Significance of Instinct
Photo: A Cabin by Alexander Hayes
Here I am sitting bare-chested in the warm glow, faint light at night in a cabin I’ve hand-built from mud pile to shiny tin roof.
The night air blows in on me cooling from a thirty-nine-degree day to something even half-human tolerable. My partner's dog lays on his deathbed struggling to breathe. My car’s windscreen cracked from a flying stone. Overdue for service 12 thousand kilometers ago we ferry children vast distances praying each time the car won’t give up.
My partner’s car lies still, immobile needing a new gearbox. Our credit cards maxed out till we are in arrears. My shoulders aching from scrubbing the floors of the adjoining shipping containers that we lie in and call our bedrooms. Hotbox by night we run fans till we can’t stand the hum anymore.
We still have no shower nor hot water but in relative terms at least we have the water now connected, saving us carrying six buckets a day from a distant tap to flush the toilet, wash dishes, fill the kettle, wash etc.
My instinct tells me that despite health scares, daily money worries, and hourly emotional roller coasters that it will all be ok. I trust it will be ok as it would seem that anything else would be a preferable route with which to take life.
So what of the significance of instinct?
“… A first thought is that of our basic instinct as humans to protect others and ourselves. Perhaps a general idea that our instinct is ours and ours alone. What essentially is ‘instinct’ you might ask? I’ve often contemplated what life might be if we were unable to ‘feel our way forward’ or as First Nation people globally attest, to dream into existence our own reality, not simply think we have no power in doing so.” (ref: Paddy Roe)
Whilst we may often be not conscious of the manner in which we make decisions on a moment by moment, hourly, or daily basis there is a correlation, I believe, between that which we have learned and that which we instinctively recognise as significant.
The term ‘instinct’ it seems gives rise to a key facet of my PhD which upon the outset for me was seemingly irrelevant to the key subject area I chose to research. At the beginning of the research journey, I was set on an outcome that would inform changes in education sector policies to harness the use of wearable cameras in the learning environment or workplace setting. How blindly naive I must have been to think that this outcome alone would have contributed anything to the body of existing science in the world.
As I near completion of the PhD I am struck with the instinctual feelings that arose as I immersed myself at the time as an avid education technologist, perplexed as to how I had not “seen” the bigger picture and the impact of my own actions at that time.
I was guided selfishly by a mantra that change is inevitable so those not keeping up with change as being redundant and superfluous as an employee to an organisation. At various points through that journey, I witnessed fellow colleagues being made redundant as the switch to technology-facilitated online learning and mobile learning gathered pace. I joined and sometimes led initiatives such as the Australian Mobile Learning Network (AMLN) and on reflection, this was all in response to my own myopic version of vision for a technology-facilitated society.
In essence, I inadvertently introduced the very technologies that would lead to those redundancies. How could have I been so blind at the time to the trajectory and inevitability of implosion that my actions were likely to create?
So gradually I gained an understanding that whilst the Internet would bring about great benefits to humanity that it also had the propensity to give rise to great control, carnage and cultural genocide. Whole departments in the Australian Vocational and Education Training sector started to close as teaching switched over to learning on demand, remotely accessible via the internet.
“… instinct or innate behaviour is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour.” - Wikipedia
“… I am bringing into focus within my PhD the direct correlation or relationship that arises from certain professional entities coming into contact with others. In essence, for example, the innate behaviour of engineers as they socialise with science fiction writers.”
According to Wikipedia, “…the simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern (FAP) in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.”
If the FAP as described brings about a series of actions without variation then perhaps that’s why these two cohorts frequent the same bars, laboratories, fetish establishments. Maybe, just maybe as one dreams the dreams the other follows and tries to bring these dreams to reality. Take for instance a science fiction author who pens some rancid prose, it passes through peers till it has hit a likes status befitting funding and finally ends up plugged firmly in the psyche of mid-teen to the late-life male psyche, though the film, gaming, merchandise and of course, upgrades.
I also believe that instinct as a literary term is a shallow, Anglo-celt expression which only touches on the surface of what we actually mean by ‘gut feel. Think for instance how many times today you have been guided by that ‘gut feel’, how many times you consciously made a decision or took a path to a result that was based on that instinctual feel forward feeling.
Sure, technology interrupts that by having the convenient answers when we need them but how many times today did you actually ‘feel’ and then make a decision based on your hunch, knowing, suspicion or any other term that co-joins that of instinct.
So at best, instinct is ambiguous, neatly abstract, sufficiently far enough away from our liberal selves as ‘just a feeling’. The purpose of this PhD is to dissect circumstances, reflect on learning from experiences, develop an understanding of the moments where I broke through old instincts, and embraced a better way of grounding reality.
For me, at this present time, sitting in a cabin, seeing the faces of my happy sons smiling back at me from a photo frame, adjusting in my chair to better see the smoke from the Indian incense that my partner punctuates the air and ambiance of this little wooden home with, my triggers take me to visualize past times and to bask in the incredible time of the present moment.
My instinct tells me that there is a time and place for it all, but the hardest and most rewarding of life journeys are grounded in the collective consciousness, humanity that extolls the virtues of basing life-breaking decisions on instinct. Even as I write free form I know that more changes are ahead as I sift the piles of literature before me. Perhaps what I’ve discovered is not unique nor contributing yet I have a hunch (pardon the pun) that there is much to be gained by paying greater attention to the way we feel of life, acknowledging the deep divides we observe around us as our children argue with us about screen time, shaking in rage with withdrawals, exhibiting behaviours and physical manifestations akin to that of autism, a schizophrenic and techno-bipolarity.
It begs another question. What of the significance of instinct - is it enough simply to say it sometimes guides us in our decision making or as I will argue, instinct is as ‘litany’ is to Australian Aboriginal people. Our ability to tap into that energy, that connection means we have a better way of seeing our way forward, responsibly living a life worth living, not simply a capitalist virtual dreamscape.
