What makes us, us.

"He, too, when a child,and even later, had been superstitious, filled with an arsenal of beliefs which his mother had instilled."  

                   -Machado de Assis, The Fortune Teller

 What role do our parents have in making our personalities? 

                       Camillo was extremely superstitious because of the way his mother had taught him. As I read about this, I thought back to one of the basic debates in my human development class. Are people the way they are because of nature or nurture? If Camillo's mother had raised him not to believe in ghosts would he still have had the basic disposition to believe this?  This age old debate is called nature versus nature. Hundreds of psychologists have hundreds of different ideas about which one is correct.

 This debate can spread through various fields. I can especially apply this into my major, political science. In my major, we often examine what gives each person their political ideology.. is it the state they were born in? The type of schools they go to? The way their parents taught them? How their parents taught them? (All elements of nurture) Or is it their basic personality trends they were driven to? (nature) 

 The nature vs. nurture debate can be taken to levels as basic as food preferences. Do we like food because we were raised being given that food or do our taste buds have preference to that?

As I read through various material on this subject, I began to think of a broader context for this. Can we blame our bad choices on our nurture? I thought of people like Stalin and Hitler. As I thought of this, I formed an opinion leaning towards our nature forming who we truly are. As members of the LDS church, this is even more applicable with how we believe agency is what guides who we turn out to be.