Adonis Diaries

What comes first…?  Totally irrelevant question in most cases?

What comes first, egg or chicken, nurture or nature, focusing on personal improvement or taking care of external influences, innate talents or acquired skills…?

Do you think that these priority questions are totally irrelevant?

I received a comment to my post https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/be-happy-smash-superstitions-spinoza-1632-77-part-3/ that says:

“Nice to read something from the classical philosophers. The factors that subjugate our spirit and body have to be found and eliminated. However, this is in my view only the second stage.

First your happiness and enjoyment in life has to come from inside yourself to be able to creating and seeking the environment and company that suits and inspires you.

After a while, you will find that nearly anything can be around you and it will inspire you and lift you up, because this is how you frame it, how you interpret it and set the context.  The beginning of happiness will always be inside oneself.”

I replied:

“Most knowledge follow the thinking process of “what comes first, egg or chicken?”; a process that is irrelevant since they both have to co-exist and interact continuously for life to resume.  Self knowledge and comprehending the external barriers to happiness interact constantly: There is no first or second in importance.  There is focused priority in divided attention for a duration.”

What you think?  Should we be concerned of what comes first and who comes first if the subject matter is not affected by rank and order?

Life and universe are affected by countless factors and external forces that mankind has no leverage to change and influence.  In such a frame of mind, isn’t it more effective and sane to study the factors that have an effect, even factors judged to be secondary, analyze their interactions in order to be able to forecast and prevent coming calamities?

We are no different from the other mammalian kinds.

Maybe we started with a couple of DNA genomes that differed from most of the other mammals.

Most probably, we nurtured these discriminating genomes to warp other genomes into a qualitative difference. It is not our mental agility that sets us apart from other mammals (that would be the external realities), but it is mainly our ability to wear masks and believing that the mask is our identity.

For example, we can observe that many animals have more developed social intelligence than mankind:  They admit that mankind is a thinking specie; the reverse is not admitted.

Many animals possess better communication skills than mankind:  They don’t need formal schooling to transmit acquired “proto-culture” in the manner of consuming appropriate food, producing adequate tools…

They know how to use their senses more effectively to listen, observe, sense, decide, and act.

They use more frequently their mirror neurons to observe our gestures and acts in order to predict our intention and what are our purposes.

Human sciences, especially neuroscience, have demonstrated the epigenesis of our brain: Meaning that the supposed pre-programmed genetic constitution of our brain and body is constantly being altered by external excitation or external factors of incitations related to environment and society.

It is the complex dynamics among morphogenesis elements (such as the form constraints of genes, proteins, cells, organisms…) that develop a person characteristics.

Our neurons rejuvenate during our life by 2% every year, especially the hypocamp or memory part of our brain. When a member is lost, for example, a leg, an arm, or a finger, the corresponding neurons transfer to other part of the body until a prothesis is replaced…

That everyone has a set of genetic predispositions cannot be neglected, that we have specific “instincts” and emotions different in strength do not eliminate that nurture played the better part in mankind evolution.

I lately read that chicken was proven to come first “scientifically” for reasons that I forgot.  Something having to do with egg lacking particular elements that only chicken provide.  A good piece of information?

Would that change anything that both egg and chicken are needed for the fowl specie to survive and us with it?

Maybe not, except for one major mistake:  Suppose, in order to keep samples of biodiversity in the future, scientists save only specimen and eradicate the surviving species?

Wouldn’t the reborn species be lacking something essential to the original?  I bet they would.

Nurturing is our identity, our individual identity that distinguish us from our neighbor.

Nurturing is the quality that characterize species.

It is time to start investing more on the nurturing aspects of our development and survival instead of medical technologies (eugenics purposes) intended to be reserved for the elite classes.