Genes, Greens, Grit and Gummy Bears

If you’ve made it past birth, early development, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school and high school with no major glitches and relatively unscathed by major medical maladies, you’re probably endowed with a fairly decent set of genes. 

The real question is:

What have you DONE with what you’ve got? 

Behavioral scientists have long debated whether one’s genes or the “environment” have the greater influence on behavior-indexed human development outcomes.  Here’s one summation:   

“Complex mixes of genetic and environmental factors influence all behavior, without exception. The environment also influences genetic expression, without altering the DNA itself, in the process called epigenesis. So the two are thoroughly intertwined, and it makes little sense to ask whether a personality trait or behavior pattern is ‘nature or nurture.’ It is almost always both.”  http://www.intropsych.com/ch10_development/there_is_no_versus.html  

The key lesson here is that, whatever blueprint you’ve been given, it’s only a nuts and bolts underlayment for whatever you can build on top of it.   

If you have the blueprint of a chicken without wings,

you still may be able to develop legs [eat your “greens” and get with the “grit”]

that will let you run like the wind! 

However, the underside of the story is that we can do a great deal of damage to both the blueprint and overall outcomes either by dereliction of duty [“gummy bears”] in cultivating the possibilities our DNA provides, or by exposing it to a hostile/corrosive/detrimental environment.   

One learns a lot about life from a look at extreme circumstances.  Cancer is a disease that has taught us a lot about early development and aging as well as about the fundamental genetic blueprint and the dreaded disease, itself. 

“Approximately 40.4 percent of men and women will be diagnosed with [at least one of] all cancer sites at some point during their lifetime.”  [http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html] 

And it doesn’t all come from a “faulty” blueprint:

• Smoking causes about 30 percent of all U.S. deaths from cancer.
• Poor diet, physical inactivity, and overweight/obesity may account for about 25–30 percent … of the major cancers in the United States.
• 40 to 50 percent of Americans who live to age 65 will have non-melanoma [cancers] at least once [related to sun exposure] …
  http://progressreport.cancer.gov/doc_detail.asp?pid=1&did=2011&chid=101&coid=1011&mid=

 But cancer isn’t the only malady promoted by the superimposition of an unfavorable environment:   

“According to the World Health Organization, 13 million deaths annually and nearly a quarter of all disease worldwide - including 33 percent of illnesses in children under age five - are due to environmental causes that could be avoided or prevented.”  http://www.cdc.gov/sustainability/lifestyle/index.htm  

So the issue here is how many different ways we can personally sabotage our innate gift of possibilities – compromised as that gift may be – to even further short-change our truest Destiny.   

Now on to equally unnerving matters ...  

Precisely how much damage we inflict on the brain by negligence or corrosive engagement is anybody’s conjecture.  But it’s pretty certain that the brain functions poorly if not deftly and deliberately “primed” and “conditioned” for advanced processing.  It wasn’t long after computers first appeared before the observation “Garbage in, garbage out” became overwhelmingly evident.  

Actually it was evident centuries ago in the Roman Empire, as the Latin phrase suggests: 

“mali principia malus finis”

[“from a bad beginning, a bad ending”] 

However, it’s not just what data is embedded in the old squash that matters.  Perhaps even more important is our overall “inclination” ... what are we most likely to DO with what we’ve got, and what are we most likely to do first next?  What underlying assumptions, expectations and driving forces govern our thinking and doing? 

“The most important thing is not so much where we are

but in which direction we are heading.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

With time, the outcomes become less directly associated with our imprinted DNA than with our acquired RNA – “Rational Neural Activity”.  Our ability to develop, evaluate, rigorously challenge and creatively expand neural inputs, prevent/avoid or eliminate those that could prove detrimental, and discard unproductive, false or degenerative holdings is our main armament against meltdown and mediocrity.  

Respect your GENES, expose yourself to as many GREENS as possible, exhibit some GRIT in choosing the best inputs and pursuing them with all due intentionality, and avoid the GUMMY BEARS that offer no redeeming virtues.  Quartermaster