[Dr. Casey]

Scientific research says that core personality traits remain consistent throughout a person's life. This isn't a concrete fact, however, so it's open for debate. This kind of bothered me for a while; I don't really like the thought of us being slaves to our genes. I thought we were more complicated than that. After thinking about it for a while, though, I think that while the scientific research is technically correct, for all intents and purposes your personality can change.

First of all, let's examine a person who inherits a bunch of positive traits. Let's take... a person who's an extrovert by nature. Sadly, at the age of eight he moves to a town named Dickheadville. Every day, he receives a roundhouse kick to the face from at least thirty of his schoolmates, and his teachers constantly pick on him and give him zeroes for no reason. He becomes disillusioned and develops a distrust of people. Now... let's say somebody reaches out to him and tries to treat him kindly at the age of... say, sixteen. Naturally, he isn't able to fully trust the person... but does that mean the kid's personality has changed deep down? No, it just means there's a lot of stuff covering it up. The kid merely adapted as a defense mechanism, and he has yet to receive sufficient evidence that he made a mistake in doing so. I have this rubbery red floppy thing that's used as an armrest on top of the computer desk. I can fold it in half, and it will change its shape momentarily... but when I let go it will return to the way it was. However, what if I don't let go? It will stay in its altered shape. That's kind of the way it is with the kid and people in general. If the reasons he had for adapting are, in any situation, temporarily considered null and void, his natural personality will come out. From an absolute point of view, the chain of events which lead a person into adopting a certain viewpoint can always be undone if met with an equally powerful force from the opposite (in this case, more positive) end of the spectrum. The problem lies within the human psyche, which is usually not strong enough to carry such a burden (that is, to remove the effect of the years leading up to who you have become), and that while some of the horrors in the world are very real, there is nothing powerful enough from the positive end of the spectrum to make up for it. Let us say, for instance, that a man's family was killed, but he received reassurance from God himself that they were in Heaven and living in eternal bliss and that he could join them some day; until that day came, they would enjoy each other's company and wait for Daddy, but not with sadness in their hearts. Just waiting. That might be enough to bring his mind to ease. The problem with that, though... that's not going to happen. There might be a force powerful enough to save the man whose family was killed, but as God hardly talks to people directly anymore, all the man would know for certain is the loss of his family.

Now let's take a teenager who has an anger problem. There's some people that he, you know, loves or whatever, like his hot girlfriend that he bangs seventy-five times a week. He is able to make a lot of progress because the belief he has in others and the belief others have in him fosters development, but what if this form of support is taken away? What if he's not inspired by the progress he made in the past, and has no motivation to change his thoughts and feelings? Then... he's left with nothing but a clean slate. He's left with what nature gave him: a problem with anger.

In the end, I think that when all our history is rendered irrelevant and we're left with nothing but a clean slate, then we do remain the same throughout life. That slate never changes. However, I don't think that we're slaves to our heredity. We have enough control, for our intents and purposes, to achieve self-satisfaction. Whenever we're presented with a clean slate, for better or for worse... we'll never get rid of that, but we can try to keep the writing we put on that slate from being erased as well as we can, in order to preserve our good traits and replace our bad. Nobody will be 100 percent successful, maybe not even 50 percent, but at the same time I don't think it's a futile effort.

So... any agreements? Disagreements? I kind of feel like I stated the obvious, only in a really long and pretentious way. >_> Oh well.