Sometimes A Comment Becomes A Post
Posted on January 4th, 2009 in General by kende ||
And sometimes this little string in my back gets tugged on and I go on… as I tend to go on:
What we know about choice and determinism in human development is very hard to differentiate from what we only think we know. The players are pretty clear: Genetic inheritance, response to environmental factors, group trends in response to sexual selection pressures, and individual choice all compete within us and around us to shape who we are and our small portion of the world. To say those among us that identify as gay are “born that way” or “it’s all a choice” is an oversimplification to the point of being totally uninformative and essentially useless.
Human beings are neuro-plastic — neither fluid or rigid in brain function and repair. We are incredibly adaptive to our environments biologically and cognitively. We are subject to a compounding effect on our choices, the choices of those around us, our genetic pre-dispositions, and every other agent within the markets that make us. We are each an economy unto ourselves, with more than one single driving force dominant, and a multitude recessive factors to go with them. What’s most interesting is that while we are very much the sum of what has come before us there is forever something new that enters into our incomplete systems. No matter how much we think we perfect ourselves, the process is never over, the players are never settled, and the deck reshuffles both in seeming order and at random.
I think the only good answer to what makes a person gay is “What does it matter?”. Even if there were a much simpler answer than our experiences and our science hint at, why would we decide how to treat each other based on whether one was born gay or chooses to be? I’d much rather ask if someone is a good person, and why they are so. Are they a good parent, a good teacher, a good business person, or politician (ok that one is a stretch)… and what is it about what they do and who they are that inspires respect or appreciation for their values in the rest of us.
Just one of my pet issues….