Seneca Sailer

Okay, he doesn't differentiate between genotype and phenotype, and he's unaware of epigenetics, but this isn't bad for a contemporary of the emperor Nero (and a Stoic to boot!):

No amount of wisdom, as I said before, ever banishes these things; otherwise--if she eradicated every weakness--wisdom would have dominion over the world of nature. One's physical make-up and the attributes that were one's lot at birth remain settled no matter how much or how long the personality may strive after pefect adjustment. One cannot ban these things any more than one can call them up.

Relative absolutism

Are you an absolutist or a relativist when it comes to defining contentment and happiness (or telos, if you prefer)? Is there one definitional formula, or are there countless possible combinations leading to the same answer?

I'd describe myself as a relative absolutist. That is, there is one specific optimal formula for realizing happiness for each person, but there as many exact formulas as there are people. Nature presumably matters a lot, and nurture plays a part, too. Gardening works for one guy while spelunking does it for another guy. But exploring caves can't work for the first guy just as cultivating cucumbers won't do it for the other one.

Basically, Curly was on the money.