Nature, Nurture, or Bacteria

For decades, scientists have debated the issue: Are we who we are because  of our Nature (e.g. DNA) or because of our Nurture (e.g. upbringing, life  experiences)? Both sides have their points. 

Now it turns out there’s a third player, a variable that includes none of our DNA  and is only very indirectly impacted by our parents’ pedagogical choices: the  independent micro-organisms that inhabit our ‘gut’. 

To whatever extent we buy into this new thesis, we accept the notion that we  are Zombies, that our apparently intentional acts are at least influenced, if not  controlled, by organisms that are biologically unrelated to us. Our biomes  consist of independent organisms that ‘choose’to live symbiotically in our  stomachs and intestines.  

Defendants in criminal cases now have a new defense. In addition to… 

➢ “My genes made me do it,”  

➢ “My childhood made me do it,”  

➢ “Alcohol made me do it (I was overserved),” or 

➢ “The devil made me do it,” 

I can now rely on something new: “My biome made me bad!” 

This argument may be the most persuasive yet. I have to deal with my genetic  inheritance and my childhood traumas in everything I do. I can choose to get  drunk…or not, and the court may not believe in the power of Satan. But who  can deny compulsion from an independent, outside source? 

For example, if someone put a gun to my head and said, “Mug this man!” I  would probably not be held liable for my actions, assuming the threat to my  safety was real and imminent. I am acting under the orders of another and  disobeying those orders would put my life in jeopardy.

How much more so if the ‘gunman’ consists of trillions of invisible microbes  occupying space within my body and continuously exchanging ‘information’  (instructions), i.e. electrical and chemical signals, with that body! 

As kids we fantasized that we were inert action figures being manipulated by a  more advanced race of ‘children’ living in dimensions imperceptible to mere  mortals. We were like characters in The Lego Movie, where the choices and  actions that seemed so real to Emmet were actually the choices and actions  of Finn, a 10 year old boy living in a dimensional reality unknown to our hero. 

“They directly affect your nervous system, shaping your mood…the trillions of  microbial residents in your gut (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea) also  communicate with your brain. Without them, we wouldn’t be who we are.” - Manasee Wagh, Popular Mechanics (5/16/2025) 

This last sentence, seemingly innocuous, has profound philosophical  implications. “Without them, we wouldn’t be who we are.” 

“Who R U?” - Alice in Wonderland. You are not your genes, you are not your life experiences, you are not what you eat (or drink), you are not Lucifer’s  lackey…and you are not your biome. Who are you then? 

According to Buckminster Fuller, you are a verb. According to Alfred North Whitehead, you are process. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, you are neant  (nothing). They are all on to something but, bad news, none of them will get  you acquitted of first degree murder. 

We live in a world where we are surrounded by ‘existents’: sugar and spice, snails and tails, terra firma below, firmament above. But we are none of these  things, Neti Neti (‘not this, not that’). We are the negation of what is  (neant), the transformation (verb) of what was, the becoming (process) of what will be. Since we are nothing that has ever been, is now, or ever will be,  we are truly nothing (neant): “My name is Nemo” (Odyssey, Book 9)… and  that’s a good thing.

Because I am ‘nothing’, I can be anything. In the context of what I have  inherited, I can be whatever I choose to be. (I can’t be a pro basketball player  because I inherited a 5’ 9” frame and a pot belly…but I can be anything else!) 

There are guardrails but within those boundaries I can do and be absolutely  anything I want to do or be. My motto is ‘Don’t dream it, be it!’ (Rocky Horror  Picture Show); but once you are it, realize that you are not it.  

I am free. More than that, I am ‘freedom’ itself. Freedom is ‘my nature’ and my  ‘freedom’ is the total absence of any nature. It is through me (and every other  ‘me’) that freedom enters the World. 

I am the negation (neant) of what is, I am the transformation (verb) of what  was, and I am the becoming (process) of what will be. I am who I was at birth (or before), I am who I will be at death (or after), and I am who I was every moment along the way. Like Parmenides’ Aletheia, “…ungenerated and  imperishable, whole…complete…all together, one, continuous…” I am the  immobile pivot at the center of a perpetually turning wheel (‘The Great  Mandala’). 

So I am not my DNA, or my life experiences, or my biome. Each of these is  important but only as part of the guardrails. They leave my essence, my  freedom, unscathed. They are not who I am…because my name is Nemo!

***

Fernand Léger’s The City (1919) is a large, vibrant canvas that captures the dynamism and complexity of urban life just after World War I. Using bold blocks of color, overlapping geometric forms, and fragments of signs and machinery, Léger evokes the rhythm of crowded streets, modern architecture, and industrial growth. The painting celebrates the interconnected energy of a bustling metropolis, where people, technology, and movement form a single, pulsing organism.