This article is long, but worth a read.
As someone with “orchid genes” in the family (both myself and my kid) it was encouraging to see that there’s an upside!
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, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.
I was thinking that, but for some reason “wrong kingdom” seems to fit mutepointe. Still remember the first time I saw pipewort and wondered why there are so few aquatic flowers. Dolphins of the plant kingdom.
Okay, well…all chiffing aside, that was a really interesting article.
2 quotes:
Yet attentional restlessness can serve people well in environments that reward sensitivity to new stimuli. The current growth of multitasking, for instance, may help select for just such attentional agility. Complain all you want that it’s an increasingly ADHD world these days—but to judge by the spread of DRD4’s risk allele, it’s been an increasingly ADHD world for about 50,000 years.
and, perhaps the take home point, in the author’s conclusion, after discovering that he himself does have the “orchid” gene, or the set of alleles that seem to put a person at both highest risk for crashing in a negative environment, but also (and more importantly maybe) in a position of being able to increase potential at a magnified level in a good environment.
I don’t plan to have any of my other key behavioral genes assayed. I don’t plan on having my kids’ genes done, either. What would it tell me? That I shape them in every encounter? I know this. Yet I do like thinking that when I take my son trolling for salmon, or listen to his younger brother’s labyrinthine elaborations of his dreams, or sing “Sweet Betsy of Pike” with my 5-year-old daughter as we drive home from the lake, I’m flipping little switches that can help light them up. I don’t know what all those switches are—and I don’t need to. It’s enough to know that together we can turn them on.
Anyway, after reading this I am grateful that, whatever other accomplishments I have failed to accomplish, and however I may displease myself at times, I was with my kids in a good way, and I think they turned out well.
We actually have two wild native orchids in our front yard. They’ve never bloomed, though; I think there’s something very particular, like a specific soil pH or mold infestation, for them to bloom. They’re still lovely plants, though.
Thanks Em, it’s good to know someone actually read the article
Exactly my impression. A bit ADD-ish and mood-swingy around here It’s been hard to cope with it in myself, though some really interesting creative things have come of it. Seeing these traits emerge in my kid keeps raising all kinds of self-doubt. This article helped me to feel a lot better about it. “See? It’s adaptive! Really!”
Great article, poor analogy. Orchids are highly successful and adaptable
Not the ones in my greenhouse Too hot, too cold, too humid, not humid enough, how much light? If more light they want more frequent watering, etc etc. I stand out there in the greenhouse looking at their chlorotic or stunted leaves and implore them “What do you want?!?!”
(Most of?) the native orchids around here have special requirements too - they need to have symbiotic fungi around their roots, or else. Cool analogy – “Some people need a certain kind of supportive environment in order to survive, and that doesn’t make them weaklings, it’s symbiotic”
Too hot, too cold, too humid, not humid enough, how much light? If more light they want more frequent watering, etc etc. I stand out there in the greenhouse looking at their chlorotic or stunted leaves and implore them “What do you want?!?!”