You and I
With the process of growing up, my environments have always played a vital role to my growth. If there is someone asking me why I have come this far, my first thought is always about being grateful to environments I have bloomed in. It has probably shaped my perspective since I was young to the importance of my environment whether it is encouraging and challenging.
However, little did I know that I was interested in psychology. One day I read an article of a debate about Nature v. Nurture. The goal was to make judgement of human behaviour whether it is determined by a person’s gene or by environment. Debate is a Western style of education. Western people like to have the idea of non-contradiction. In another word, they prefer “either/or” rather than “both/and”. They try to make a clear line that human’s behaviour is either determined by a person’s gene OR by environment. In contrast, inclusiveness has always been a part of Eastern culture because they believe that there are truths in both sides. Then it turns out to be true that both Nature and Nurture all play parts to determine human’s behaviour.
Since then, the idea of inclusiveness of contradiction becomes a part of my life. I believe that everything in the universe has its contradiction, and in fact, that contradiction leads the world to go around. One of the things I have been interested in so far is the differences between the Western and Eastern culture. I started to question why Asian cultures prefer to have hierarchy but there is no racism, while democracy works so well in the West and they do not feel offended when someone disagrees with their opinions. As my curiosity went up, I have explored and discovered that there are a lot of contradictions that we have barely noticed. For example, the contradictions like idealism v. realism, conservative v. liberalism, capitalism v. socialism, democracy v. communism, microeconomics v. macroeconomics, anarchy v. order, individualism v. collectivism, so on and on. In daily life, if you pay enough attention, you will see both poor and rich, polite and rude, rational and non-rational people all around the corners. Our situations are full of positive and negative things.
But with all the plus and minus, it has become a beauty for the universe. If you have at least a bit of motivation, you will see that there are a lot of things to learn and to live with satisfactory. You and I are parts of universe where we both have a lot of differences, but all of the differences we have are very well complemented with the sake of beauty.
