Riding the Wave

I used to be very troubled by the fact that my mind is basically just a very complicated chemical reaction. Thought, emotion, aspiration, and dream could all be reduced (or maybe oxidized) to basic organic molecules and cation gradients. Don't get me wrong, it still isn't my favorite thing to contemplate, but I put it in a new perspective this morning. As biology is increasingly melded with chemistry, and chemistry with physics, we begin to see the ways by which fundamental principles govern complex systems. For instance, traits may be determined by DNA, which is structured the way it is due to the interactions of nucleic acids, which interact as they do because of the properties of nitrogenous bases and phosphates, which react in specific ways because of the electrons in their molecular orbitals. Electrons, of course, and all subatomic particles really, are essentially wave functions describing the probabilities of their existence at a point in space and time. Despite the gross over-simplification and my minuscule knowledge of quantum physics , it makes me think about the fact that we are not just animals (as per Darwin's decentralization of humanity), we are not just unconscious minds (as per Freud's), we are not just chemical reactions sloshing around in a bony brain-case, we are not even collections of atoms. We are, as far as I can tell, probability functions with enough pieces to have a high degree of existence. The "Free Will" of particles notwithstanding, thinking about these kinds of things can lead to a very dark, scary, and confusing place, not unlike certain Baltimore neighborhoods late at night. In the interest of not getting mugged and beaten by my own psyche, I don't spend too much time there. But visiting every once in a while does remind me that living in a place where I can think of myself as a well-maintained chemical reaction really isn't so generative of existential angst. After all, it could be a lot worse: I could have to reconcile my rich inner life and sense of self with the notion that I am just a lucky interference pattern of quarks. Here, I have no choice but to take Hume's sacrament:

"I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. Here then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determined to live, and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life..."

(A Treatise of Human Nature, I.vii)

Drinking the Scotsman's claret absolves me of my grindings and rumblings, and all is well enough for now.