I think I'm genetically predisposed to certain types of behavior.

I feel like I was born adversarial to authorities or 'group think'. Even looking back on childhood, I was the kid that rarely did what they were told to do, and often disobeyed simply because I was told to not do something, when I might have done what they wanted on my own volition, had they not said anything to me.

Reverse psychology didn't really work on me, either. I was too smart for that. I remember one time my parents told me they didn't want me to mow the yard anymore, and I was perfectly OK with it. It turned out to be a failed reverse psychology ploy. The yard went for 2 weeks without getting mowed, and after that they offered to start paying me more for mowing the yard. Where they were mistaken, and why the reverse psychology didn't work, was because they assumed I would take the initiative to mow the yard after they told me not to do it.

As an adult, you have to pick and choose your battles wisely though, but my nature to be adversarial is still very much 100% there. I might go along with something, temporarily, but given the 1st opportunity to throw somebody under the bus, or turn against you with acceptable consequences, I will. That's just in my nature. I don't know why. But the stricter the structure or environment is, the more adversarial I am.

I was a troubled child, even though my situation didn't really account for it. Upper middle class family, and my parents weren't terrible people. I was just always a little hellion.

I remember being 6 years old, and my parents signed me up for T-ball. Very first game we played, at my very first at-bat, I freaking struck out. I was so steaming pissed, that I started flailing at the tee with a bat, and beat the crap out of it. I nearly knee capped the person behind me. Nobody likes going up to the plate and striking out, but I viewed losing like it was a personal assault on me. Meaning, my brain gets the two mixed up. Again, this isn't normal, and I didn't consciously choose to be this way.

There was a story about a Viking who lost a game to some other kid, and split the other kid's skull with an axe. I don't remember all the details, but it went something like that. During a different time period/scenario, that very well could have been me.

As an adult, I've had to learn to simply distance myself from competition, or simply downplay it, because I don't take losses very well. Competition honestly brings out the worst in me as an individual. If I'm gonna lose, I'd rather lose for not trying than lose and give it my all. If I'm sure of victory, on the other hand, I'll play to win and rub it in your face.

So basically, I'm going to have to reiterate that there is no situation in my life that would have accounted for the development of these types of behaviors. If that's true for me, then it can be true for others as well.

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Sounds like a standard story of a spoiled youngster to me.

I wasn't spoiled. Pretty much all the kids in my neighborhood had fancier toys, and newer video game systems, when I didn't. My parents could have afforded to buy me this stuff, but didn't. I was stuck with an Atari system while most of other kids had SNES or Sega Genesis systems. I had to save up allowance money from doing chores to buy a Sega Genesis. When most kids got presents like that for a birthday or Christmas. My parents never bought me a car either.

And I think it might go deeper than just behavioral tendencies. There are certain things I have an aptitude for, and other things not.

Like, I was known as the kid in the neighborhood that knew how to fix stuff. Other kids would break video game controllers, remote controlled cars (we called them turbo hoppers), and occasionally mountain bikes, and I just knew how to fix the stuff. I received no training, from my dad or anyone else. I just remember breaking stuff, and getting in my dads tool box one day, and was surprised at how easy it was to fix a lot of things.

I even had someone bring me a Sega Genesis. The system was dropped on the ground, and didn't work, and made a weird noise when you powered it up. So I took the cover off, and looked and listened. I isolated the noise to a specific location where a capacitor connection was broken. I knew I'd get shocked based on a previous experience with electronics, so I took a pencil and pushed the capacitor down to where it had a proper connection, and then the system displayed on the screen. Then it was a matter of wrapping it up with some electrical tape to hold the connection into place, and call it fixed.

I remember trolling the neighborhood kids into having a remote controlled car demolition derby......when I had the biggest car! Mine was a monster truck looking one, and the other kids had some that were smaller. Mine took a little bit of cosmetic damage, and one of the kids was bawling in tears over getting his shit rekt, and you know, I helped everyone fix their stuff except for the kid that cried. 90% of his damage was cosmetic. He stampeded off and slammed his car into a trash can. None of us really understood why he was crying, because he had more stuff than any of us. We eventually kicked him out of our cliche and started picking on him instead. I think the only reason we became friends with him, is because he had all the video game systems + dozens of games for each, and all the games everyone wanted to play.

I guess you could say I was the ring leader of the little clique we had. I never had social interactions as a child from a perspective outside of 'cool kid' cliques.

"The illusion of free will is so complete, that it may as well be real." -- Bozo Erectus

I'm of the mind that 75-80% of what we do and how we act we cannot actually control. Genes play a big role, but so does our brain which often acts as its own free agent. Practice, by which I mean paying thoughtful attention to, may help.

I remember playing SF2 against people when none of us could consistently do any of the special moves. Like when someone actually landed a dragon punch with Ryu, it was a true wtf moment. Most of the time I did one was when I messed up doing a fireball, and it was a whiff 90% of the time. There was one time I landed 2 in a row, and people were scared to jump in on me for a couple of matches until they figured out I got lucky.

I remember cheesing everybody with Ryu doing nothing but jump in, double roundhouse. One of the kids I played against thought he got good at doing flash kicks with guile (about 50%), and I just kept jumping in and cheesing him anyway. Ryu jumping in 100% for a double roundhouse vs a 50% Guile flash kicker wins every time. With Guile being mighty salty.

Eventually someone got cute and decided to pick chun li, who's the queen of jump-ins. All I remember was that none of the normal moves any character had would beat Chun lis jump ins. Either dragon punch or flash kick that shit, or GGs. So Chun Li was banned from selection. There were at least a few normal moves that could take out Ryu's jumps, if properly timed.

If you have the will, you can always influence a behavioral pattern, even if you will always be predisposed towards a certain type of reaction.

One of the strongest catalysts for that is - love, love and respect for other life. Being without both is rooted in your experiences since you were too young to even remember them - apathy.

And there is always a reason for everything, even if it isn't worth blaming circumstances as a change always starts inside. But saying: "that's just the way i am, genetically", is just pushing responsibility away and blaming something, a powerless position excusing the continued behavior. With age change gets more difficult, especially if you never figured it out growing up and never started building a pattern of it.