Nature versus Nurture: it’s not so much a debate as a battlefield.
Some share Philip Larkin’s sentiments about ‘Nurture’ from his poem “This be Verse” (I can’t directly quote the opening lines, there would be complaints, but it’s your parents fault essentially).
Others stand resolute on the ‘Nature’ side of the argument believing that our flaws, vices and graces were locked into our DNA from the moment of conception.
And, of course, for other the answer lies somewhere in-between.
Oliver James, psychologist, broadcaster and author, said at the start of his talk that nothing he was about to say would likely sway anyone who had an established opinion on the matter.
James falls very firmly on the ‘Nurture’ side of things, but was at pains to emphasise that he’s not a “Nurture Flat-Earther’. He accepts, for example, that Maternal Stress and premature birth increase the risk of conditions such as ADHD or autism in the unborn baby. Biology does matter.
What James argues is that no genes have been found that significantly explain our psychology, such as mental wellbeing or intelligence. He believes that our upbringing, not our genes, play our far more important role in our fate and he quotes geneticist Professor Robert Plomin as saying:
“I have been looking for these genes for fifteen years. I don’t have any”.
This is the substance of his most recent book: “Not in Your Genes.”
But while he covered that topic in passing at the start of his lecture he wasn’t on stage to talk about that.
He wanted to talk to us about David Bowie.
In his other recent book, “Upping Your Ziggy” Oliver James considered Bowie’s family life and upbringing. Bowie’s half-brother and three of his aunts suffered from psychosis. This left Bowie with a terror of losing his mind. James proposes that in later life Bowie unwittingly used his stage personae, such as Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke to play out his internal dialogue on an international stage and eventually emerge as an emotionally healthy man as a result.
Further to this James posits that we all hold a wealth of our own personae who we use in our everyday life and that there is a therapeutic use to examining these sides to ourselves to identify our roots and choose who we become.
James expounded this notion on stage in a coherent and sometimes mischievous manner with the occasional waspish aside aimed at his detractors. And he played some Bowie – “Rock and Roll Suicide” – so he could highlight the blurring of personae in the lyrics. Which was nice, because you can’t beat a bit of Bowie.
I can’t claim to have absorbed all of the subtleties of his argument, but then he wasn’t trying to lay it out in full detail. That’s what the books for. And selling the book, in the most pleasing and enthralling way possible, was what this talk was for. And I’ve bought the book, signed by the man himself, so: job done, really.
As far as Nature versus Nurture is concerned he was right. I haven’t really changed my views. I’m still pretty much “Mainly-Nurture-But-Probably-A-Bit-Of-Nature camp. But I do find it comforting to think that we’re not chained by our genes from birth.
Oliver James’ books – including Upping Your Ziggy, Not in Your Genes, Affluenza and Contented Dementia – are available from all good book retailers and quite a few of the allegedly tax-dodging online ones as well.
