/lit/ - Literature

Why do people get anxious when you suggest that personality is genetic? Obviously patterns of behavior can be understood as functions of your body. People seem to believe that the personality is the same thing as the soul (perhaps they are better differentiated for religious people and not secular people), and they hold it as sacred. I think it's necessary in some sense to believe your personality is some infinitely malleable spirit -- so that it gives us hope that we can become great people. I also think it's just naivete that causes young people in particular to have fantasies that "motivation" can actually change them into a different person. It's likely that when people mature, say around age forty, that they come to accept that they have the same basic motivations, patterns, and quirks as their parents, despite in some cases having totally different external lives. I mean just look at how sons look just like their fathers and tell me they're really different people. I don't think so.