Today I would like to discuss heredity. Let’s talk about how violence, addictions, and poverty are hereditary! I do not want to discuss this from a scientific point of view, citing research, although what I have read has certainly shaped my opinions. I would like to discuss this at a completely ordinary level. Maybe even based on my own experience to some extent.
What I have seen are the patterns of behavior and attitudes that come from home from the time of birth already. The human world is constantly affected by what is happening around the human being, and it is most affected in childhood. As children, we impregnate everyone around us and are already created by nature in such a way that learning takes place by itself. One strange fact, the answer to which I have not yet reached, and the answer of which is certainly to define for each person for himself, is that in the same way there is a tendency towards negativity in itself. We must learn goodness, caring, and love, but egoism, evil, and coldness stick to us by themselves. The instinct of survival? Maybe. Certainly, every person is also put together differently at the biological level, and through it tolerates and learns differently. But, as Tarvo Tobbi, from My Book (Estonia), once said one sentence that has given me food for thought so far – a person cannot be reduced to the level of a biological being. And yet, violence, addictions, and poverty are largely inherited. How so?
When I look back on my own life, I am more aware that there were all the prerequisites for a violent standard of my life, full of addiction and impenetrable poverty. Did I grow up in a family that would have expected it? No! Did I have any possible genetic assumptions for such a life? Yes! Was it my parents’ choice that their lives had gone as they had, or was it also hereditary?
Ok, let’s dig more into this topic. If I look back on my life now, decades later after all the biggest storms, I see that yes, no matter what I did, what I didn’t want and didn’t try, everything tore in one direction and not where I wanted to go. The bad side of life pulled me along like a magnet, and not because I liked it – far from it. It was more like an inexplicable curse chasing me constantly, and I didn’t have the strength to escape it. One person, I knew described the same thing about her own life. She said she could standstill in the middle of the room without touching anyone and saying a word, and problems still found her. If I were a believer in the curse, that would certainly be a good explanation. Just as genetics would be a good explanation, but there are many holes in this theory as well.
My discussion of heredity changed very drastically at some point after I was told the story of Angelica Kjos (Norway). A woman who survived the extremely brutal betrayal by her loved ones and the human trafficking in childhood. As a child! Her story is truly heartbreaking, and if I hadn’t seen her talk about it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe that something like that would be possible to survive and create a normal life for yourself. Angelica broke all my understandings of logic and physical laws. How did she do that?
Angelica has published a book, “Slipp meg fri”, which means “Let me go”, where she talks about her journey and, more precisely, about the many years of therapy with a psychologist. But one sure thing that always stands out for Angelica, both when she talks and in her book, is her intolerance to life which is not good for her, and her constant pursuit towards something better. Her bravery. Her energy, will, her vision of the future, and understanding of what is wrong and what is right. In other words, everything that is not physical. Where does an idea, that didn’t exist in human life at first, come from? Where does the desire for something different starts when violence and fear is the only thing a child has learned? Where does the realization that I want a different life begins, if so much easier would be to go down the genetic and negative paths?
My personal opinion on this subject is that we are not alone in this world. We are surrounded by people and a world whose influence we cannot even write down on paper. Not in an exact scientific way at least. Invisible forces to us are as physical as visible ones. A word can do a lot, but so can a look, a smile, a good thought. Nothing is eternal and nothing is 100% certain. The exception confirms the rule and I find that this is what makes life so interesting!