Is it nature or nurture (or some combination of both) that makes a person? What strange factors most decide the individual person a man or woman will become? How much is pure choice, and how much is causality and circumstance?

Learning is my pursuit of choice. I seek knowledge, insight, even pure experience where I can get it. Curiosity is one of my chief virtues, and I wish that it would have an even freer reign over my personality. Hesitancy also plays a role in the way I am, too great a role, and it holds me back in the grip of fear and caution. This balance of subtle contradictions that makes up a human personality, my personality: are they simply my nature, or does the influence of my past have the bigger say?

Of course, the debate rages even between absolute free-will models of psychology, absolute deterministic models, and the whole vast grey area in between. I happen to think that we’re born predisposed to certain desires and ways of being, but that our experiences, particularly when we’re young, inform and constantly modify the way we think and the way we see things. After all, we’re born with no knowledge or language that we could even think with. Thinking itself is a learned skill, a learned process, and those who teach us have a lot to answer for if they mess the tuition up.

Very little is really known about the human brain or how the mind works. But it seems to me that if a person is taught from an early age to love and find happiness in the world, he or she is more likely to grow up a loving and happy person.

Even though this is the case, very little education time is spent on this. Most education seems to be based only on the acquisition of cold data and technical skills that allow us to manipulate that data. Parents are expected to teach their children empathy and love, but what if the parents themselves are egocentric and loveless?

Surely there’s a strong argument that the education system itself could play more a role in this. Empathy, communication, and basic kindness ought to be taught to young kids in their early school life. These skills could be constantly encouraged, and no rewards would be needed because giving and receiving affection and kindness is a reward in itself for those involved. With proper nurture of the young, we could practically ensure a more loving and less violent future world.

Terrible as it is, I often see the opposite with most education systems. In school, kids are taught and encouraged to be ruthless and competitive. They get this message not only from teachers but also from the culture as a whole and the media. The same people pushing this way of thinking have the gall to moan when it transpires that we have whole generations who care only for themselves and what luxuries they can gratify their egos with.

Anger at this state of affairs, however, achieves nothing on its own. Action is required, and by that I don’t mean lashing out or starting some kind of violent revolution. Instead we need to focus upon a wiser and more holistic strategy.

Culture itself needs to change in a radical way if we are ever to escape an endless cycle of barbarism. Our society needs to be centred more on co-operation and compassion, less on materialism and ruthless competition. It is the spreading of this idea that is the real weapon for societal change. If you would like a better world, take this simple idea and spread it everywhere you go, tell it to everyone you meet. Remember that there is beauty as well as ugliness to be found in humanity. So, if a beautiful stranger comes up to you unexpectedly and asks if they can hug you, please reply:

Yes.