripping beef counterparts.
Victory does feel GREAT today, actually!
My thoughts on 3 May 1#P.C.
Sue
