Sociopath Community

I don't know if I was born or made.

Even though I was raised in an abusive home environment, I was never an emotional child. I never felt a desire to bond with my own parents, let alone anyone else. My mother described me as a cold and distant child. In fact, she still describes me as that, minus the child part. Though, she still thinks I'm fairly young in the mind too, apparently.

I've always been the way I am, so I do believe it's quite likely both nature and nurture made me the way I am.

There's a saying that I think is very relevant in my case... Nature loaded the gun. Nurture pulled the trigger.

As a being created through hundred and hundreds of years of evolution. We are both a product of our genetic inheritance and our environmental presence. The very fact that we are malleable and influenced by our environment is what allows us to evolve in the first place. If our environment didn't affect us, we would be incapable of learning and instead would be static since birth.

So to ask if we are born or made is ill conceived. We are both born and then made into who we are at any given moment by the things we experience and how we choose to react to them.

As to which is stronger. Well I think the concept of evolution has shown us that we are made to evolve and change. Therefore change and adaptation to our environment is the more powerful and beneficial of the two concepts.

We can't change what we came from, but we can change where we're going.

Born.

by Daddy

As a being created through hundred and hundreds of years of evolution. We are both a product of our genetic inheritance and our environmental presence. The very fact that we are malleable and influenced by our environment is what allows us to evolve in the first place. If our environment didn't affect us, we would be incapable of learning and instead would be static since birth.

So to ask if we are born or made is ill conceived. We are both born and then made into who we are at any given moment by the things we experience and how we choose to react to them.

As to which is stronger. Well I think the concept of evolution has shown us that we are made to evolve and change. Therefore change and adaptation to our environment is the more powerful and beneficial of the two concepts.

We can't change what we came from, but we can change where we're going.

 Good point.  But we can never change what we do or what we want to do at a bare minimum: lie, cheat, steal, kill, etc...

We are always tucking that instinct just below the surface are we not?

...Those are choices you make, so yes... you can change them... If you want.

by Daddy

...Those are choices you make, so yes... you can change them... If you want.

 I made a mistake: emphasis on what we want to do versus involving what we do

by Pink01

Both. I was like a loaf of bread. Mixed ingredients in a bowl, bake at 360 except someone forgot about the timer and burnt me a little. And they used powdered sugar instead of flour. I'm all messed up!

 ^^  Pretty good description of me, too.   I consider myself to be both, born into a nightmare yet predisposed genetically. I often wondered if I had grown up in another family environment and did not go through the shit I did, would the disorders and issues I deal with manifest themselves differently or even be what they are? IMO there really is no answer to this. Of course things would have been different, how different, nobody knows. 

I blame the Black Lagoon.....

Both. But mother did her best.

I think I would say both and neither. 

To me there's no proof so far that it was in my genetics, but I know that 90% of our thinking and development is controlled by genetics. 9% by socialization stages, therefor I have to say, it could hardly be my 1% of 'free will' that made me who I am. 

There has never been one major trauma, that would have let me develop the way I am. And even though my parents probably weren't 100% into the whole raising thing, I don't see them failing in my primary socialization.