A lot of people think I have a few 'chips' on my shoulder, and I do nothing to dispel the notion, in particular I have a abhorration of private schools (although they might have taught me to spell!). Note I said schools, not the students of said schools! But, to drag the conversation back on topic, we are considering what makes you who you are. Yes, I believe private school has the effect of turning people into silver spoon fed selfish brats... but i also think it has the effect of providing upteen more opportunities more bright minds then public school. Which I think is a contributing factor to social class divisions... but hey, thats another topic!
What makes you who you are? This is something I spend a lot of time thinking about... not about what made me who i am, but what makes people who they are in general, what decides how well they will do in life (whatever that means!), how they behave, how they act, etc.
I agree with my lovely sister, Rhian, that the people that care for us are a very lage part in the process of who we are, how we react and what we think. But I don't think everything that is a part of us is a product of the people who are important to us. I think most things are. Nor do i think that everything that happens to us has a reason or was caused by someone. Logic does not permit us to infer cause and effect from a sequence, just because we won cricket the last time I wore my lucky socks, doesn't mean they are either lucky or that we will win next time I wear them. Accidents happen and sometimes nobody is genuinely responsible.
Any act of significant influence can create change and have an impact on people. Al Gore and the movie he is promotong, "an inconvenient truth" may change the way some people view the world. Armstrong stepping on the moon may have had the same impact. There are many moments in life that can have a major impact on who we are; a near miss car accident, a winning lottery ticket, an inspirational drunken D&M, a random pay-it-forward moment, a smile from the woman in the red dress and for the chaos theorists, a butterfly flapping its wings...
As for those parents who bring a child into the world that they cannot support, I don't think it is quite so black and white. I'm sure there are situations where people are responsible for raising children they had no hope of supporting. However I'm also sure that people who were in a position to support a child, had a child and then circumstances change to place them in a position where they can no longer support that child. And what say those of us who are in a position to support a child, but don't?
So who and what is it that I can blame for me having this tendency to write on my blog when I should be finishing my thesis! Not to menthion the tendency towards addiction to certain computer games!
