.....it's a word I've been dying to use ever since I learned it a couple weeks ago. It refers to the process some fish naturally take when they migrate upstream to spawn. Salmon do this. They fight the river's coursing current, fight the natural flow, watch their other fishy friends go with the flow and swim with the greatest of ease as they fight nature on the outside and risk all to embrace it on the inside. It's hard and many salmon never make it back. Some have heart attacks and die, such is the strain on these little anadromous wonders. But those who make it spawn in glory. What a natural wonder!
Do you feel it? Yes, here comes the metaphor. I'd like to consider myself anadromous in a certain way. There is the natural flow of things; cultural, societal, biological. It's all very tough to swim against but I simply cannot ignore what's going on inside me, no matter how the currents rage around me on the outside. This inner truth always trumps the outside influences, whether they come from a book, a magazine, a billboard, a song, a voice, a joke, an institution, or a whole relationship. Even when the influence comes from my own mind or my own body there is a deeper truth still, far more quiet but somehow more poignant and piercing. I see some of my peers, going with the flow. Some of them think I'm just crazy. I get all sorts of warnings. "You're going the wrong way! What are you thinking?! You're gonna kill yourself!" What they don't know is I am not headed toward death but toward the only life worth living.
2 comments:
I would caution one from "trusting" such instincts (read literally and figuratively). I would guess (though I'm not a biologist) that the anadromous behavior was selected for by way of traditional evolution - the process of natural selection which has contributed to (if not driven entirely) the evolution of life on earth - thus far. Those poor little fishy wouldn't know any better even if there was a better way to survive (perhaps there is). They just follow the "flow", albeit in reverse.
Here we arrive at a very important distinction - a level of evolution if you will.
Question: At what point does rational thought have more influence on survivability of a species than traditional natural selection?
Possible Answer: The point at which rational thought can contribute to adaptation faster than random mutations (rough definition of the traditional natural selection mechanism).
Support: I would argue evolved humans can think, learn, and change behavior within, say, one year. Let's say on the order of years. Random mutations take generations and sustained environmental circumstance to persist and play out the advantage sufficiently to "infect" a large population at a given time. For humans, generations represent many years... and it's a growing number as life expectancy increases.
Conclusion 1: Humans are evolving faster by way of thought than traditional natural selection.
Conclusion 2: Be careful trusting primitive instincts alone, even if they really, really feel like they "flow"... those could be rooted in an evolutionary advantage which was only applicable a million years ago, or perhaps only a few thousand years ago. Otherwise you may also find yourself swimming the wrong way up the river.
Let us all continue to think and evolve - perhaps now redundantly so.
In response to Jassem:
I like your response. Thinking is what we need to do in order to evolve. Well, it's step one. We need to think first, discuss, listen, consider, meditate, formulate, plan and then comes possibly the most important step: execute. If we hope to change we need to take action. If we've been doing things wrong our whole lives, maybe for generations, it isn't too late to make a shift. It is very difficult, however and it will feel very unnatural for some time. Perhaps a long time. I know there are things I've acquired behaviorally that turned out to be maladaptive. There are things we do "naturally" to self medicate. Point is, turns out there's a better way, albeit harder, in a sense. Sometimes things that require more effort at first yield wonderful results down the road. All successful people know that. It's the old ant vs. the grasshopper story. One played the summer and autumn away while the other put in the harvesting efforts and only one survived the winter. Taking the path of least resistance is often considered natural. It is also often the surest way to destruction.
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