There are those who claim that it is only our environment that dictates who we become and how we handle life's ups and downs associated with our everyday encounters. There are others who believe that it is solely our genetic coding that sets the stage for our individual characteristics and traits. And then there are those who insist that we are who we are because of both of these factors.
I have always believed that this third explanation was the most reasonable and plausible to accept. Now there appears to be evidence to back-up this third theory.
However, while environment most certainly plays a role in affecting and directing our personalized traits, it is our genetic makeup that dominates who we are, how we act, what we feel and how we live our lives.
Using similar genetic testing principles and techniques as those used to isolate the genes responsible for a variety of illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis and breast cancer, geneticists have now isolated a gene for anxiety, as well as one that is associated with the desire for excitement (the so- called bungee-jumping gene). These discoveries, I believe, are only the tip of an enormously large iceberg.
Soon genetic scientists will be announcing the discovery of a gene or series of genes for temperament, courage, anger, desires, loquaciousness, passion, moodiness, happiness, and perhaps even sexual orientation, to name just a few.
A gene-based explanation for someone's personality is not too far off in the future. Each cell in the human body contains approximately 100,000 genes spaced along the 46 chromosomes which have already been isolated and identified. Only a fraction of these genes have so far been identified, but in the next several decades most will be discovered.
These genes, working in billions of combinations, are responsible for who we are to a larger degree than we had previously thought.
While it may take a few genes to stimulate an angry response in someone who has just been cut off in traffic, there are in those individuals with a slow or blunted response to anger a set of more powerful and influential genes that overrides this impulse. The absence of such calming genes in some may help explain those whose fuse is quite short.
Personally, I am comforted by this evolving theory of a gene-based personality. It means we obtain our personality characteristics honestly. And although it by no means takes away responsiblity for our actions, it does explain much of what and why we do specific things.
Although we develop from our genetic pool, fortunately the environmental factors also contribute to who we are and influences our behavior by stimulating or suppressing the genetic composition episodically. This would help explain why some children raised in a very negative environment turn out to be very special successful human beings while even though raised in an extremely positive one, others turn out to be total failures.
Environment, however, does not seem to have any significant dominant or long-lasting effect on our personality. Who we are and who we become is to a very large degree dependent on the genes we possess or lack.
I probably lack the anxiety gene, which would explain why I am basically a non-worrier and an even-temperamental kind of guy. I certainly lack the bungee-jumping gene, for there is no way I would ever do such a thing, much less parachute from a plane, climb a mountain, or drive a racing car.
I had always thought I was just a chicken. Now I know it really is not that at all. It is my genes which say "no way". That certainly sounds like a better explanation to me.