Our chemical selves

Sometimes I find myself quite fascinated by the chemical forces at work behind all that we do and all that we think. For every twitch and every passing thought, neurons are firing off neurotransmitters. We are but the sum of these chemical reactions.

Zoloft, which I have written about, is a selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor. Effectively, it causes more seratonin to get passed around inside the body, which in turn makes you feel subtly better about things. It also makes you a bit friendlier, and it seems to suppress sociophobic tendencies, at least for me. It can make you slightly more reckless than you would normally be, which can turn out to be a good thing when you're the kind of person, as I am much of the time, who exhibits high levels of risk avoidance behavior.

We are all under the illusion that we make choices, and that for each choice we make, there is some alternative that we could have willed into being. It certainly feels that way. But really, it seems to me that what we experience as choice is the natural outcome of a series of chemical reactions in our bodies. Just as water flows according to the physical laws governing nature, our thoughts progress in serial fashion. The choices we experience ourselves making are simply the natural chemical outcomes subject to physical laws, even if we lack the capacity to truly observe it all.

All you need to do is stimulate the brain in just the right way, with drugs or with electricity or even (creepily) by touching it, and you can alter a person's thoughts and behavior. You can change who they are. Science is only beginning to unlock some of these secrets.

Cause and effect are illusory. More accurately, they are simplifications, since everything causes everything else on some level. Ultimately, whatever started things in motion with the Big Bang (which, in itself, has a lot of unknowns and may not represent a beginning so much as a transformation) set in motion the universe as it is now and will be in the future.

People like to point to quantum physics as a signifier that there really is choice, that outcomes are affected by observation and that conscious action impacts reality. However, it is my belief that science will eventually discover a deterministic reality underlying this apparently non-deterministic quantum one.

My view is far less romantic than the idea of making a personal choice that affects outcomes. It reduces us to little more than observers of our own actions. In fact, I contend that that is precisely what consciousness is: passive observation. I also believe that consciousness is not binary; you are not either conscious or unconscious. Rather, consciousness is a sort of trait inherent in all things, but some simply lack the chemistry to process information or, beyond that, achieve self-awareness (which, I contend, is based on the illusion of disparate selves).

There are many consequences that arise from this view of reality. However, I am on the train and about to arrive at my station, so I won't get into them now. Maybe some other time when I'm in the mood.