Emperor Penguins go through a death-defying mating ritual whereby they forgo food and shelter for months at a time. They waddle over 70 miles to the same patch of ice each time in order to mate and give birth and ostensibly to keep their young from harm’s way, though not always successfully. Sea turtles live for well up to, and sometimes beyond, 100 years, throughout which they travel thousands upon thousands of miles all over the world, from shore to shore to shore. And every time they nest, they return to the same space to within a hundred yards on the same beach on which they were born. When the queen ant of a colony dies, the worker ants quickly take a batch of the most recently hatched female eggs,to a separate enclosed “room” and when the larvae hatch, they receive a specially nutritious diet. The worker ants then seal the room and leave the developing larvae to devour one another, and whoever emerges the victor is hailed the new queen. These behaviors are, for the most part, completely baffling to us. And so we, as humans, have created a concept called “instinct” to help us understand the behavioral patterns of animals. “Instinct”, as defined by Webster’s Medical Dictionary is:

1 : a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason

Without involving reason…hmmm. The penguin returns to the same patch of ice because there is less danger there than at the water’s edge. The sea turtle returns to the beach because the safety of that particular location is proven in the initial survival of that very turtle. The ants recognize the necessary qualities of resilience, durability and strength in the one who is to become their colony’s official procreator. But none of these animals makes these decisions consciously. In fact, if these animals could choose, they probably would choose differently; many of their “instinctual” behaviors make their individual lives far more difficult. The old example of salmon swimming upstream, for instance, they often die in the process of procreation. So if it were up to the individual salmon, he may not make that particular journey, but it is not up to him. Why? Because he does not have the ability to reason. He cannot weigh the consequences of his actions because he cannot conceptualize things such as time, life, death, knowledge, reason; he cannot deem one thing as more important than another because his mind cannot comprehend two things at once. He cannot compare. In fact, Mr. Salmon can only remotely understand what is directly in front of him at that particuar instant. So why does he swim so steadfastly up that stream? To ensure the survival of the species, you say? Well, yes, but he doesn’t know that. Why does HE do it? Instinct. It’s largely inheritable and unalterable. Unalterable because he cannot choose to do otherwise. Whew. Okay. Now. Humans cannot not choose. Everything we do, have done and will do is a choice. Because we are innately born with the ability to conceptialize things such as time, life, death, knowledge, and reason, we do weigh the consequences of our actions. In every capacity. Even when we do not neccisarily reason consciously, we are still making decisions based upon our unique knowledge of the world as it stands. Our unique knowledge stems from the fact that because we have the ability to use language as a representative means of communication, we can conceptualize the abstract, lending us an inherent ability to reason. It seems cylical and weird, I know, but bear with me. There is not a single instance I can think of in which humans display instinctual behavior that cannot be thwarted by our conscious or subconscious mind. We have no unalterable tendancies toward anything. Perhaps, taken as a whole, humans have the survival of their species in mind, but that’s just it, it’s in mind. Every human’s particular response to the best way of going about preserving our existence is vastly different based upon that particular human’s knowledge/understanding of our existence.