🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
Am I a product of my environment? Is my personality a manifestation of conditioning that has been imposed by outside forces?
Yes.
Am I responsible for the characteristics that congeal into the person I am defined as? Am I the motive forced that decides who I am as a man?
Yes.
These two viewpoints may seem diametrically opposed, but they are not. Neither is it contradictory to say that the validity of each changes depending upon time, circumstances, and even awareness. Once upon a time I was a child who could not be held accountable for instinctual reactions to external stimuli. Even as an adult some events cause a response that is so viscerally necessary that conscious control cannot be expected. Such a fight-or-flight response is made prior to conscious awareness of the decision actually being made.
When I was young and pliable I experienced many different types of trauma. Being as so much happened during my so-called “formative years”, I could easily blame who I am on what I went through. How easy to think that my “formative years” formed who I now am. Yet, that would deny any personal responsibility for who I am.
One trait that I have retained from those early years of my journey through life is that I refuse to be a victim. As with any aspect of a person’s character, this principle manifests in various ways. As it pertains to this current subject, I will not be a victim of my own past, of prior victimizers, or of any ghosts of my memories. I am not helpless.
I do admit that my childhood experiences are responsible for the creation of many bad qualities that I was forced to face. The child who experiences those events was definitely a product of his environment. Case in point: His refusal to be a victim caused him to fight anyone who tried to diminish him in any way. He did not understand why such belittling made him angry, but he knew violence was the response to anger. Was this child a product of his environment? Was his personality a manifestation of conditions that had been imposed upon him by outside forces?
Absolutely, yes.
I am not a child anymore. I am not that child anymore. I was still that child when I first came to prison, though.
For much of my first year or two in prison I was locked in a cell with very little to do. I had virtually no financial support so I could not afford the extra amenities that inmates could purchase such as fond items, cosmetics, extra clothing, a television, radio, even books and magazines. My time was spent in my head. That was a scarier place to be than a cell, at that point. To be so trapped while struggling with one’s own demons is not a good thing. I would agree with those who were around me at the time who described me as “crazy”. That is a very imprecise term, but it fit. I was.
I was explosively reactionary in word and deed. I lied about everything for no reason. I refused any advice, all orders, and defied all authority. I don’t want to dwell on a litany of flaws, so suffice to say I was acting as if I were crazy. I still believed that I was a victim and that I shouldn’t be in prison.
Eventually I started to read a lot and, in reading, I found peace. I could shut out my surroundings, enter another world, and discover new ideas. Initially I didn’t read novels or fiction, so I started with a physics textbook. I found comfort in the ordered world of math and the certainty of one definite answer. I moved on from there to philosophy and religious texts, and eventually into fiction.
At some point my curiosity found a juncture with introspection and I began to wonder why I did some of the things I had. Up until then I never really thought before I acted. I flitted from one event in my life to the next, like the stranger in Camus’ novel, with little actual decision process that I was aware of. When asked why I did anything, I could seldom give an honest reason because I was almost completely reactionary.
This was a significant step in my path to no longer being a victim of my past. I began a process of growing up that day. I finally realized that I had deserved to be incarcerated because I was acting like an animal instead of a human being. If reason is what separates us from the beasts, then I was an animal in my lack of use of that faculty.
It hurts to admit that I was 27 when I began to grow up. It wounds me deeper to know that someone died needlessly because I refused to put away my childishness sooner. I had exposed myself to so many different religious beliefs, philosophical ideas, moral principles, and general world views, yet I had held onto a feeling of being a victim of my past. Am I responsible for the characteristics that have congealed into the person I am defined as? Am I the motive force who decides who I am as a man?
Yes. I am responsible for all that I have done and will do. I have been judged for what I have done. I ask to also be judged for what I will do.