Book 2: “The Deadly Dungeons of Baba Yaga” Page 13
TRAVELOGUE
NATURE VS. NURTURE REVISITED
or
BRYAN TALKS TOUGH, NIKKI TALKS NICE, AND I TALK FINANCIAL SERVICES
11 October 2014
Greetings, honored reader!
Bryan’s really something, isn’t he? How would you like to work with him as I had to? Every workplace has someone like Bryan, the local Grade-A (fill in the blank with your favorite derogatory term!). B. there’s no avoiding these people. No matter how rigorously you try to A-Hole-proof your environment, like cockroaches they somehow find a way to sneak back in and make your life a living Hell.
Let’s not be too tough on Bryan, though. After all, he wasn’t always like that. Before his reincarnation into a Dwarf by the Thinker, he was actually a pretty nice kid: thoughtful, generous, respectful, and courageous. So what happened? Is there some-thing inherent in being a Dwarf that makes a person a jerk? After all, some time ago I discussed how becoming a Swamp-Man had given Seth urges and impulses which he didn’t have before his reincar-nation, urges and impulses forced upon him by the needs, chemicals, and hormones of a Swamp-Man.
Does becoming a Dwarf mean becoming an auto-matic A-Hole? Well, not necessarily. It’s far more complicated than that. I’ve worked with plenty of Dwarves here during my tenure on the Wyrld, as any longtime reader of these transmissions knows (and as seen, for example, HERE ), and I can say that they can indeed be truculent, conniving, greedy, and suspicious. The dangerous environ-ments in which Dwarves lived and thrived over the millennia worked to make them highly intelligent in the matter of survival, of defense, and in the man-agement and protection of vital but scarce re-sources (read: hoarding!). Yet this was smoothed out and managed by Dwarven culture, which stressed rewarding one’s friends and allies while taking a suspicious view of outsiders. In fact, over the centuries, I met many a generous and noble Dwarf, so being a Dwarf did not necessarily make one a jerk.
However, somewhere deep inside, the Dwarven survival traits live on, and though you can take the Dwarf out of the mine, you can’t always take the mine (as in, “MINE! All MINE!”) out of the Dwarf. Bryan, without the ameliorating cultural influences and upbringing of Dwarven society, had little to protect him from his Dwarven urges. I, however, still saw the seeds of greatness buried deep within him which only needed a little nurturing to blossom and bloom.
So let’s be more forgiving of the A-holes and jerks in our lives, shall we? Somewhere, deep, deep in-side, there just very well may be a Dwarf lurking far back in their genetic line-trying to get out!
Until next week, dear reader!
Cognescentii blessings!
—The Traveller