I am who I am because of the environment of my neighborhood. It consists of violence, prostitution, and drug wars. It doesn’t have the best resources, but it does have resources around. When you have been accustomed to a way of life for so long, you adapt to your surroundings and learn to live with it. These obstacles lead to friends, family and neighbors being murdered in your life. I believe that everyone in low-income or challenged neighborhoods has faced hardships and constant problems. It takes a village to raise a child, but it’s harder when the village has been influenced and engulfed in the negativity surrounding it. I am who I am because of the neighborhood I lived in and I feel that it has made me strong as an individual through life lessons and teachings. Life is hard dying is easy and that’s how I feel from the heart due to many situations I have witnessed and personally been through. People have their own views about people coming from a specific neighborhood, but their judgment is irrelevant because situations in life affect everyone differently. Judging an individual from their past or background is easy to do, but it does not justify who you are as a person or your moral values. Everyone makes mistakes in life and it’s up to the individual to grow from it or stay in the constant cycle of previous habits or addictions. Life is precious and it would be a better place if we evolved towards equality and justice for all. I am proud of life experiences because it teaches me to be thankful for everyone around me and appreciate everything that I do have. Life teaches you that no matter what you go through, your situation can always be worst. All in all, my neighborhood has had bad influences that were life changing, but it makes me push that much harder towards positivity.
It is a proven fact in the field of psychology that an individual's environment contributes to their behavior. It is also proven that certain genetic/biological factor contribute to an individual's behavior. So each person's behavior and personality is a mixture of "nature" (biological factors)and "nurture" (environment). This suggests that while a person cannot help but be a product of their environment, everyone still has the capacity to transcend or fall short of the expectations of their environment. This blog post suggests that the environment has shaped the poster and made him what he is. This post also reveals the environment that the poster has psychologically internalized as his own. I think that most people do this. Yet,Philosophy and psychology suggest that one's environment is actually an illusion, a construct of the mind to make sense of what it is experiencing. Two people can be from the same environment and have separate impressions and/or experiences that they find influential based on how their mind (i.e "nature")finds meaning in what it is observing. The philosopher Plato discusses the illusion of one's environment in "the allegory of the Cave."
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
The dedicated philosopher must reject the outward/societal "environment" for the inner/psychological "environment" as the ultimate truth. This is a very difficult step for people to take as it challenges their core perceptions of who they are(the sense of themselves ascribed to "environment" and "nurture"). Plato suggests that, given the opportunity, most will "return to the cave" when they find themselves outside of this environment that they have become so accustomed to. But this is not an option for someone wishing to transcend themselves. They must transcend their environment first.
-Chris Carmichael