Monday, April 15, 2013

Adopted Thought

The first thing you need to know about Yoshimi, as featured in Yoshimi and the Shadow Clan, is that she's an orphan.  I am not an orphan myself.  I can understand, though, not just because they're a common trope in fiction, but because they're ultimately alienated individuals, who either lost or never knew their birth parents.  The ones who don't end up in foster homes are especially alienated.  We have families as a social rule for a reason, because they're the first best way to understand why it means to live in society.

The aspect of the orphan mindset that Yoshimi most closely embodies, however, is adopted thought.  I define adopted thought as thought that is not native to oneself but rather learned from someone else.  Some people live their entire lives subsisting on adopted thought.  It's just easier to accept what someone else has told you to believe about something.  Original thought is rare.  Adopted thought is not inherently bad.  Some people will just naturally assume that what they consider their original thought is in fact adopted thought.  They internalize the behavior they observe in others.

This is a matter of the old nature vs. nurture debate.  In psychology this is the phenomenon of determining how much of a person's psyche is determined internally and how much externally, or in other words learned or inherent behavior.  Did you get it from someone or did it develop of its own accord?

To an orphan like Yoshimi, this is very much a pertinent question.  From the perspective I took, she would be rebellious of all attempts to be placed in a foster home (which she fights against through thirty-six of them) because it would be like replacing her parents.  How, then, would she know if anything that she becomes is from herself and her dead parents, and how much from the strangers who took her in?  She's afraid of losing a link that only exists now in her mind.

Yet as the story develops she's told that everything she is, all her instincts, have been inherited from her parents, abilities she never knew she had but she's been using unconsciously all her life.  Studies on twins, who have the exact same genetic material, have shown that when they're separated and raised in different environments develop, in fact, differently.  I wasn't interested in taking a strictly scientific approach.  Biologically we undoubtedly inherent certain genetic traits, obvious ones like facial structure, hair color, body type.  The children of famous individuals often have a hard time living up to their parent's achievements, but a lot of that is simply the typical impossibility of facing pressure of that kind directly.  Yoshimi is in the unique position of doing exactly that but without the pressure.  Although since most of the people she subsequently encounters knew her parents, it's simply a matter of her own necessary ignorance.

When faced with a blank slate but a given set of art supplies, there's only a matter of variance.  That's the story of writing.  No matter how different, every story is the same, and it's a fool's errand to try and prove differently, much less rebel and deny and reject.  In Shadow Clan Yoshimi encounters James Peers, who refuses to teach her traditional martial arts methods because he believes in a holistic approach, or in other words the nurture approach by way of nature, absorbing what will develop as it's experienced, using one's own instincts to take whatever form will develop.

In adopted thought, it's simply a matter of learning.  That's what education is all about in school, taking what's given you without question.  In original thought, it's an interactive experience.  You accept and reject and modify as you deem necessary.  Truth is not always obvious, even when it seems that it is.

The natural instinct of any guardian is to assume that the person you're taking responsibility for needs your guidance.  If someone like Yoshimi doesn't believe that, or fears it, then there's very little to be gained by the experience.  She's an orphan because that's what she is and what she believes she must continue to be.  There was always the chance that a family may have presented itself that broke all her barriers.  In fact, the complete story is all about how the people she meets end up being a different kind of family.  They're all struggling against each other, but the real trick is that they don't let that get in the way.  That's the true definition of family.

I have a problem with people who rely on adopted thought.  I think it always shows, and it's damn depressing, because they never realize it themselves.  It's not always a bad thing, but it's a phenomenon that causes more trouble than it's worth.  Yes, it helps everyone function in a common direction, but it's also distrustful of dissenters, and that's never a good thing.  You don't always need a sword to confront it, and maybe Yoshimi's real story is that she's awash in a sea of original thinkers who are all struggling against adopted thought.

Please note that I'm not arguing against foster homes or adoption, but rather the belief that it's okay to deny the identities of those who are entered into these equations.  It only ever causes trouble.  That's exactly what Yoshimi believes, and most of this is merely subtext.  The story of Yoshimi is a metaphor for how tough life can be in any context, no matter what you believe or what you're struggling against.

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Please note that I'm writing about Yoshimi, as well as the Space Corps, all month long over at Scouring Monk as part of the A-to-Z Challenge.

11 comments:

  1. Andrew Leon posted along these lines a month or two ago - how most just absorb and go with the flow. I forgot how he defined it, but something to the effect that only twenty percent really thought for themselves.

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    1. I wonder if it's even 20%, but I don't tend to be generous in my estimations.

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  2. What a coincidence. I was pondering about adopted thought yesterday night, although I was not aware that's the official name. Anyway, I was thinking it was not very wise to relay on adopted thoughts too much. I'm inquisitor by nature but it's difficult sometimes to tell the difference between adopted and original.

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    1. It's not the official term. If you read me long enough, you'll find plenty of my unofficial terms.

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  3. Interesting idea, adopted thought. I can think of a lot of instances of adopted thought, mainly in politics, so I won't start a flame war by listing them. I can see how that would be a good character arc where a character is forced to challenge what he or she has always believed.

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  4. Of course if I agree with you then I'm adopting your thoughts and not thinking for myself. So I guess the moral of the story is to never listen to anyone or just think the opposite of them. But then you're not being original so much as a contrarian, just being different for the sake of being different, like all those dumb poser kids who dye their hair funny colors because they think it makes them rebels when really it's rebelling in a very conformist way. So maybe I should be original by rejecting your ideas here and just going along with what everyone else is thinking.

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    1. The whole idea is not accepting blindly whatever someone else thinks.

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    2. But I can't just blindly accept what you're thinking. If I reject what you're thinking then I should just blindly accept what you're thinking.

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    3. It's really about rejecting everything. Think of it like being assimilated into the Borg Collective versus joining Starfleet. One is very much your choice, while the other isn't. The Borg don't really give you to option, and once you're in, you think exactly like everyone else. It's the ultimate cult. Starfleet, meanwhile, is very much up to you. That's what I'm talking about. It's about the ability to make your own definitions rather than rigidly conforming to a single standard. Standards are great and all. They're incredibly helpful. But if you can't deviate from them, then they're no longer a standard. They're something else entirely.

      A pattern of thought that only follows a path set out by someone else, that's pretty dangerous, and history has proven that time and time again. A pattern of thought that branches out, however, has to ability to discover something new. It's the whole point of the Robert Frost poem "The Road Less Traveled."

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    4. I believe that first sense should have the word "not" inserted. For the record.

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