The following is another interesting article by Tom Fiske:
Not always do I practice genealogy. Sometimes I read about it. Right now I am reading a fun mystery by Fiona Mountain called Bloodline. It is a mystery involving a genealogical search in the Cotswolds in England. I have been there, and it looks like a genealogy unfolding. It’s a great place to lay your eyes on.
In her book, Ms Mountain wonders whether we are products of our genes or of our environment, or our own free will. “Sometimes I see my ancestors as puppet masters… It’s as if they’re there behind the scenes, controlling me, pulling strings I can’t see. I’m dancing to their tune…” a character in the book said. But in the final analysis, that character found herself in the middle between the pulls of Nature and Environment. I don’t know what happened to free will.
Everybody knows or at least suspects that the real determinant of personality (whether the forces of nature or environment take control) is nature, nurture, free will and sometimes all three. There is an entire political movement that asserts that our genes control us and we are not responsible for what we do. An opposite view is that we must take responsibility for what we do, for we alone are responsible.
Some people may really be driven more by genes than anything else. Who really knows whether there is an unseen hand that guides out lives? Well, genealogists have a closer look than many people. That is because we know how our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents lived. We can infer certain things by looking at their lives.
We know whether we are repeating their lives or not. I know that part of my life is very much like my father’s side of the family: mechanics and engineers and electrical designers and tinkerers, somewhat religious and very patriotic. Nearly all were entrepreneurs. I am the only economist, professional manager and teacher in the group, but I am not the only one to have run factories.
On the other hand I am only a little bit like my mother’s folks: farmers, lawyers, judges and politicians, with very little religion and patriotism thrown in. Innately, I do not trust lawyers and politicians. I heard enough “inside” stories to make an intelligent decision about which path to take. But my brother was like those folks and even looked like our grandfather on that side of the family.
You know about your own ancestors—how they ran their lives and what their abilities and expectations were. Perhaps in your family the genetic “pull” is strong. You also know much about your own talents and how you respond to the framework of the society in which you live. For instance, I am a Southerner who admired other Southerners.
I never will forget Carlisle Jefferson of Virginia. Yep, he was a white Jefferson descendant (maybe of Randolph). Carlisle lost his arm in WWI, when he has a dashing young pilot in France. He could deal a deck of cards with one hand faster than I could deal with two hands. He and his wife were friends of my parents. I wanted to be like him when I was a boy (but with two arms). He had great Southern manners and mannerisms that I still utilize in one form or another. Hunter S. Thompson, the author, lived across the street from us. He wrote about being a “Southern Gentleman,” so I was not the only one to be under the influence of that same environment.
I suppose everyone is influenced to some degree by his environment. But how much and in what ways do genetics, environment and other factors intermix to produce the person known as you?
Edward O. Wilson has supposed in one of his books, Consilience, that environment acts on genetics and that is why identical twins raised in different places, seem to grow up in different ways. My wife is one of those identical twins that has grown up somewhat differently from her sister. I think they are unalike but when my sister-in-law comes to visit, people mistake them for each other (I know one of the twins is heavier than the other, so if in doubt, I just pick one of them up).
It is not a problem of determining the “real” force that forms a personality, but of determining the mix or degree of forces. In spite of these problems we genealogists are in a position to observe patterns of behavior across the generations that can lead us to make useful observations about strong influences in a family. Sometimes there are those genetic influences that show up in trades such as medicine or scholarship or mechanics, and sometimes there are social problems such a tendency towards imprisonment. Some of us are wanderers. A cousin was on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. His father was a Virginia settler, while his son went off to California where he helped the U.S. take the territory from Mexico. They never saw each other after a brief period of childhood.
And all these factors are American. I have no idea what it was like in Europe or Asia or Africa. I have examined only those generations on U.S. shores. Some “forces” seemed to be genetic, some seemed to be born of free-will, some were social, and some were just nutty. No doubt there were other roots. All I can guess at with any accuracy is that something influenced certain families over several generations. I will probably never know what caused the something, just that it could have been present in the family’s genes or environment or possibly food supply.
Who knows? We all ate grits and loved ‘em.