As this is a free post I’ve decided to go for a topic that’s
a little different. Awhile back I was introduced to a new television show
called Orphan Black by my best friend
while I was over having dinner at her place. For those who are unfamiliar with
the show, it’s a Canadian sci-fi drama about clones. What is slightly ironic
about this situation is that my best friend is an identical triplet and spent
most of her high school existence being called one. The show focuses on three
main clones as they struggle deal with many complex topics including nature vs
nurture, mental illness, identity, legal, social and bodily rights along with
the overarching question am I real? While my best friend doesn’t have all these
questions to answer, the nature vs nurture topic is something that we can both
relate to – partially due to our background.
 |
| Orphan Black (BBC America, 2013) |
This is probably a good time to mention that I’m a triplet
and we’ve been part of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research’s multiple
birth study as they’ve tracked us from childhood and used us as test subjects
to help them answer the nature vs nurture debate. Over the years they’ve
measured us, photocopied our hands, tested our tastebuds, taken blood and hair,
given us complicated memory games to complete and stuck us in an MRI machine to
look at our brains just to name a few. Unlike my best friend who they really
want to test, I’m fraternal (which means that we didn’t hatch from the same
egg) are part of the control group. So we can completely empathize to the
characters as they were treated like lab rats.
While on an ice-cream break in between episodes I asked her
about what it was like to be called a clone. She vividly recalled in a Year 10
Biology lesson that the student teacher emphatically stated that identical
triplets didn’t exist (they were all in the room) and that it was a genetic
mistake, causing the rest of the class to explode into laughter. This gave a
selection of immature teenage boys plenty of ammunition to use over the next
few weeks. Naturally she took it in her stride, the next day bringing in the
framed piece of paper from the hospital lab saying that they were monozygotic triplets - 99.9% identical and while the incident
didn’t effect her, it did have an effect on her sister Wendy*, who as far as I
know became withdrawn in that particular class and now heavily dislikes this
anecdote being told. This is where the nature vs nurture question comes into
effect – how is it that three sisters who are genetically identical and raised
together have such varied reactions to a situation? Are personality traits
genetic, is it environmental or is it a mixture of the two? As much as I’ve been led to believe that it’s
50/50 – I’ve read a study from German scientists that traits such as resilience
and stubbornness are up to 75% genetic. Not to mention the countless studies of
identical twins separated at birth which showed IQ, education, job choice,
grooming, partner preference and tastebuds as just some of the traits that were
almost identical, despite the fact they were raised in polar opposite
environments. So the jury is still out on that one.
While they may look the same they have extremely different
characteristics that make each of them unique: one had a stronger accent and
passion for languages, one was very direct with her communication and tried
every trick in the book to physically stand out from her sisters, while the
other creative and more laid back then the other two and was a little more
sympathetic with the mistaken identity issue. I used to be able to tell them
apart from 20 metres purely by body language, how they walked, what they had
for lunch and what company they kept. Everyone else knew one of them and then
took a wild guess or tried to see the identifying mole to get the right name.
She also remembered how good it felt when she went to
university for the first time that she was referred to by her first name rather
than as “one of the triplets”. I can relate to this as members of my extended
family still do this when they introduce me at family functions.
Not that it’s all doom and gloom – they have been able to
pull the sister swap off with very few people noticing, a feat that I would
never be able to do. I find the show interesting as the characters inter-change
with each other and how they react under different circumstances. Can’t wait
for season 2!
*Name changed
Featured Image
Offical Orphan Black Poster by BBC America, tvdb image by cedell: http://thetvdb.com/banners/posters/260315-4.jpg (Copyright BBC America, 2013)
Featured Image
Offical Orphan Black Poster by BBC America, tvdb image by cedell: http://thetvdb.com/banners/posters/260315-4.jpg (Copyright BBC America, 2013)
Hannah, I'm really interested in this topic and found your post very enlightening. I had no idea that certain personality traits were more genetic than others! I'm not normally a great believer in things 'supernatural' (though far less of a sceptic now than I was in my twenties) but I've read a great many accounts of some very freakish mental and spiritual connections between twins and I find this area fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for your post. Your personal experience and that of your friend added amazing insights and I know I will think about this for a long time.
Interesting post, Hannah. I think the nature/nurture, biology/culture, innate/learned, genes/environment debate is interesting because it crosses so many disciplines - philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology etc. But I also think that expressing these relationships as dichotomies (using 'versus') is unhelpful. They're not mutually exclusive explanatory forces of the human condition. That is, they both influence each other and evolution in interesting ways. I'm thinking of obvious examples like lactose tolerance/intolerance. To think that a popular cultural practice like drinking milk could change 1/3 of the human population over 1000 years is pretty amazing. (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.html)
ReplyDeleteWhile people will continue to argue the relative importance of nature and nurture to explain phenomena, I don't think they'll ever be able to put a number like 50/50 on it. I often have to stop myself from expressing opinions that swing too much in favor of constructionism, without even considering essentialist points of view. For example, I'm trying to write a blog post about what I understand is "culture", and it's proving very difficult. It would be easy to explain it all away as a social construct (which is the mistake I think a lot of people have made for the last 50 years). It's far more complex than that. I'm interested in finding simple ways to explain things like culture to the students we teach, but I also think it's important to use the best available knowledge we have about these things. For me that means looking at what people like Chomsky and Pinker (who both consider this issue) have to say, then also looking at what their critics say.
At the moment I'm reading a pretty good book called "We Need to Talk About Kevin" which considers nature and nurture. Do you know any other good examples of fiction which deal with this? Re: clones, I thought the first season of "Orphan Black" was OK, better than a lot of other fiction about cloning which tends to focus too much on the novelty of putting identical siblings in comedic situations. The movie "Moon" is another interesting take on cloning.