Essential Questions #1 #2 and #3

[evanrichardson]

'#1 There are times when we are not responsible for our beliefs or behaviors. The first example is if someone has a mental disorder of a psychotic nature. In this case the person is unable to determine reality due to delusional thinking patterns. Someone who is delusional due to a mental disorder who believes they are Christ or believes others are trying to harm them cannot be held responsible for their incorrect beliefs or possible behaviors that may stem from these beliefs. 

Another example of when people are not responsible for their beliefs or behaviors is when they have significant cognitive deficits. If a person's cognitive abilities are severely below the average person, they do not have the cognitive ability to understand right from wrong and should not be held accountable for their beliefs and the resulting actions. These two examples seem exhaustive to me.  Therefore, in my opinion, the group of people that are exempt from responsibility is relatively small. As a result, I feel that even though the author attempts to make it seem like Perry is a victim of circumstance or that he is not completely responsible for his actions, he still is.

#2 If I had to chose, I would pick nature as being more important than nurture.  Our DNA shapes our temperament which determines the types of activities that we gravitate toward. Nurture, our experiences, simply further concretize nature because we tend to engage in activities that we were born to do. For example, from birth I was a child that liked rough play. This was part of my DNA. Throughout my life I sought out activities to support this interest. If my parents had forced me to take dance lessons, it is unlikely that I would have stayed with it because it did not fit my nature of engaging in rough sports and activities. I believe nurture supports nature but cannot overcome nature.

#3  Environment has a huge impact upon people.  Nature can only get me so far.  My environment or experiences determine the range of ability that I can achieve. For example, nature determined roughly how well I would be able to write a paragraph within a range.  My writing experiences and education determine how high or low I will achieve within that range.  If I have rich experiences I will be at the higher end of the limit of my ability. If I have poor educational opportunities I will achieve toward the low end of that range.  But regardless of my experiences, I will not fall outside the range.

 

[oliviawhite]

I agree with your points on how the nature has helped to develop a person, but I do not believe that nature is more influential than nurture. Our parents taught us to work hard, try our best, and excel. We learned that we are expected to get good grades and excel at everything we do. If our parents had not cared about our education and grades, then HHS would not be the excellent school it is today. In "In Cold Blood", the Clutter children were expected to get good grades and excel in their lives because their father taught them the values they should believe in. If their parents did not care for them and nurture them, then they might have turned out like Perry or Dick who did not have parents that cared.

[carson]

I agree with your thoughts regarding the effects of nature on our development. However, I disagree with your opinion that nature is the more important of the two. While nature does greatly effect us, nurture influences our behavioral patterns. While it is nature that provides our foundation, nurture has the ability to expand upon and completely change the behavioral patterns of a human regardless of nature. Within the text, it was through hard work and a relentless attitude that allowed Herbert to be so successful. He received these qualities from his father, through behavioral learning as a child, not through DNA.

[oscarheithaus]

Your assessment of the effects of nature upon human development and the instances of allowable irresponsibility for people and their behaviors is something that i believe to be correct, however, your insights about the influences of nature on development versus that of nurture are opposite to mine. Nature in humans can be as basic as the laying down of Dna sequences to decide simple characteristics such as eye color, or other physical factors that are so easily determined that we have created squares to figure out the probability of different genes. You talk about rough play, but it is highly unlikely that, as an infant, you were participating in very much of it. These passions of yours were much more likely developed through an external source, such as a family who also appreciated participating in it. Just as the children of the Clutter family were very religion conscience people, and their murderers were not quite so god fearing. Nurture is everything from how much you were held as a baby, to how much you liked teachers for a certain subject in school, and although a direct correlation between all of these seemingly meaningless activities and impressions in your life cannot be seen by yourself very clearly, it exists in extremely complex ways, influencing everyone to make them he person they are and continuing to do so into their future. Identical twins share every sing part of their genetic makeup, as they are from the same egg, but even though they have the exact same nature, they are completely different people, because nurture is what shapes people to who they are, not nature.