Kotowaza of the day: nature trumps nurture*
- Japanese:
- 三つ子の魂百まで
- Romanized:
- Mitsugo no tamashii hyaku made
- Meaning of Japanese:
- What a child learns at three is unforgotten for 100 years
- English equivalents:
- What is learned in the cradle is carried to the grave
The child is the father of the man
A leopard cannot change its spots
*clarification:
where
nature = (inherited Nature) + ((imprint) + (early vital character-shaping experiences))
nurture = enculturation, socialization, and all other subsequent attempts to change nature
These are definitions tailor-made for this post and this post only. Please to not confuse with classic nature v. nurture debate.
posted @ 03:54 by eBohn - permalink
5 Blogger comments
5 Comments:
Yo man, nice kotowaza, but I am going to quibble with the post's title. I don't think that the kotowaza is really about nature vs nurture...I think it's about enculturation and the malleability of the young. Which is strictly nurture, no?
Okay, so there's Nature that we're born with, and there's nature that is acquired early on and is near-impossible to change henceforth. Obviously, I was just making a feeble play on the nature/nurture argument and my "nature" and the kotowaza's "nature" is the lower-case version. (Although the leopard, taken literally, would support a capital N.)
No arguments here that the kotowaza is about the malleability of the young, but it's just as importantly about the relatively static "nature" of the person after a certain early point. Right?
It is my general policy not to change my pithy/trite/irrelevant titles once I've spent the requisite 2-3 minutes thinking them up. There are more kotowaza than Texans at a presidential inauguration, after all, and only so much time on this earth. But I can see you feel strongly about this title in particular, so I went ahead and amended it for you.
Please let me know if you're not 100% satisfied. Alternatively, you could suggest a better title.
Yo man, I was just making conversation. I think the appropriate response is to tell me to go jump in the lake. Or to start my own blog if I don't like the way you do yours...oh, wait....
Oh. You Americans have such odd patterns of communication. That's the last time I take you seriously! ;)
Uh, that last one was Eric. I don't know why this finicky thing didn't recognize me.
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