Nature Versus Nurture in Brave New World

1. Some people have argued that the Johns Hopkins psychologist used this opportunity as an experiment to test his nurture theory of gender identity. What are the expected results of this experiment, assuming that the nurture theory is valid?

Furthermore, their maternal attitudes balance each other. Lenina is unable to grasp the concept of motherhood because of her “Beta- Mindedness,” a result of her conditioning. Linda, like Lenina, is unable to fully understand being a mother as well. Linda expresses obtrusive attempts at motherly affection. For example, she constantly refers to John as “baby” and says “come and lie down, Baby” (Huxley 111). Linda’s motherly affectation is a result of her being engulfed by shame, and causes her to feel the need to play a caring mother.

Nature or Nurture. Nature may be all of the genes and hereditary factors with which influence them to become who they are such as physical appearances and personality characteristics. Nurturing impacts people’s lives as well as how they are raised and all the environmental factors. In combination, these qualities can be the true identity of oneself. Many people may argue that nurture appears to a play huge factor in the two, but others may think otherwise. Not having both as a characteristic can have a negative effect on a person physically and mentally. The debate of nature versus nurture appears to be the oldest argument known to man, and it still remains to be unanswered. In the old-age argument nature versus nurture, nature may play a huge role in determining a person’s true identity.

Reading Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley, readers are led to a dystopia in which the World State takes control over everything including reproduction, consumption and the most important of all‐conditioning. Although Lenina and Linda are not the main characters that bring the story to its climax, they play significant roles in the story as they represent the people being affected by the World State conditioning.

John is the son of a “civilized” woman named Linda and the previous Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning. Even though he was born of “civilized” members of society, John grew up on the “uncivilized” reservation where families existed and people were not made in laboratories. While growing up on the Reservation, John did not fit in well because of what the village thought of his mother. On page 121, John’s mother, Linda,says, “take the way they have one another here. Mad, I tell you, absolutely mad. Everybody belongs to everyone else---don’t they? Don’t they?” This quote emulates one of the main ideals that “civilized” people have. They do not believe in monogamy, and they believe that polygamy is the key to a stable civilization that is free from too much emotion. Because Linda followed the way of the “civilized” life that she grew up in, she was considered to live a promiscuous lifestyle by the other villagers. Therefore, John and Linda were outcasted or exiled from the village.

An author by the name of Aldous Huxley wrote a novel named Brave New World. It is about two vastly different worlds, a “civilized” and technologically advanced society; the World State and the “uncivilized” Savage Reservation. The World State is taken place in the future where people are born out of test tubes and when they are eight months old they are electrically shocked so that they hate books and flower. This is due to the controller not wanting his clones to have knowledge or know the true meaning of happiness. In this Utopia the government is run by Mustapha Mond. Mond is one of ten World Controllers who exile those who have unorthodox beliefs. While discussing these unorthodox beliefs, two main characters are presented. Aldous Huxley

The nature side of the argument is basically what we are born with, our heredity. The main idea of this is that we are born with predetermined traits that may or may not create psychopathic tendencies in us. Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison published a report in 2000 that compared brain scans of five

“No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.” Many would agree with the words of William Ellery Channing, a leading theologian of Unitarianism, but not Mustapha Mond or any of the other powerful personnel of the World State. They believe strictly in community, identity, and stability, willing to do almost whatever it takes to uphold those values in their society, willing even to eliminate individuality among the people. Under the belief that individualism obstructs a society's ability to remain stable and constantly happy, that is exactly what the World State does. Through a process of conditioning it brainwashes the youth into believing only the ideologies and morals the World State wishes them to. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Lenina and her peers are raised to believe in and act in accordance to the morals of the

Linda maintains this belief after she goes to the savage reservation. She has sex with anyone she wants and can’t understand what she has done wrong. These behaviors can’t be accepted by the savage citizens. They think that having sex should be based on love and marriage, and that people should show loyalty to their mates. Because of their different viewpoints, women came to abuse her, which not only hurt Linda’s feelings but also change people’s views of John. This condition results in John’s isolation and influences his viewpoint about sex. Even though John tries to focus on reading skills in order to prove his manhood, the foundational difference of the two cultures can’t be changed, so that John can’t gain the acceptance he wants from savage reservation. His isolation illustrates the conflict between two opposite cultures.

