
This is my (slightly edited) response to a author's post on another blog, where the author contended that being a victim to circumstances - or rising above it - was always a matter of choice. I felt strongly, so I responded:
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"I think I can see the point you are making here – that because you perceive that you have choices, then other people should be in the same position.
There are a couple of reasons that I can’t agree. The first is that my academic training in infant and childhood development quite clearly shows that the influences that an infant, child and adolescent are exposed to shape the very structure of their brain. Through this shaping, certain responses become habituated in them, but even more profoundly, certain forms of thinking become habituated. Our forms of thinking are tightly interlaced with our emotional beings, which becomes the single most powerful informant of the way the world looks to us.