Nature vs. Nurture: Our Moral Compass

                        Nature or nurture? This question is the basis of a debate about whether you or born who you are or if you are made that way. I believe you develop your morals and ethics with a combination of both. If you want to learn an instrument, start early. This is a common suggestion with varying degrees of scientific evidence behind it. When you’re younger your brain is still developing, so it is the most opportune time to start learning an instrument. Why not apply the same logic to morals?

Children aren't born with prejudices. They find their beliefs through the people and environment around them. Some people grow up to be racist and some people grow up to be activists and win Nobel Prizes. I believe it’s extremely important for a child to learn to accept people from an early age. My family’s neighbors and close friends when I was younger were a lesbian married  couple. I went to their wedding and didn’t question it for a second. To me, they weren’t a groundbreaking progressive couple and they weren’t two sinners destined for hell.  They were just Patty and Jen who lived in the condo next to us with their boisterous dog Girshwin. They moved away and we moved away, but I never forgot them. I got older and I learned about LGBTQ rights and understood more about some of the struggles they may have gone through. Being friends with them at such a young age was crucial to the way I think about acceptance and how I treat people. Another way I was taught these values was through what I read and watched.

As a young child, I was immersed in the storytelling of books and movies. I loved every word of the worn out pages in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series that was once my brother’s, and I devoured every Harry Potter book as soon as I could Harry Potter is hugely influential to my generation, as the books came out in the 90s and the movies came out in the 2000s. The books deal with themes like discrimination, being an outcast, and finding where you belong. Harry’s Muggle family, the Dursleys, hated the magical side of him and worked to suppress it. He was neglected growing up and punished for expressing who he truly is. This is experience, minus the magic, is very real for many people.  I also watched films like Happy Feet, which had strong environmental messages but were centered around progress and leaving behind old ideas and traditions that hold us back. These stories all made me who I am today.

Your childhood is vital to the way you think and make decisions, both logical and moral. I am who I am because of all the stories I've heard. These stories, whether they're from a book, movie, or the Museum of Tolerance all made me think about the world in a different way. It wasn't a single moment that changed me, but a long process. I am forever improving my ethical standpoint and trying to be the best person I can be, but I need a little help along the way.

Witness to Tolerance

This really happened. These events occurred in real life and affected real people. This fact is difficult to wrap your head around when you’re an 8th grader learning about the most famous genocide in recent history; the Holocaust. We recently toured the Museum of Tolerance, which is a museum designed to educate people about this horrific tragedy. The experience is nothing like learning about it in a sheltered classroom, where the bell rings and breaks you out of their world and back into yours. The Museum of Tolerance put you in the shoes of the millions of Jews who were forced from their homes and murdered. This 3 hour experience of our tour guide’s raspy but powerful voice describing the worst acts of humanity, simulated gas chambers, and the chilling words of Adolf Hitler and his followers being read out over loudspeakers will make you come out a different person than you were before you entered. The museum excels at bringing out your empathy. Their terror becomes your terror,  and their suffering becomes your suffering. The sensory experience made you forget about the honking of LA traffic outside and put you in 1940s Germany. TVs lined the walls, displaying photographs of mass graves piled with dead bodies while recordings played of laughing Nazi generals telling their compatriots to finish their drinks. Our tour guide brought us to a model of the gates of hell and beyond. Many of us cried for them and their pain, but some felt detached because they didn’t want to think about all the innocent men, women, and children who were murdered with no remorse. They lived and died in the past. We can’t change what happened to them, so what are we supposed to do to help them? This question has been asked many times, and our guide gave us an answer. We have a responsibility to make sure everyone remembers the horrors of the Holocaust so it may never happen again.

A Poem From a Union Soldier's Boots

I am leather, soft and worn out from use

I have seen horrors and I have seen victory

I have trudged on through mud

I have splashed through creeks running red with blood from the fallen

“War is hell”, someone said

Then I guess I’ve been to hell and back

You’ve never seen things like I’ve seen

You’ve never been where I been

I have stood upon many battlegrounds

Grounds soaked with the blood of human beings

I have been cleaned more times than I can count

Cleaned of dirt, mud, blood, and tears

I have seen too many tears streaming down faces as young as 16

Pray, children, pray you will never see those people or be those people

I have walked through tragedy.