My Genes Ate My Homework
So, what do we mean by this? Well, we can all relate to the miserable excuse that our dog ate our homework—or we got stuck in traffic, or—well, insert your favorite excuse.
The topic of avoiding extremes and aiming for the middle ground is something that comes up often in our coffee talks and when writing about different topics on this blog. We think that this line of thinking is very applicable to everyday life—this can be politics, fitness, career goals, one's view on traditions, child upbringing, etc. Avoiding extremes and cultivating the necessary introspection to assess when we’re heading down an unsustainable or misfortunate rabbit hole is a worthwhile skill set to nurture.
Today we want to talk about genes—and to what extent our fate is written beforehand.
This is a broad topic, and since we see ourselves as primarily a health and fitness blog, we’ll use that as a springboard. When we assess this line of thought there are two extremes.
The first one is the camp of the tabula rasa—or clean slate in plain English. This perspective advocates that there are no significant biological differences between humans. This means that all variation we see in human ability and behavior is a psycho-social construct—we’re all a product of society, and have the same innate biological potential.
The other extreme is a form of biological determinism. We’re a product of our genes, and the only way to get ahead in life is to pick our biological parents carefully.
The attentive reader will probably already have guessed that we’re somewhere in the middle. When we read about these perspectives, they sound very extreme, but we seem to fall into this line of thought daily. We so often hear people state something like “you have always been strong,” or “you have always been able to…” (insert the thing that is hard for you). On the other hand, we hear well-intended advice that goes something like “you can become whatever you want.” In the movie Justice League—we even see Wonder Woman giving this advice to a little impressionable girl when she’s asked if she could be like her when she grows up. This sounds nice, inclusive, and friendly, but is terrible advice to follow if acted out.
The takeaway is, that we’re somewhere in the middle. If we want to be a top achiever in a specific area, then we need to choose our parents carefully. Attributes like intelligence, height, and the distribution between fast and slow twitch muscle fibers are highly genetic, but when that is said, we can become better than most humans at almost anything if we apply ourselves over time.
So, take a realistic but optimistic approach to your goals and remember--most people can become good at most things, but there are differences between individuals, and the process takes longer for some.
Until next time
Scott and Lennart