Nature vs. Nurture, not.
“You are who you chose to be.” A wisdom-heavy statement uttered by a small boy reasoning with a robot built for destruction but fighting those urges, who then ends up saving town and the boy he loves with the sacrifice of his own life, from the move The Iron Giant. This theme is extremely common but I don’t know if people ever really stop and think about what it means. Battlestar Galactica, the Terminator franchise, The Invisible (another movie I love) and most recently, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo all feed into the ever growing dialogue of Nature vs. Nurture.
But I’m beginning to question what that statement means in regards to the ‘versus’. You would think a person like myself, who heavily deals in black and white wouldn’t muddy the waters with grey but I have to wonder is it really a matter of versus? Each of the films I list above take into consideration that idea. The first three movies/films center around robots built to mimic humans, and their interactions with humans, and them learning the idea of what it means to be human and choosing their fate instead of leaving it to their programming. The latter two (both being films base on Swedish books) show us some of the most horrid environments, both emotional and physical, that humans are raised in. Each of these films clearly describes two types of humans that are byproducts of these environments. Those that chose to be weak by succumbing to the brutality of their environments to only then exact this on the innocent and unwilling and those that while they fight brutally (because that’s what they’ve learned) for their lives, also fight for the lives of those that care for them and for the basic idea that there is still something good, whether it be small, in being human despite everything they’ve been shown.
What if it isn’t about Nature vs. Nurture, or a combination of both (which is the other commonly held thought). What if it is about finding the strength in ourselves to nurture the best of our natures? Yes, my environment or Nature as I know it has shaped me but I have a choice, and have had one all along, and I choose to Nurture the idea that we are truly only limited by ourselves. That at the end of the day, we are who we choose to be.