Nature v/s Nurture : The age old debate
The crime - thriller movies had greater appreciation among the Indian movie fanatics over the past few years. The nail-biting plot twists combined with the fear factor combinations often provide a spine chilling experience for the viewers. The acceptance of this genre among the Indian viewers was kind of fueled by the introduction of so called psycho /serial killer roles into the equation of contemporary villainism. Hollywood has been feeding of this criminal mastermind narratives since the days of Alfred Hitchcock.
The art of film making relies on exaggeration of events to some extend.However once we are done watching a movie involving such intense crimes, the thoughts about existence of such weirdos around us begins to ponder our minds at least in the midnights of solitude right after the movie. The movie usually has some fitting reasons for the birth of its supervillian .But outside the scope of the movie : What might be the rational for such psychopaths to emerge in the first place ??
All the answers ultimately leads to the to the age old debate on Nature and Nurture.So what essentially is the debate here ? Lets examine these couple of terms from a psychology point of view.
Nature is simply the biological framework comprising the genetic traits we inherited from birth. Nurture is the impacts that we have on our nature from the influence of the exposed environment . Some of you might have made up your mind, " Well its mostly nurture that plays a factor for all we know for sure is that no child is born a criminal ".
Although we cannot rationalize many of the motives behind a crime, still from a quick analysis of the stats its evident that most of it are based on some reasons at all. But are all the crimes really driven by motives alone or is there someone out there like a 'born criminal'. Whatever be the confessions of an offender, In most cases it would be the nurturing that went wrong or is it though ?
When H.H Homes in late 19th century was convicted of 27 brutal killings, these were the exact words from his final confession :
"I was born with a devil in me. I could not help that fact that I am a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing "
There might be some questions hovering around now, Is it one of those questions with no one correct answer.... !
/...To be continued
Nice write up. Applause for this blog.
ReplyDeleteThank you :)
DeleteYou have an interesting take on this topic.
ReplyDeleteIn an evolutionary point of view, our ancestors have always been violent and territorial. They were born killers. They killed their rivals, may have put an end to the neanderthals and the Denisovans. So, we have the genetics in us that's capable of doing such atrocities but our developed rational thinking made us humans and once in a while some of us may go back to square one driven by their surroundings. As E Guevara said we all are children of our environment. Most of us monsters by birth and humans by karma.
I enjoyed reading this very much. Keep writing, good luck.
Thank you for the insight of bringing evolution into consideration
Delete