It’s true that we inherit some characteristics—from nearsighted blue eyes to perfect pitch—and that there are all sorts of biological influences on specific talents. You could inherit height that is suitable for basketball or the innate grace of a slender dancer. But inherited inclinations and potential don’t guarantee that the talent will flourish or even manifest beyond a little spark in nursery school. Still the mythology that predates any knowledge of DNA persists and now clings to science for validity.
So much is made of the stuff that we are made of.
Both of my parents were avid readers and excellent writers/storytellers. Is my passion for writing rooted in some kind of blood born ability or did it come with nightly bedtime stories in a house full of books and people who told great stories, read all the time and made weekly visits to the public library? It’s likely a combination of the two, but I’m betting that had I had an adopted brother he’d be imbued with the reading bug and maybe the writing one, too. This is a variation on the nature versus nurture debate, but from the angle of talent—and potential talent.
I just read ‘Lovecraft Country’ by Matt Ruff. It is creepy, scary, intriguing fun and at the heart of the story is the idea that BLOOD, in the guise of inherited magical abilities and inclinations, is real. The fact that the critical inheritor of abilities from the historic wizard-ish coven leader, is the descendent of a child born to a slave in the antebellum south makes the mid-20th century setting compelling. (It’s about to be a series on HBO, we’ll see how it turns out as books-to-TV can go either way.)
While reading it, I became hyper-aware of this idea of something being “in your blood.” We often talk about an ability “skipping a generation” or being the one of a group of siblings without the family talent. It got me thinking about the current interest in ancestry, in DNA, in family origins, and how this kind of science argues in favor of what feels like an ancient concept. The carpenter’s son becomes a carpenter, the soldier’s son becomes a soldier… But what of the son who hammers his fingers into bloody stumps and yearns to bake bread (or tend an apple orchard or brew ale)? What about the daughter with the carpenter’s genes who lives in a time and place without women carpenters? Lots of stories right there.
A talent being in the blood is a great backdrop for fiction. Real life? Is often complicated. We are a stew of genetics, experiences, family stories, location in time & place, and, I believe, so much more. Still there is something tempting in the notion that our essence and our destiny is somehow rooted in our blood.
Oh! This is one of my favourite topics. 😀 Despite all the hoo haa about genetically modified this or that, the truth is that genetics is incredibly complex, and not just because each individual inherits half of all their genes ffom each parent. Every mixing of genes also triggers a cascade of genes that are turned on or off. And then there are the expressions of genes that require combinations of genes with a particular recipe of on offs… Ahem.
We’re born with potential. Whether that potential is realised, well, that’s environment and luck, imho. An ancestor a long way down on my Dad’s side of the family was quite a famous poet. But he was a monk so… My Dad was an engineer who played the violin and recited poetry. He helped me with my homework, but neither parent read to me, certainly not in English!
My Dad made sure I’d learn the piano, but I fell into reading almost by accident. I’d had an operation on my eye and wasn’t allowed to watch TV. No one said anything about books, so in my boredom, I started reading. Now I’ll read toilet paper wrappers if there’s nothing else around. As for writing? Who? Me? Yet here I am, writing scifi for…almost 20 years now.
I sometimes think that human development is like a game of pinball. We start out with something, get pushed into the world, bounce around for a while, more or less at random, and finally end up with a score of some sort. 😀
I Love the pinball game analogy!
Yes, there’s a good deal of random chance and circumstances. You get dealt a genetic hand with good things, not so good things, and just plain odd ball things like super curly hair. We are what we make of the strange mix in game of pinball with bank shots that enhance and misses that diminish the value of any given shot. Some people even manage to “tilt” the machine in their favor!
What fascinates me most is the persistence of the idea of blood as destiny and how it weaves itself through stories old and new.