What Has Shaped My Life? Free Essay Sample

Human beings are born with some traits and attributes that differentiate them from others. There are the ones that can be used to identify one from other people and tell who he is. There are those who assert that human beings are born with them and there are those who say that this happens as a result of interactions with the surroundings. This paper will look at and discuss the various theories that attempt to explain what makes human beings' traits and attributes.

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There is the belief in nature being responsible for people becoming who they are and this takes two forms one which is predestination and the other that attributes it to nature. For the ones who attribute these things to God, they talk about everything that happens as being allowed by the will of God. This by extension means that He has a program that is followed by human beings from the moment that they are born up to the time that they leave the earth. Hence if it was a book it can be consulted to establish where one would be. This means that He is responsible for who one's knowledge and who he becomes in life in terms of our physical attributes and traits. They believe in God goes further to state that human beings are given a free will that shapes the character that they take.

Genetics asserts that human beings inherit what shapes their appearance and behavior from their parents. This is done by DNA which is cells that contain coding to indicate the shape or traits that will be taken by the individual. This explains why family members have some degree of resemblance from the parents. There is a situation where he or she will take more from one parent than the other due to what was dominant with that particular one.

According to John Locke who was a philosopher we become who we are due to the way we are raised up or the interactions with the environment. This according to the philosopher will be as a result of a combination of several things including the upbringing, one's experiences, and the culture. This goes ahead to dispute that there are some qualities that one is born with and attributes everything to nurturing. Hence the capacities of human beings to think and act after gaining knowledge will be used in interacting with the surrounding shaping him further. The human beings may also use the same to change the environment which will also continue changing him in some aspects like his temperament among other things. This idea will have a tendency to study one's environment and his upbringing and blame them when he turns out to be a bad person in the society. It means that we may alter these things to shape the individual to the kind of person that we desire.

The study of celestial bodies and their movements is what is called astrology and there are those who believe that they determine the nature of human beings. That their movements and position at any given time can be used to tell what one will be experiencing in his life and hence used to impact on his life. Therefore there are those who take in a step further and use it to predict what may be happening to them in future and plan for the same. The ones who study it assert that it helps in determining people traits as long as their birth dates are known. They use the movements of the planets and heavy objects to determine what may be happening to human beings as they believe that they have a bearing on their temperament. There are those who use it to unravel the hidden truths about individuals and predictions of what they are likely to become in future.

The theory of free will does not attribute one's behavior, traits and what he or she becomes in life on anything other than the individual. It further asserts that it is the individual who will make choices devoid of where he comes from or who his parents were in shaping his life. The individual is taken to be responsible for the dynamics that take place in his life resulting in what he becomes. They have the self-control to refuse to act in certain ways or make certain choices irrespective of what they may have in store for them. It cannot be underestimated that one's knowledge will be critical in making these choices since he will be acting from a point of knowledge which again may be negating this theory as it will be questionable on how he acquired it and from what source bringing the environment in question. The human beings past experiences and his conscience play a significant role in his decisions given a set of choices.

From what has been covered above it can be seen that what one chooses to believe in will have a bearing on his life. No one theory can be discarded as being invalid as there is some evidence to support each bone of them. There are situations which call for a combination of some of these theories in explaining them. Like the case of free will relies on nurturing to some extent.