Is it possible that our upbringing could lock us into a path that will strongly influence all future choices, beliefs, and desires? Is it possible that our early education makes us in a way incorrigible to any future correction?

Case study: appetite and ideological baggage

A long time ago I lived thousands of miles away from home in Japan, and several times I had a craving for comfort foods that I grew up with. Which were of course hard to come by in this new land I was living in.

In a way, what was in my head was extra baggage, in the form of my desires that were formed from my upbringing. My choice in comfort foods was entirely happenstance, coincidence of my environment, and not a result of my choosing. Similarly with other desires.

But is there any way to reshape this so I would crave different things? Could I intentionally change my comfort foods and other desires?

I also brought extra baggage in the form of beliefs, for good and bad. Most folks who grow up in the US has especially strong belief in autonomy and independence, and also arguably for the toleration of different opinions (though this has been obviously waning in recent times). Japan’s collectivist society was an antithetical challenge to this, and it manifested even in daily nagging. Sometimes in trivial things, like the way I personally opened my onigiri rice ball snacks from the convenience store. As I learned, it turns out there’s only one correct way to do this. And whatever that correct way was, I wasn’t doing it. This applies to many things: there is a proper way to do most things, and little toleration for deviance from that.

If I had been raised elsewhere, I’d likely have different ideas about autonomy, or at least those ideas held looser. Maybe I would have had cravings for different comfort foods. And maybe I would have been more comfortable in a conformist society like Japan.

And interestingly, maybe with such a radical difference, I would have been a fundamentally different person.

This comes back to education: if upbringing is an essential part of who I am, then this also likely applies to others. And if we care about who we’re surrounded with, then we should care about the quality of the upbringing of others as well. Ideally one that doesn’t cut off future possibilities for human flourishing.

What do the philosophers say?

It’s pretty hard to deny that education is pivotal. So we shouldn’t be surprised to find that great thinkers of our societies have thought similarly. It turns out that education comes up again and again in both western and eastern philosophy.

The Analects, a collection of saying from Kongzi (Confucius), starts talking about education right away:

To learn and then have occasion to practice what you have learned - is this not satisfying?

Confucius, Analects 1.1 (Slingerland translation)

He’s clearly not just talking about early formative education, but about lifelong learning, which gives me hope that we can actually change later in life. Even after seventy years, Confucius was still working on himself and trying to reshape his desires to keep them in check:

At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning;

at thirty, I took my place in society;

at forty, I became free of doubts;

at fifty, I understood Heaven’s Mandate;

at sixty, my ear was attuned;

and at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety.

Confucius, Analects 2.4 (Slingerland translation)

For anyone who’s walked outside into the world, we know that Confucius is the exception to the rule. It’s clear not all of us strive for this level self-refinement, or even have a desire to (perhaps an anti-education desire formed early?).

A lot of us apparently go bad and definitely don’t flourish. But why do some thrive and some don’t? Is it because some folks’ nature is bad or because their upbringing is bad? Confucian thinker Mengzhi (Mencius) used the metaphor of Ox Mountain to explain that (not without controversy) all humans are born good. They only turn bad when deprived of nurturing, analogous to our early education.

The trees of Ox Mountain were once beautiful. But because it bordered on a large state, hatchets and axes besieged it. Could it remain verdant? Due to the respite it got during the day or night, and the moisture of rain and dew, there were sprouts and shoots growing there. But oxen and sheep came and grazed on them. Hence, it was as if it were barren. Seeing it barren, people believed that there had never been any timber there. But could this be the nature of the mountain?

Mencius, 6A:8.1 (Van Norden translation)

Flourishing into full virtue never happens if the sprouts aren’t nurtured, or are chopped down.

That barren state is the worst case scenario of a bad education, incapable of flourishing ever again. For humans we see this in incorrigible folks who are perhaps past the point of no return. And that’s an important lesson for conserving our own energy trying to correct them; why spend effort on folks who are too far gone?

Plato also recognized this, and describes the scenario with the famous Parable of the Cave. Slaves in a cave, brought up from birth, are misled into thinking shadows on the wall are the truth, even though the actual truth is outside the cave. So content and satisfied with their self-assurance of their opinions (shadows) that they openly ridicule folks who return to the cave, after having been exposed to the truth outside. These folks will continue with the illusory business of the world (moneymaking), and never have a desire for something higher.

And Plato knew that education is crucial, and has ripple effects through the later generations:

And surely once our constitution is well started, it will, as it were, go on growing in a circle. For good education and upbringing, if they are kept up, produce good natures; and sound natures, which in turn receive such an education, grow up even better than their predecessors in every respect - but particularly with respect to their offspring, as in the case of all the other animals.

Plato, Republic 424a4-b1 (Reeve translation)

Plato’s student Aristotle, perhaps famous for his disagreements with Plato, actually seems to agree with him in this case:

It makes no small difference, then, whether people are habituated in one way or in another way straight from childhood; on the contrary, it makes a huge one - or rather, all the difference.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1103b23-25 (Reeve translation)

Importantly, the type of constitution one is raised in is also crucial in shaping beliefs about how a society should be ruled. For us, growing up in a democracy gives us not only experience into the success (or failure) of it, but also a very democratic slant to looking at the world.

It’s also a sort of cultural steeping that imprints on us the north star of the society as a whole. Oftentimes we unknowingly absorb this, even though the actual content of belief is just happenstance - whatever situation we find ourselves being born into. We live and breathe it as air. This imprints on us not only trivial things like those specific comfort foods, it also imprints basic ways of thinking of the world, and closes off paths that don’t resonate the right way or don’t give us the right gut feeling. Even paths that might be correct.

So much is at stake.