The word “mother” alone “made Lenina look uncomfortable” (Huxley, 118). The idea of a family disgusts the citizens of the New World and she is definitely viewed as an outsider for having one. Another reason Linda isn’t accepted is the fact that she aged. When Lenina first sees Linda, she is disgusted at “all the lines on her face” and she cringes at the sight of “the wrinkles” and her “sagging cheeks, with those purple blotches” (Huxley, 119). The citizens are not used to old people. Lenina does not know that this was the natural aging process. Linda is also viewed as an outsider on the Indian Reservation. She is used to the New World, and when she first arrives in the Indian Reservation, she is viewed as different. She is used to sleeping with many men, so when she “had people in the ordinary way, the others [thought she was] wicked” (Huxley, 121). The women who lived on the reservation hate her deeply. She becomes an outsider on the Reservation. Linda is a fitting example of an outsider in the book because she aged, she has a kid, and she lived on the Indian Reservation with the same morals as the people from the New World.

“No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.” Many would agree with the words of William Ellery Channing, a leading theologian of Unitarianism, but not Mustapha Mond or any of the other powerful personnel of the World State. They believe strictly in community, identity, and stability, willing to do almost whatever it takes to uphold those things in their society, willing even to eliminate individuality among the people. Under the belief that individualism obstructs a society's ability to remain stable, that is exactly what the World State does, through a process of conditioning in which it brainwashes the youth into believing only the ideologies and morals the World State wishes them to. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the character Lenina lives in the World State as an Alpha, raised to believe

The ongoing debate of the topic “Nurture” is more important than “nature”, has been considered true many times throughout the world from books to real life scenarios and events, but what is our meaning of “nurture” and “nature”? The common aspect of “nurture” is where outside influences determine what we will be like society being an example, while “nature” is basically that genetics determine the outcome of how people turn out. There is an easy argument for the case of “nurture”, but just because of the argument being an easy case, is it really true? People acquire their personalities, opinions and beliefs through “nurture”, while they also inherit a much deeper meaning of quality through “nature”, being that, quality is the trait which it takes to commit murder, seek risk, or become an accountant. That is why the statement “nurture” is more important than “nature”is false.

Does the environment that one grows up in contribute to alcoholism or is alcoholism determined by genetics? It wasn’t until 1991 that alcoholism was considered both a medical and psychiatric disease by the American Medical Association. Alcoholism is defined in the dictionary as a chronic disorder characterized by dependence on alcohol, repeated excessive use of alcoholic beverages, the development of withdrawal symptoms on reducing or ceasing intake, morbidity that may include cirrhosis of the liver, and decreased ability to function socially and vocationally. (dictionary.com). It is also defined as an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness

The Nature vs. Nurture has been a long never ending debate for some time now. Nature vs Nurture has been so profoundly debated, that now it’s unclear whether what makes us who we are and what we do, nature or nurture. For purposes of this essay Nature is going to be defined as characteristics we acquire through our genetic and biological factors, while that Nurture is going to be defined characteristics we acquire through our interactions and influences with the environment. There are endless ways of taking an approach to the Nature vs Nurture conflict, thus the reason that it’s truly unclear if its Nature or Nurture or even both what makes us who and what we are.

For more than a century, researchers and psychologists, such as Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and many others, have been trying to understand how people are transformed by their environment. Researchers have mainly argued whether it is in fact our environment or rather genetics, our biological pre-wiring, which has influenced human behavior. This concept ultimately facilitated what is now known as the Nature versus Nurture debate. The Nature aspect states that human behavior is predetermined by our inherited genes or is the product of our innate behavior. The Nurture side of the disagreement postulates that human behavior stems from acquired attributes through individual learning and experiences. Correspondingly, the Object Relations Theory in psychoanalytic psychology supports the position that a person’s natural environment (i.e. family, peers, acquaintances, society) forms human development. The Object Relations theory stresses that it is the relationships between people, more specially family, often between mother and child, that crafts the human psyche.