Even if it all comes down to chemicals

Sometimes I consider that all our emotional states come down to the chemicals running around inside our bodies. It's easy to make a case for this. So if that's true, why would life and all the things we do have any meaning?

I think the answer is that the chemicals are there as a result of processes: interactions, thoughts, the food we eat, and so on. In short, our daily lives and the choices we make are where the chemicals come from in the first place.  A case can easily be made for this too.

Yes, but why not use shortcuts? Why not just throw some of the right chemicals in and make everyone happy? Don't we all want happiness?

In other words, rather than trying to feed our hunger, we could just dope ourselves up until we don't care. Or we could take soporifics and immerse ourselves in a virtual reality that resembles heaven. Or any other variation on chemically induced happiness that you care to think up.

The fact is that this happens all the time. The most common daily example is drug use, especially those drugs that cause psychological dependence. They are showing us a better time than we could get in the non-drugged-up world. 

You could also say that a great portion of our online activity is another form of escape from reality, even though these examples beg the question of what reality is. If we play the game and define reality as 'natural human experiences, interactions, and the physical world' then I suppose we might be speaking of the Amish or other societies that minimize technology and stress physical presence and personal interaction.

In a more mainstream sense, we might say that reality consists of waking up and for most of us going to work and doing some sort of interaction with others to make our daily bread, having and raising children, getting old and dying. Even though none of us, hardly, do this without sometimes escaping reality, through daydreams, liquor, movies and other technological distractions, or drugs. 

If we jump through all these definitional hoops, we've pretty much defined any chemical shortcut to happiness as bogus. In effect we're saying that it doesn't all come down to chemicals, negating the title of this article.

So it comes down to reality and how you define it. Mathematicians have the same metaphysical problem when dealing with paradoxes that arise because of infinities. All in all, discussions of this nature are a great escape from reality, don't you think? Say, pass me that bottle.

Reinterpretations around us

Of COURSE change is inevitable. Yet we strongly yearn for things to stay roughly the same. Indeed, a great part of our consciousness is based on arguments (some would say facts) such as the law of identity and the Little Orphan Annie Law (the sun will come up tomorrow).

The Bible draws its strength from this concept, as does Capitalism.

But hold on. If all these things we are hanging onto are so fool certain, then how come change seems to be coming at us with increasing speed?

It's time to look at focus and framing. Jack Canfield, the Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author, rightly says that we control our destiny (some might say our very reality) largely by how we choose to respond to the events around us. Respond with resort to stability and logic, and to some degree you can tame the tiger of rapid change. Simply discard those inputs which don't fit into a framework and keep the ones that do. Occasionally you'll be blindsided and even perhaps knocked to your knees or killed, or driven insane. But that has always been a possibility.

This induced blindness is what we call rationality, and in terms of efficacy, it is rational indeed. The easiest way to stay on course is not to look at what's happening in the other lanes or on the side of the road.

Of course, we need to be aware that we are living in a culture of voluntary mass distraction. That simply means that it is trendish to be distracted as much as possible while still performing at a passable level. Never mind that the real work getting done is accomplished by decidedly old-fashioned drive and initiative. You can't tell me that the recent discoveries in technology and psychology were the result of whistling over beers in the parking lot while listening to the latest device. Focus is very much alive.

Why then, the emphasis on the distraction? Might we not argue that mass distraction very nicely serves the engineers who are driving society? Are we not easier to predict, influence, herd, control, when we are barely able to function, all because of a voluntary movement to conformity masked as relevance?

We can even see this phenomenon in past times, if we frame it properly. What was World War II, but a conveniently botched result of world economic stagnation, which was used to focus and drive conformance for the next 50 years?