shrag022: February 2012 Archives



Last week in discussion, we talked about inattention blindness and not seeing things right in front of our faces. We were shown an example of some people passing a basketball back and forth, while a bear moonwalked across the screen.
While on Facebook this week, a post came up with an article about a musician. He played six Bach pieces on the violin for about 45 minutes in a metro station during rush hour. Roughly 1100 people were in the station during that time. A few people stopped and listened for a few minutes, and children were pulled away from listening by their parents to keep walking. In his 45 minutes of playing, he made $32 and received no applause or recognition after he finished.
The violinist was none other than Joshua Bell. He is one of the most talented musicians in the world, and was playing one of the most intricate pieces ever written on a 3.5 million dollar violin. Two days earlier, Bell sold out at a theater in boston where the seats averaged $100.
If one of the top musicians in the wold can play one of the best pieces of music on an instrument that expensive and not be noticed for who he really is, what else is happening in the world that we are simply passing by without a second glance?

Approximately 80 years ago, quadruplets Nora, Iris, Myra, and Hester Genain were born. All four sisters were diagnosed with schizophrenia. This scenario highlights some key points in the battle of nature vs. nurture. Even though they were identical sisters, they varied in weight. Two of them, Iris and Hester, weighed significantly less than the other two, Nora and Myra. Three of the four sisters were hospitalized due to their disorders, leaving Nora to be the only "strong" sister. Whether it was because Iris and Hester severely weighed less or not, their mother favored Nora and Myra. She would even go to the extent of punishing Iris and Hester for inappropriate behavior. Myra was her favorite though, to the point where she said that she thought Myra was psychologically healthier and smarter than the other three. Myra went on to get married and held a job position for many years. I see different ways of nurture every day. Had the Genain family only had twins or triplets, the way they raised them would have been very different. Had Myra not been born, the parents would have treated each of the other three daughters a lot better, and not have caused as muc stress on them later in life. My brother and I are, even though a few years apart, very similar. We are about the same height, have similar personalities, and like many of the same things, but we act differently because of how our parents raised us with the knowledge they had. He is older than me, so my parents had a few years to raise him before I was born. They learned things while raising him that they did differently with me. Humans develop differently based on their nature and nurture, and no person can be raised the exact same way.