This article covers the effects of heredity and environment on human traits, explaining how this argument has been used historically and why it’s tired. It also suggests how to approach the debate to make it more productive.

Introduction

A, who has always been a poor math student, has been studying for the SATs and has been sitting in the classroom for a long time, even during breaks. Suddenly, his friend B comes over and says “Hey, I saw on the news yesterday that math skills are limited by innate ability, so there’s no point in trying,” said A’s best friend C. “What are you talking about? “Don’t be ridiculous, I have an older brother who scored a 30 in math, but he studied hard for a year and got a first in the SAT, so I’m sure he can do it.” A couldn’t concentrate on the math problem because B and C were arguing in front of him. “They’re talking. It’s annoying. They’re making me tired,’ A thought to himself.
We often find ourselves in situations like Student A’s, where people around us argue about heredity versus environment. What have we realized after such debates? That they don’t lead to anything. It’s a debate that has already been answered experimentally to some extent, and it’s obvious that people will cherry-pick the important factors and use them to their advantage. So there’s a certain tiredness to this debate. Let’s take a look at some examples of how the genetics vs. environment debate has been tired, and then break down why it’s tired.

The tired genetics vs. environment debate

“The best men should, as far as they can, be joined to the best women; the children thus born should be nurtured, but those who are not should be thrown away; and the incurably mentally ill and the naturally corrupt should be put to death.” – Plato, during ‘ The Republic

“Successful people are those who find the circumstances they desire. If they don’t find it, they create it.” – Eric Sinai, from Howard’s Gift

These two quotes may seem unrelated, but they’re both premised on the idea of genetics versus environment. The first quote assumes that good human traits are inherited, and denies that they can be changed by the environment. The second quote assumes that success depends on environment and personal determination rather than genetics. As you can see from these two examples, the tedious battle of heredity versus environment when it comes to factors that influence human traits like personality and intelligence has been going on for as long as humans have been around.
The heredity vs. environment debate began in earnest when Darwin’s theory of evolution and Mendel’s laws of inheritance established the concept of genes. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, individuals born with traits that happen to excel at survival are able to pass those traits on to the next generation through natural selection, while individuals born with traits that don’t excel at survival are not. Darwin’s abstract idea of something being passed down between generations became a concrete gene that could be mathematically calculated by Mendel’s 29,000 peas. While it was clear from the peas that genes play a large role in our physical appearance – our height, eye color, hair, and so on – the debate was over which played a more important role in traits like personality and intelligence. This genetics vs. environment debate was aimed at better understanding human beings and increasing our knowledge base.
However, as the two quotes above show, the nature vs. nurture debate has also been used for other purposes. One of them is to justify eugenics in the past. The first quote relates to this eugenics. The first quote states that only people with good genes should live, because goodness is inherited, and inferiority cannot be corrected by nurture. Expanding on this thesis, eugenics, founded by Francis Golton, aims to increase the population with superior genes and prevent the population with inferior genes from growing. Eugenics is justified by research that shows that human traits are largely determined by genes. This bizarre theory was the basis for the Nazis in Germany to exterminate Jews in the name of racial hygiene. But if the claim that the environment alters human traits and is more deterministic than genetics is proven, the case for eugenics would be weakened.
Another example is self-help books that claim that human limitations can be overcome through hard work, as seen in the second quote. If human traits are determined more by the environment than by genes, the logic of self-help books becomes more robust. If humans can change their environment through their own will, they can acquire the traits they need to succeed and eventually get where they want to be. But just as the arguments of eugenics have been discredited, if the influence of genetics on an individual’s life is proven to be unequivocal, the glossy messages of self-help books may become hollow rhetoric.
The conclusion of this long and tiring battle is currently in the balance. When it comes to human intelligence, twin experiments have shown that genetics plays a big role. In fact, studies from different countries around the world have shown that intelligence is 50% genetic, 30% family environment, and 20% personal environment. And when it comes to criminality, genes and the brain have a strong influence, according to the work of Airdrian Lane, a world-renowned authority on neurocriminology. Both studies show that human traits are heavily influenced by genetics, but that doesn’t mean that there is no influence from the environment: you can excel if you have good genes, but there’s still room for this to be altered by the environment.

Why the genes vs. environment debate is tired and how to dispel it

The reason the genetics vs. environment debate is tired is that it’s not productive because it serves a different purpose, as we’ve seen in the two examples above. While heredity has a strong influence, there is also room for environment to play a role. Which factor is more important in interpreting this depends on the mind of the person making the argument. In eugenics, it can be argued that genes determine 50% of intelligence, so there should be more people in a race with better and better genes. On the other hand, self-help books may focus on the 20% effect and argue that we can be good and great if we put in the effort. Does this debate make sense? If we use this debate as the basis for the two examples above, it doesn’t make any sense.
What made us tired was that the argument was used to frame human excellence and excellence as more important than productivity, and that we should always be improving. Let’s go back to the two quotes above. The first quote says that only good humans should survive, so we have to be good in order to survive. The second quote conveys a strong sense of determination, but again, we must succeed. Eugenics and self-help books that frame human beings as superior have tired us by using the heredity versus environment argument to bolster their position. In the frame that we must be good and successful, we feel compelled to either have good genes or change our environment through hard work to find a way to do so. In other words, the gene vs. environment debate has become a way of encouraging us to continue to be good.
So what can we do to break free from this fatigue? The answer is to unlearn the tiredness of the debate. We need to strip the debate of the implications that drive us and make it work for us. We need to use the genetics vs. environment debate to learn more about us and use it to our advantage. We need to investigate how our environment and genetics affect our health, confidence, happiness, and more, so that the genetics vs. environment debate can be used to give us happy, healthy lives instead of being used to tell us to be great. Only then will we be able to shed the tiredness of the genetics vs. environment debate.
An example is current eugenics. The eugenics in the example above is a very long time ago, and today’s eugenics has been renamed and rebranded as genetic counseling. Genetic counseling is based on the premise that human characteristics are determined by genes, with the goal of combating genetic diseases that have been difficult to treat. Genetic counseling is one example of how the heredity-versus-environment debate can inform our health. Another example is child developmental psychology. Child developmental psychology is based on the premise that childhood experiences have a profound impact on a person’s life and development. Furnham’s research shows that the way parents discipline their children as children has a huge impact on their personality and self-esteem, which is related to their happiness. Here, the nature vs. nurture debate can give us happiness. In this way, if we strip the genetics vs. environment debate of the message that we have to be good, and only use it to our advantage, we won’t feel so tired anymore.

Conclusion

“Hey, genetics and environment both play a role, so what’s the point in fighting over it? You guys are really screwing up my math, I don’t know! Let’s go to the canteen and buy some bread together,” said A, who had reached the limit of his concentration. B and C nodded their heads in agreement. What we need to realize is that the heredity versus environment debate has been used to bolster arguments from eugenics in the past to self-help books in the present, all of which have the same frame of mind that humans should be good. When used in this way, we are bound to get tired of it. We can only find meaning in the debate if we take the fatigue out of it and use it to our benefit. Now the meaningless debate is over, and only the meaningful debate remains. The three students’ giggles echoed down the hall.