Epigenetic Inheritances

and your brain on admin

Greetings friends and readers. I’ve got one really interesting thing to share with you this week and then a little personal update.

Epigenetics

The first thing is about epigenetics. I have heard of this concept before but I accidentally came across a really interesting discussion of it on a ten year-old Joe Rogan podcast with Rupert Sheldrake that I happened to be listening to whilst I was working out. It begins about half an hour in (I think) but the whole conversation is fascinating.

Epigenetics is essentially the theory that environmental and behavioural factors can be passed down from from generation to the next. So, as I understand it, we might have the idea that physical characteristics like height and hair colour are passed down from parents to children but epigenetics says that there is far more to it that that. The skills we’ve taught ourselves, the behavioural traits we have cultivated, the type of things that we have trained ourselves to know and love and pay attention to: all of these things may get passed down to the next generation also.

Rogan, hearing this from Sheldrake, talks about the way his daughters seemed intuitively to know certain martial arts moves and to use them when they were play-fighting, even though they had never been formally trained. Rogan recognised them as the very same moves that he had spent his life perfecting since he was a young man. Sheldrake talks about the musical culture within his family that has been taken up by his children. There are even studies that show that eg children with musical parents or parents with other skills are more easily taught those those things from scratch than children who don’t have them in the family.

Fascinating stuff. And it speaks to the fact that we seem to be so much more interconnected that we are conditioned to believe in Modernity. We are taught to think that we are just blank slates when we are born and that “talent”, whatever that is supposed to be, is simply some kind of random ability thrown up by our genetic makeup. But what if there is much more to it than that and what if our children actually - to some significant extent - inherit not only our physical traits but also our experience?

One of the implications I’ve thought of is that it would probably make sense to test this with one’s own children and to try and build on the work that has already been done as it were. Which makes me feel better because I have been teaching my children piano for a few years now. And actually the two older ones seem pretty good. And they do seem to get things quite intuitively and quickly. I have taught other children before but not enough to know if my children are especially quick. But they are certainly not bad.

Anyway, I just thought that was interesting food for thought.

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Personal

I have a bit of leave to take before the busy Advent and Christmas period at the end of the year, so I’m writing this at the end of a three-day period which has largely consisted of lots of admin and recording a couple of podcasts.

While I’m not working I’m planning on reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, which is a book that I’ve been meaning to attend to for absolutely ages. I’d also like to spend a bit more time in silent meditation and prayer, so hopefully I’ll find a bit of space for that. I’ll try and write some kind of entry here for next week to let you know how it’s all coming on.

Thanks so much for subscribing to this blog and reading it. It really means a lot to me and it helps me financially in a significant way. Until next time!

Your brain on admin.