The Choice Is Ours Page #4

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You're making jealousy and envy.

That's where it comes from.

(Henry) But from a scientific perspective,

the environment really consists

of the moment to moment interactions

between your behavior

and those events both inside and outside you.

So, the environment is in constant flux.

(Jacque) You put the young kid

on your lap and the older kid.

You say "I love you both."

You never play with any one kid

or have a favorite.

If you say "You can go to the movie

but you can't because

you didn't do your homework",

when she falls down the stairs,

you have a grin on your face.

It's not that you're bad,

but you feel you've been mistreated.

(Narrator) Even our concepts of

aesthetics and beauty

are often attributed to an intrinsic quality,

but closer investigation

reveals that these perceptions

vary greatly from place to place

and throughout history.

(Henry) I think notions of aesthetics

and beauty are for the most part learned.

All you have to do are cross-cultural examinations

of what people consider

to be attractive and beautiful.

You'll find that they differ widely

from culture to culture.

Sometimes they differ widely

within the same culture.

(Jacque) There are people who wear

brass rings around their neck.

They stretch their neck.

If you take those rings away,

the head would fall over

and they call that beauty.

On some of the islands I went to visit,

if the girl had a buttocks

that stuck way out, that was beautiful.

The other girls were nothing.

(Announcer) Even a girl

might find herself shut up in a cage

until she's put on almost 265 pounds

that make her almost,

but not quite eligible for marriage in her country.

(Henry) I know there are suggestions

that there are genetic contributions

to what we think is beautiful,

but I think the most parsimonious

explanation we can have for

what constitutes beauty

to a given individual has to come

from that individual's environment;

the culture they're raised in.

(Jacque) If everybody had a nose a foot long,

you'd have surgery done.

There is no such thing as beauty.

It's all projection.

If you marry the most beautiful girl in the world

and she turns out to be a pain in the butt,

that face becomes ugly to you.

(Narrator) Some researchers are posing that genes

rather than upbringing,

determine if someone might become a criminal

and even a murderer.

(Henry) If you ask people to tell you

what determines whether they become

a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever profession,

most people will agree that

it has to do with your upbringing:

the influences from your parents,

from teachers, from others.

Not genes. Genes don't determine

that you become a lawyer or a doctor.

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