Development and Environment: Learning by Example

It’s a well-known cliché that humans are social creatures; we are shaped by our social interactions. If we are born into homes with morally upright and emotionally consistent parents, our psychological development tends to mirror and reproduce that. If we are born into homes that are run by authoritarian, punitive, emotionally inconsistent, “do as I say, not as I do” parents, our psychological development tends to follow suit. Our early life environment leaves an imprint on us, making it likely that we reproduce that reality in our adolescence and adulthood.

We learn through observation. Right from our first breath, we use the outer world to guide our development; what our priorities will be, how we will take care of ourselves, how we’ll interface with those around us, and in general, how to live. After all, we have no other information to go off. John Locke, a philosopher from years back, said babies are born as a “Tabula Rasa”, which translates to “Blank Slate”. And he wasn’t far off, we are born with maximal degrees of plasticity, meaning we are born with an innate tendency to be shaped by the environment around us. We aren’t born with definitive blueprints that can guarentee and guide our development. In fact, up until we are about 8 years old, our brain and the neurons that make it up form around 1 million synaptic connections every second and those connections are all highly influenced by what we experience. At the time of reading this, you have roughly made and maintained around 1 trillion synaptic connections. Think of how amazing it would be if a huge city was like a child’s brain and could form its general layout within 8 days.

For some of us, this can be of great benefit. Wonderful parents and early life environments make for a fantastic and logical layout, with perfectly laid out city centres, beautifully built self-sustaining suburban neighbourhoods and a well connected rural landscape themed with bountiful farmland to feed everyone with food to spare. If this city were a person, I would say they would be quite pleasant to be around, and they would probably agree it’s not so bad living inside this city.

Now think for a second, what if this rapidly constructed city was built during a devastating storm? How might a raging hurricane influence the way the city is built? I would guess that it wouldn’t be as logically laid out. There wouldn’t have been any thoughtfulness that went into building mom-and-pop storefronts that lined children-filled streets. There wouldn’t be well-constructed gardens and walkways along coastlines or any optimized street layout that allow for easy travel. The city planners would’ve clearly prioritized access to the most essential resources like cheap, barely satiating food and basic clothing. All the houses would’ve been made quickly and poorly, all clumped together with multiple families in each home. Now if this city were a person, what do you think they would be like? I imagine an individual who has become a bit of a storm themselves; vigilant and explosive, or completely exhausted, rarely if ever reaching genuine states of relaxation or leisure. I would guess that they might be difficult to be around, perhaps they’re inclined to manipulate you out of sheer self-preservation, willing to take food from your plate, and prone to outbursts at the slightest sign of provocation.

This is the reality of the developing brain and its surrounding environment. If we grow up in a stable environment, we’re likely to become stable individuals, and if we grow up in unstable environments, we’re likely to become unstable individuals. Fortunately for everyone, our cities are never done being built. There is no final cutting of the red ribbon to signify that a city is “finished”. It remains sensitive to environmental changes, buildings are taken down and rebuilt elsewhere, city planners are fired and others hired, mayors are voted in and out and the citizens that shape it come and go.

Leveraging Social Learning

Although we are most plastic and influenced by the outer world at an early age, plasticity as a whole stays with us for our entire lives. Although the general neural network is laid out, there are still many changes, both micro and macro, that occur right up until our last breath. Luckily for us, we can leverage this plasticity to improve areas of our psychology that are underdeveloped. We can make these changes in many ways, and one such way is through a conscious attempt at structuring our environment. After all, most of us are past our adolescence, and we have some say in what our environment contains, why not put our vote towards something useful.

So what makes up our environment as adults? The people and physical environments we surround ourselves with. By default, we tend to gravitate towards people who are similar to us because it makes us feel safe or at least gives us a sense of normalcy, but if one’s goal is to learn how to quell the storm they carry inside themselves, it is probably a useful endeavour to stop surrounding oneself with other storms.

We can leverage our capacity for social learning by surrounding ourselves with people we wish to be more alike. And given our immense level of connectivity thanks to websites like this, and social media, we have never been more capable of finding those people than we are right now. Start small. Take a minute, or several, and imagine the person you would like to be like. What are their characteristics? How do they behave in social situations? How far off do you feel you are from them in these ways? And simply put, start being that person.

And then go out into the world, and find people who resemble aspects of this new version of you. Go out and surround yourself with the people you admire and actually enjoy being around.

Social learning works in many ways, but primarily through our tendency to want to fit into our environment. Much of our social processing and behaviour is aimed at creating a sense of congruency between who we are and our environment. So if we know this to be true and we are shaped by our environment, then building an environment that is conducive for who we want to become is a perfectly logical attempt to make. Opposite to our early life, where we were more or less forced to adapt to an environment, as adults, we are able to consciously construct our environment to yield the same effect; we become a product of our environment.

This is one of many of the steps you’ll take in this transition. Although it may feel like a massive undertaking to completely redesign a city, all you really need is a plan and a desire to apply it.

You’re the mayor of this city. And you can start making some really good changes.

I know you can do it.