Comment on Are we truely prisoners of our upbringing?

sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  How much of that is still a reaction to their upbringing though?

  Say someone is raised in an abusive situation, and because of that they decide to be nothing like their parents when they grow up and become the epitome of a loving, nurturing parent, or maybe decide to not have kids at all to make sure they break the cycle.

  Would that same person make those same choices if they were raised in a more “normal” household?

  We can’t really know for sure, but I suspect in a lot of cases the answer would be no.

  And of course there’s all kinds of little butterfly effects.

  For example, I’ve known one of my best friends since preschool. We attended the same public school from kindergarten through graduation, but after pre school I never had a class with him again until 10th grade. If my parents had decided to send me to a different preschool, it’s very likely I’d have a different best friend, and who knows how that might have affected my life?

  Or later in life, when my grandfather was no longer able to drive, my parents ended up with his truck, they could have sold it but instead they held onto it and when I started driving it sort of unofficially became “my” car that I used to commute to community college. If they hadn’t kept that truck, or just didn’t let me use it, I probably would have had to take the bus and would have had to arrange my class schedule differently and never sat next to a guy in a history class who would eventually introduce me to the woman who is now my wife.

  So those two little decisions made in my upbringing had big effects on the trajectory of my life. I’m quite happy with where I’ve ended up, but I had no say in either case, so I think you could definitely argue that I’m a “prisoner” to those decisions they made. I’ll never know what twists and turns my life might have taken if they’d chosen differently. Maybe there’s an alternate timeline where my best friend from a different preschool convinced me to buy a bunch of Bitcoin in 2009 and I could be a retired multimillionaire right now.

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  • sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sure it can be a reaction but does that make them a slave to it?

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    • Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t think growth is a determining factor for imprisonment. If someone is sent to actual prison and is successfully reformed and rehabilitated and able turn their life around, does that mean they were any less a prisoner than someone who didn’t learn and grow from the experience?

      I don’t think so, though you may certainly feel differently. I think the defining characteristic is the lack of agency. You are the product of countless choices that you had no say in during your childhood, you are a prisoner to those choices, nothing you can ever do will undo those choices, you can work around them, overcome them, and make the most of them, but ultimately you are who you are because of them.

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