ABSTRACT
Whatever happens to us, as this opening quote underscores, can permanently shape our brains, at any age. Truly traumatic events, ones that threaten our very existence, even though long buried, may be recalled unbidden from the recesses of our brains by some seemingly innocuous stimulus. Our experience, the nature of the environments in which we live, really does matter. This chapter examines in what ways our experiences shape us. Every society has had its own theory about this and establishes child-rearing traditions that it believes will produce its vision of “ideal human beings.” Of course, that vision changes with time, as a culture’s underlying beliefs shift and it creates new institutions and then tries to shape people to fit them.
