A person's current personality of love, hatred, jealousy, rage or

The words of Kim Ki-duk strike like a bell upon the soul: “A person’s current personality of love, hatred, jealousy, rage or a murderous intent and so on is formed upon genetic elements, education, the environment and a family a person grows in.” Here is a truth that resounds through the ages—that the human being is not born in isolation, nor shaped by chance alone. Rather, each life is a tapestry woven of many threads: the bloodline carried from ancestors, the education that molds the mind, the environment that surrounds, and the family that nurtures or neglects. The sum of these becomes the soil from which the fruits of the heart arise, whether they be sweet with love or bitter with hatred.

The ancients knew this well. Aristotle declared that character is not innate alone, but cultivated through habit and teaching. Confucius taught that a family’s order creates the foundation for a nation’s harmony. The great teachers of the past recognized what Kim Ki-duk echoes: that no man or woman is merely a creature of nature, nor purely of nurture, but the union of both, entwined inseparably. When we see jealousy, rage, or even the shadow of murderous intent, we must look beyond the surface, into the roots that fed such growth.

History gives us countless mirrors of this truth. Consider the life of Adolf Hitler. Born into a home of conflict, raised in an environment of poverty and disappointment, hardened by the humiliations of war, he carried within himself both the genetic fire of a restless temperament and the nurturing poison of hatred taught by circumstance and ideology. Out of this mixture emerged a personality capable of destruction on a scale unseen before. It was not chance that made him so, but the relentless shaping force of blood, education, family, and environment twisted toward darkness. His story stands as warning: if the roots are neglected, the tree may grow monstrous.

Yet there are also tales of redemption and light. Think of Nelson Mandela, born into a divided and wounded land, trained within the harshness of oppression. His environment could have forged him into a man of endless rage. His family history and the injustices endured could have turned him toward vengeance. Yet, through a different kind of education—both in books and in the hard school of prison—he reshaped his personality into one of endurance, forgiveness, and unity. The same forces that could have forged a tyrant instead gave rise to a liberator, because he chose to master them rather than be mastered.

Thus, the teaching is not merely to observe how personality is formed, but to recognize that we hold responsibility over its shaping. We may not choose our genetics, nor the family we are born into, yet we may guide how our education nourishes us, how we respond to our environment, and whether we will feed the seeds of hatred or the seeds of love. To say that a person is shaped by these forces is not to say they are bound in chains forever. It is to acknowledge that while destiny gives us soil, the soul may still choose what grows within it.

What lesson then shall we take? That each person must strive to be mindful of their influences. Parents must guard carefully the home they create, for in their love or cruelty they plant seeds that endure for generations. Teachers must wield their words with reverence, for they etch lines upon the clay of the young. And each of us must examine our environment, asking whether it draws us closer to compassion or drives us toward envy and rage. We are each both sculptor and sculpture, and the work is never finished.

Therefore, O listener, do not despair at the shadows within you. Recognize them as echoes of blood, of upbringing, of lessons absorbed long ago. But do not believe that you are powerless. The ancients taught, and Kim Ki-duk reminds us, that the forces that shape us are many, yet the will to reshape ourselves belongs to us still. Take practical steps: seek noble teachers, surround yourself with uplifting companions, build families of love, and educate your heart as fiercely as your mind. In this way, the inherited darkness may yet be transformed, and your personality may become not a prison of fate, but a monument of choice.