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| We seems to be ok with readings of hierglyphs but not about other stories |
I am sure everyone watched atleast one movie in their life, which was about a child finding his/her biological parent(s). I do not know the reasons but it would appear that while I was growing this theme was quite popular in Bollywood. Many famous movies were made around that theme. Independent of the fact if the child grew up in an orphanage, on streets or with a good family who adopted the child and loved it to all it’s capacity. It was always shown one or other way that biological parents are more important than anything else.
It was probably around that time when I started to learn about genetics as well. I was a bad student of biology, simply because I hated learning all those fancy names for each and every single part. I was more happy with structures and formulas that logically connected and built on top of each other. This made mathematics my subject in school. Enough flashback of school time and back to genetics. Somehow the education at that time (it would appear to me) was biased towards genetics and genes. It would appear that everything could be explained by genes and they makes up and explain everything about your life. Learning this one can easily relate why those kids in movies were so adamant about finding their biological parents.
As the time passed by, science made progress and technology made it possible to learn subjects independently from various sources across the globe. One is no longer limited to the books from the school or from local library. Many a times these books contain old information which, thanks to today’s fast pace life, is outdated fast. When I came to know about these online course platforms, I was astonished and happy. Since then, I always have atleast one course ongoing. One of these courses is about behavioral genetics by Stanford University. It is amazing what one can learn just sitting at home and without paying any travel or university fees. However, one do need is a lot of self-motivation and commitment to learn. That is enough self-praising. This course is amazing and it has a method which aligns with my style. That method means one can make a counter argument for every situation and everything is about “it depends”.
I learned through this course about importance of the environment in shaping up the behaviour from the very base that was made available by genes. I am still learning and probably there are other sources with more and different information. However, I believe that environment has more effect on behaviour compared to physical attributes. In both cases end result is ultimately the effect of gene-environment interaction. But my personal view is that percentage effect on shaping a behaviour vs body shape is dominant for environment. I hope there are some studies that are working on this hypotheses as well.
While attending lectures of this course, I was reminded of one phrase which I heard as a child i.e. ” paalne waala paida karne waale se bada hota hai”. In English it would translate as “The one who provides you parenting stands higher in respect against the one who gave birth”. I am not sure if it was part of the above mentioned movies or not. But, I surely connect it to the lessons of Mahabharata and it is main hero; Lord Krishna. Who are not aware of Lord Krishna, I would suggest to go through atleast wikipedia if not other sources. For some reason, Krishna was taken away to his foster parents the same day he was born. The effect of foster parents is so high that he even has a name from his foster mother. In the stories, I learned as a child, there was no fight to find the biological parents and when he comes to know, he does not go against his foster parents. He still loves his foster parents and in fact values them more than biological parents.
Ofcourse one can argue that he is God and it is different with Gods. If one comes from those hard religious believes, it would appear so and it is fine. In my case, I take all the religious, mythological stories as just that; stories. They probably happened in some way, may be not. In either way they kept on changing with time. The way I see it is that as human societies got bigger we needed systems to have a way to manage big number of people. Today we learn law and order, social behavior, ethics, science etc. In those times stories were created to educate people about different subjects. While some stories would teach about respect and morals other may warn you about ill effect of your actions. I believe some of those stories were about passing the scientific knowledge in simple words.
I cannot help, but link these two parts to propose that in fact this old story of Krishna had a way to communicate that it is not about biology, but about environment that shapes your character. It also tells us not to fret too much about biological connections rather make use of the available environment get the best out of it. Ofcourse, it is not all about environment, but it is about the interaction. It is the interaction that makes the Lotus stands beautiful in the muddy waters.
For the same reason, you can find a poor kid with one meal a day smiling, while a rich kid crying, annoyed, angry throughout the day because he did not get the same color candy as he wanted.
Keep Smiling,
Love
Arundeep
Few things are valid only in mythology
The judge was questioning Mulla Nasrudin. “I understand that your wife is scared to death of you,” he said. “That’s right, your Honor,” said the Mulla. The judge leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Man to man,” he said, “HOW DO YOU DO IT?”
