Are we a mere reflection of our surroundings?

Watching Papillion the other day, where Steve McQueen was held in a dark prison cell for years with nothing but cockroaches to keep him company, got me thinking about the building blocks that shape us and how they are absorbed from our surroundings. Are we merely reflections? The age old debate of nature vs. nurture comes to mind.

If a person is hypothetically brought up in a different environment from that in which they are in now, would they end up to be a different person? This theory is opposed to that of genetic composition, i.e. nature, which states you will become the same kind of person no matter where you are raised. Thus a criminal would always be a criminal, wherever the roads of his past lay. If we are to accept the former, that we are a mere reflection, then we are hinting that we are really empty inside. The word ‘mere’ hits the mark. All humans could just be vacant shells composed of mirrors that absorb and reflect back anything which hits them.

Others judge us according to the situation we are in. The house we live in, the clothes we wear and the objects we interact with. In a way these others are not very far from the truth, even though they are stereotyping. We absorb these items of our surroundings, or better to call them bits of information, and incorporate them into our personality. That is why when a person changes his surroundings, he is automatically assumed to have also changed his character. Take for example going on holiday, where all of a sudden the traveler’s senses are bombarded with new waves of information. The traveler will temporarily change, if he/she accepts it of course, for the duration of that holiday. For example, a student going to Cancun will become wild and erratic due to the very nature of the place and people there. On returning home, they find that strands of holiday evidence has latched and remained with them, which they will reflect on to their local surroundings.

To understand the question better, it might be easier to imagine a person with no surroundings at all, as Papillion had in that prison of the mind that they caged him in. What would happen if we placed someone in an empty dark room and observed their changes over time; mentally, spiritually, and physically? For a while, the mind would survive on old memories, previous impulses and reflections. Days or even hours later, depending on that person’s disposition, hints of unruliness would seep into the brain…flashes of uncertainty, uncharacteristic of the subject, which are a side effect of the conditions they find themselves in. As more and more time passes, the starved brain would start to deteriorate, eating itself away in despair. Quite soon, the subject will have become a shadow of their former selves, a mere afterthought to their pre-existence. Without a steady stream of light, they cannot exist. Therefore just as we are dependent of that ‘light’ for our mental survival, we just as easily lose it if it is not constantly reinforced or renewed.