I am inclined to side with nurture. We all pretty much start out as blank slates. Then again, all of existence, which swings pendulum-like between the extremes, seems to wash us all along in its relentless tide. In many issues, we should rather look the more closely at personal choice. A choice may be as simple a matter as ‘it was easy’. However, choices returned to time and again take on the texture of nature. How are we to distinguish between habit and nature?
I have seen certain tendencies in existence that lead me to accept the natural swing between extremes. For instance, a boy with a worldly father may grow up to choose a life as a preacher, whereas that person’s son seems the more likely to grow up and reject the religious life style.
I think many people base their life choices on the kind of mind they possess. Certainly, if you look closely enough, you will see that a person who thinks like a policeman becomes a policeman. A person who thinks like a fireman chooses a fireman job. A man with the mind of a doctor will follow the path of a doctor.
As for certain personality traits, I think they may depend somewhat on a person’s strength, or lack thereof. It may be argued that I am a nice person because I do not have the strength to be otherwise. I don’t possess skill sets that would be of any benefit in a confrontation, therefore my natural choice is to avoid confrontations. Older people, as they loose steam, become nicer and more sociable.
Then of course there are the odds. There is a lot of scope to the human nature. There are bound to be a number of one type and a number of another type. Think of trees along a river. Each tree is different, and produces a certain volume of leaves (as representative of its type)—however, all of those leaves fall off into the river. Some leaves are carried all the way to the sea, but most are caught in the eddies along the banks, where eventually, a kind of settling occurs.