Having trouble waking up after an afternoon nap. Took me a few minutes just to remember when, where, and who I was.

I had a fairly good grip on what I was. A human, probably, based on the fact that I woke up in a bed and not hanging from a tree.

As to why I was, really, does anyone know?

Actually, we know, we just don’t like the answer. There is something very deeply rooted in us that insists there must be some sort of reason for our existence and some sort of meaning to our lives.

But the fundamental existential truth is that there is no such thing. We weren’t put here for a reason (by who?) and we have no cosmic mission or purpose (for who?), we merely exist, just like the clouds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and that dog turd you almost stepped on in the parking lot.

Who the fuck walks their dog through a parking lot, anyway?

The fundamental existential conclusion is that there is no meaning to our lives except that which we give it ourselves. Within a creator to imbue us with their divine intentions, we are free to decide for ourselves what our lives mean and why we are here.

People don’t like that answer at all, though. It makes them feel cheated. And in a very real sense they were because our very strong social instincts tell us that we must have a role and a job in this big tribe we call life on Earth, and so we would rather think that we have a purpose and just don’t know it than face the fact that it just ain’t there.

Me, I am fine with a universe in which my existence has no intrinsic meaning. Honestly, I have been wondering why people thought there was a “meaning of life” ever since I was a little kid, and it took me a long time to come up with an answer.

It being my answer, it is based primarily on evolutionary psychology. We evolved to be members of small tribes in which we did, in fact, have a job and a role and a purpose.

But then agriculture happened, so towns happened, and groups too big to be a tribe happened, and then cities happened, so having to get along with throngs of total strangers happened, and eventually atheism happened, and suddenly the question of our purpose became an open ended one.

The last ingredient was expanding knowledge of the universe. With every major advance in our knowledge, our role in creation became smaller as our world became bigger and we stayed the same size.

Ironically, it’s stated quite well in this song about God.

That’s a take on religion that makes a certain amount of sense to me. It doesn’t cure me of being a nontheist, but that seems like a form of theism that is at least sustainable

I doubt anything can cure me of my lack of religious faith. Nothing logical, anyhow. Maybe when I am filled with terrible pain and death is coming for me and I am facing the grim grey void of nonexistence, the emotional appeal of theism will finally be strong enough to make me leave my logical mindset behind.

I wish I could do that now. And in a way, I am working on it. At the very least, I am trying to expand my logical mindset beyond mere logic so it can also encompass aspects of human existence that have nothing to do with knowledge or cognition.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

More after the break.

Thoughts on adrenaline

I apologize in advance if I end up just saying stuff I’ve said before. I did enough of that in part 1 today so I hate to do more of it, but this is what is on my mind right now and so this is what I’m gonna write about.

That is, after all, what this blog is all about.

Now then. Adrenaline. More specifically, the adrenalized state, otherwise known as the “fight, flight, or freeze” response

We all know that when we’re excited, whether it’s by lust, fear, or rage, we make bad decisions. And we all know that there are times when even the brightest amongst are functionally quite stupid.

I offer myself as a humble example.

But I don’t think people appreciate how deep the adrenaline effect goes. Adrenaline signals our brains to switch to a completely different modethan the one we use in our normal, every day lives.

We modern monkeys operate primarily on the slow circuit of the brain. This is the circuit that gives us reason, restraint, complex symbolic reasoning, and all the other higher brain functions that make us human.

This is, therefore, the part of the mind we consider “us”.

But adrenaline switches us to the fast circuit and it is all about NOW. It is optimized to make split-second “good enough” decisions rather than well considered ones, and most importantly, it immediately dumps out our immediate sense of the past and the future in order to make room for process the NOW.

The built in assumption of this fast circuit is that you are in some kind of life or death situation where all that matters is what is going on RIGHT NOW and to hell with the past and the future.

This immediately blocks all complex recall tasks. Hence your mind going blank before the big exam despite how much you’ve studied.

The fast circuit is also very sloppy in its reasoning because it’s all based on making sufficiently good decisions in realtime rather than better decisions at leisure.

See why I keep going on about not judging decisions made in the moment by the standards of our brains at rest?

That’s based on actual brain science.

It is almost like we are two different people in the same mind. There is slow circuit us,. often associated with lofty things like reason, logic, and the ego and superego, and then there is fast circuit us, whom we most likely associate with almost all the bad decisions we have ever made.

Judging one by the standards of the other makes no sense at all.

Now if only I knew how to stop doing it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.