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Running Away In Order to Thrive

Submitted by bhealy on Sun, 04/17/2011 - 1:59pm

It's been a week since I watched Adaptation and the same scene is stuck in my memory:

Laroche: "Adaptation's a profound process. It means you figure out how to thrive in the world."

Orlean: "Yeah, but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. You know, they just move on to whatever's next. But for the person, adapting is almost shameful, like running away."

While there are major parts of the film that I didn't enjoy, and I doubt that I would go back and watch it a second time, this scene made the two hours that I spent watching the film worthwhile. It made me re-analyze some of the major decisions I've made - leaving public school for boarding school my junior year, transferring from my first college to Bryn Mawr after my freshman year, and gave me a new perspective. While I feel that I ultimately made the decisions that were right for me at the time, and I wouldn't take back any of it, I couldn't shake feeling that I was developing this pattern for running away, an algorithm if you will. I felt guilty for whatever reason, and felt the same shame that Orlean mentions, wondering why I couldn't figure out how to thrive in one place. Like I was weaker for not being able to figure it all out the first time around. But now I see that I was meant to move on to all of these different places, and that I wouldn't have thrived if I had stayed put. Just because people stay in one high school or one college, that doesn't mean that they are learning to thrive more than I am - it could be the exact opposite. They could just be stunted in place, to afraid to move on.

Adaptation, and evolution, takes courage and acceptance, and in a way it also involves our own agency. Things are going to happen regardless of our effort, but without our mental willingness we will be just physically moving through life, not willing to mentally process how we are changing. The physical may be controlled by the greater powers at be, and we may not have much of a say in it, but how we perceive the changes we encounter is what really makes the difference - it's how we change.

Groups:

The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: EvoLit

Comments

Questions questions questions...

Submitted by elly on Mon, 04/18/2011 - 5:41pm.

In the following quote you point out one of the issues that we have been struggling with as a class throughout the semester:
"Adaptation, and evolution, takes courage and acceptance, and in a way it also involves our own agency. Things are going to happen regardless of our effort, but without our mental willingness we will be just physically moving through life, not willing to mentally process how we are changing...but how we perceive the changes we encounter is what really makes the difference - it's how we change."

Whether it is The Plague, Darwin, Dennett or Powers, or Adaptation, we always come back to the question of whether or not we can affect our own change, whether or not evolution is "positive" change, and if we have the agency to be directly involved. Do we want to just be plants? Avoid the shame in constantly changing, trying to better fit our new environments, the newest trends or a new relationship? And how can we even say that these changes and adaptations will be a positive change? I like this idea that how we change is through "how we perceive the changes we encounter," but I'm still not sure whether or not we can control this. (Yet another question we have been grappling with!)

memory

Submitted by skindeep on Mon, 04/18/2011 - 1:22am.

this is really interesting.. does memory hold us down and prevent us from moving forward?

thinking about it, it seems like we tie ourselves down to memory. our memory seems to work a little like a recorder - it just films whats going on around us. but we add to it, we select little bits of the film and play it over and over again - we create a strong connection between what happened to us and how it influences our actions in the future.

is it possible to just let our memory record things without getting especially attached to certain pieces of it? i dont know, but i hear it is. ive read that there are monks and saints who could have things happen to them repeatedly but not let it influence anything that they do. like the story we spoke about in which sisyphus continues to roll the rock up the hill despite the fact that it never reaches the top - he seems to have fought past his memory - seemed to have moved past it.

im not saying that that's what we should all aim for - not in the least. but what it be like, to be free of our memory? would be essentially be free of our pasts? how would we choose to conduct ourselves then? on what would we base our actions?

would it be liberating, a new kind of freedom? or would it just lead to new kinds of anxiety?