Of orchids and dandelions
Nov. 23rd, 2009 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonI now link you to my favorite article from this month's Atlantic. It's about genetics to begin with, but also vulnerability, flexibility and ultimately success.
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics...
At first glance, this idea, which I’ll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to [current thinking]. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it’s actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior. Risk becomes possibility; vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness. It’s one of those simple ideas with big, spreading implications.
Despite the best efforts of 23andme.com, I don't know quite what I got in the genetic lottery, but I know it's been a long time since I thought of myself as a person who could thrive anywhere. (Survival is a different discussion; I survive like a... hmm... imagine a ferret crossed with a thistle and driving a little ferret-tank. Thriving is a whole lot less intuitive).
A long time ago, in college, a boyfriend and I were talking about places we might want to live someday. My list was short and conservative,1 and he said I was like one of those fish that can only live where ultra-hot water comes blasting out of vents in the ocean floor, and so we referred to me as a tropical fish for a while. The same topic's come up a few times over the years, including last year with a psychiatrist trying to get me to distill some kind of lesson out of the whole Slogger almost-getting-fired fiasco. "Maybe the lesson I can learn is just that I don't do well everywhere, and I do need to be on a team that suits me." Still, the notion isn't one I've talked about very much in public, because who wants to be the fragile, whiny, spoiled princess who needs everything just so in order to get on with her life?
This is something I'd like to stop fighting and work on accepting -- that environment can have a huge effect on me, my happiness levels, how successful I am at any number of things. I have this ideal in my head of someone who's completely self-contained and unaffected by surroundings, and it's easy to be disappointed that, in general, that's really not the case for me. What this article holds up as an alternative is the notion that sometimes the sensitive among us can do better than the dandelions if the environment is right... which is not to say I want to focus on any competitive aspect of life, but that the vulnerabilities mean that environment really does matter, and maybe it's okay that it matters, because the payoffs of that effect can be huge. It's a tradeoff that might have an upside as well as a downside.
And that new way of thinking changed things. I felt no sense that I carried a handicap that would render my efforts futile should I again face deep trouble. In fact, I felt a heightened sense of agency. Anything and everything I did to improve my own environment and experience—every intervention I ran on myself, as it were—would have a magnified effect.
I'd like to experiment with thinking in those terms.
1not politically conservative. The list consisted of Boston, San Francisco, and NYC. It was several years later that I decided I could probably do well in Seattle too.
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics...
At first glance, this idea, which I’ll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to [current thinking]. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it’s actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior. Risk becomes possibility; vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness. It’s one of those simple ideas with big, spreading implications.
Despite the best efforts of 23andme.com, I don't know quite what I got in the genetic lottery, but I know it's been a long time since I thought of myself as a person who could thrive anywhere. (Survival is a different discussion; I survive like a... hmm... imagine a ferret crossed with a thistle and driving a little ferret-tank. Thriving is a whole lot less intuitive).
A long time ago, in college, a boyfriend and I were talking about places we might want to live someday. My list was short and conservative,1 and he said I was like one of those fish that can only live where ultra-hot water comes blasting out of vents in the ocean floor, and so we referred to me as a tropical fish for a while. The same topic's come up a few times over the years, including last year with a psychiatrist trying to get me to distill some kind of lesson out of the whole Slogger almost-getting-fired fiasco. "Maybe the lesson I can learn is just that I don't do well everywhere, and I do need to be on a team that suits me." Still, the notion isn't one I've talked about very much in public, because who wants to be the fragile, whiny, spoiled princess who needs everything just so in order to get on with her life?
This is something I'd like to stop fighting and work on accepting -- that environment can have a huge effect on me, my happiness levels, how successful I am at any number of things. I have this ideal in my head of someone who's completely self-contained and unaffected by surroundings, and it's easy to be disappointed that, in general, that's really not the case for me. What this article holds up as an alternative is the notion that sometimes the sensitive among us can do better than the dandelions if the environment is right... which is not to say I want to focus on any competitive aspect of life, but that the vulnerabilities mean that environment really does matter, and maybe it's okay that it matters, because the payoffs of that effect can be huge. It's a tradeoff that might have an upside as well as a downside.
And that new way of thinking changed things. I felt no sense that I carried a handicap that would render my efforts futile should I again face deep trouble. In fact, I felt a heightened sense of agency. Anything and everything I did to improve my own environment and experience—every intervention I ran on myself, as it were—would have a magnified effect.
I'd like to experiment with thinking in those terms.
1not politically conservative. The list consisted of Boston, San Francisco, and NYC. It was several years later that I decided I could probably do well in Seattle too.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-24 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 06:19 pm (UTC)Pretty neat, and definitely-maybe some cause for optimism.