Within the humanities there is an age-old debate of “Nature vs. Nurture.”
In short, it is a way of questioning the origin of different aspects of one’s self. What parts of me are a result of nature? That is, what parts are biological, hard-wired, context-independent, and in some way unchangeable?
Alternatively what parts of me are a result of nurture? That is, what aspects are social, learned, context-dependent, and in some way changeable?
Qualities attributed to Nature are bound to a given individual for any situation.
Qualities attributed to Nurture are bound to a given situation for any individual.
That couplet is an oversimplification since in reality, Nature and Nurture play off of each other in a multitude of ways where drawing sharp lines is a difficult task; however, they do offer helpful categories to help assess what parts of me are just “who I am” and what parts are “who I’ve become.”
In a previous post, I Just Want to Belong and Be Liked, I highlighted the fact that I have a desire to be seen as an intelligent person. Not only do I have this preoccupation with my self-image, but I also genuinely have a desire for knowledge. The questions, “Is it true?” and “How does it work?” often ring through my head.
In this post I want to explore further the origin of this value for knowledge that I have. How much of it is nature and how much nurture? What are some of my earliest memories that may help identify when and how this value originated?
Biological-Naturing
As I consider the Nature-dimension of my value of knowledge one of the first things that comes to mind is my family tree. My grand-dad was an electrical engineer professor, and three out of five of his kids became engineers as well.
Borrowing the stereotype that engineers tend to be people who enjoy knowing how things work and using problem-solving skills, it’s not far-fetched to say that there may be something in my genes that is predisposed to asking knowledge-oriented questions.
What gives me pause as to how much of this Nature component I actually have is that as I compare myself to others who are similar I am quick to realize many dissimilarities as well. Notably the increased degree in which others go after knowledge and at what age they seemed naturally attuned to it. I didn’t show any interest in reading books that were not a school assignment until after high school. Nor do I recall being that interested in “fun facts” or wanting to know the inner-workings of a thing.
My younger brother would often show more interest when our dad was tearing apart another computer or popping open the hood of a vehicle than I did. So it would seem that to whatever degree of Nature-derived knowledge-seeking behavior I have was at least not very prevalent for most of my upbringing.
I would do well at school, but I was not a particularly studious or curious individual until my freshman year of college. I had no draw towards reading until after high school. I have an isolated memory of reading a beginner “level 2” Lego Castle book when I was 7-9 years old; but otherwise, books were a thing to be shunned.
One counter-example that goes against this is my desire for reading the Bible. I have mostly enjoyed that for about as long as I can remember.
I recall walking down the staircase while reading from a children’s Adventures in Odyssey Bible which contained five short comic-strips throughout its pages. Eventually it became a nightly routine to read with my Dad 2-3 chapters every evening before bedtime. I had read Genesis-Revelation by the time I was thirteen and then started again.
Social-Nurturing
As I consider the Nurture-dimension of my value of knowledge, I can pretty much write a whole narrative for how I think it arose. I can think of three primary catalysts for why I derived a strong(er) value of knowledge:
- Desire to belong with a peer-group and be seen as an equal
- Desire to love God and know more about Him
- Desire to evangelize and see others believe in Jesus
The first thing that comes to mind is a peer-group I had at fourteen years old. While I was more interested in video games and sports at the time, I had friends who were clearly more generally informed than I about history, politics, and technology. This peer-group is also the first time I remember experiencing the desire to rise the intellectual ranks in order to converse on the same plane as them.
Secondly, my desire for reading the Bible and learning more about God was the one knowledge-seeking counter-example to my otherwise cynical demeanor towards reading. When I was fourteen I received a NASB McArthur commentary Bible as a Christmas gift from my parents. I was obsessed with going through the notes on whatever passage I was reading and enjoyed the introductions for a given book of the Bible. It even had precursors in the beginning about the history of the NASB translation, how to study the Bible, and how to effectively use this specific study Bible with its unique abbreviations.
However, even that wasn’t really knowledge-seeking. It was relationship-seeking through the means of gaining information and meditating upon it.
The third – and I think the largest – contributor to my value of knowledge is attributed to growing up in the evangelical subculture. The emphasis laid upon the importance of seeing none-Christians convert to Christianity meant that I deeply internalized the need for evangelization. (This primarily happened through the sociological concept of Introjection). As life naturally progressed and I became more aware of living in a pluralistic culture I became attuned to the need of being informed about other religions and distinctives of Christianity.
Highschool was a very pivotal season in my life where I started to really enjoy Christian apologetics. Again, I still never read anything (I was too busy playing basketball and Kingdom Hearts for that); however, I was really drawn to the idea that philosophy, reason, and science, could be used to help usher others into the Kingdom of God.
I thus became really interested in those areas so long as they pertained to helping others come to Christ. I didn’t value the knowledge or information for its own sake or because I thought it was cool. I valued it for the potential consequence of seeing more people come to know and love Jesus.
I have now cultivated a value of truth and knowledge for their own sake through my Christian apologetics journey over the past 15 years. I have a fascination with philosophy and with wanting to know the underpinnings of what technology makes for the best dishwasher. Those things have practical ends that they may serve, but I more often find myself experiencing a joy that comes from the learning process than in high school or college. The joy of learning and seeking knowledge isn’t merely a means to an end, but has become an end in itself.
Concluding Reflections
Trying to identify how much of my knowledge-seeking behavior is Nature and how much is Nurture can be a bit of a messy process. It seems that Nurture has played the dominant role, but it could be that I needed relational contexts as the spark for igniting a biological predisposition. Furthermore, perhaps the Nurture component was only able to be as influential as it was because of the underlying Nature that was there to be acted upon.
It seems that Nature may have provided the necessary seed of a personality predisposed towards learning; however, social-nurturing by means of introjection and impression management along with social conditioning acted as vital soil that gave the required nutrients to help the seed to sprout and grow.
It is also interesting to note how much of my desire for knowledge was really relationship-oriented more than knowledge-oriented. I wanted to have a relationship with friends, a relationship with God, and wanted others to have a relationship with God. Based on my context and social surroundings, pursuing knowledge ended up being the means to those ends.
While much of that relational context for learning is still present, I also now find enjoyment in learning for its own sake and for my own personal edification. That is the primary drive behind this blogging project. I want to have a deeper understanding of myself, the beliefs I hold, and the path I took to get to these beliefs.
