i don’t know how i typed up what i did yesterday, but it definitely took some very deep and unexpected turns. the fact that i have bitched so long about existence without bringing it back to simple justification is mystifying in how i never made the connection sooner. that was huge. but now it’s time to polish it up a bit.

ah yes, let’s bring this back to some hard chemistry here.

the whole idea of a bag of fluids fascinates me. most of the time, i just think of myself as something more of a concept, like what i expect to see in the mirror when i take a gander at myself. it’s all very abstract. it might be my training as a biologist (environment!) but when i sit and think about things like the soul and the self, i always boil it down to the chemistry in my body. this can be taken as a very bitter pill, that people are basically the way they are and experience emotions because of chemical reactions. it’s sounds too simple, but that’s what makes it beautiful. the fact that molecules based on how they are paired can have trillions of permutations is simply amazing. the fact that there are trends in these reactions that can be categorized is even more so.

i guess the fact that the ideas of self are so personal and mystical that to boil it down to science is crude and smacks of over-simplification. which it very well may be. but i feel that natural law plays a part here and the idea that millions of chemicals are interacting in millions of ways in my body to create something unique isn’t much of a stretch. something so unique that comes out of a wellspring of chaos is amazing, and almost divine. but divine or not, the product still exists, is here, and can be reflected on. the fact that we are catagorizing genes and establishing connections between all the systems in our body right now is some form of proof that out of this chaos springs order.

that’s a very bare-bones rationalization, but i’m not really looking to delve into that right now, it’s more of a prelude that comes more around to ownage of myself. i understand that there has to be a me here, a self, that is my own in a sense. my self is mine, but only by default. my mind is mine alone for the sheer fact that there’s no way anyone could have the access to it that i do. i could write a diatribe here millions of pages long and it still would only be a fraction of how i function as a self. in my mind, i am beholdant to no one, but no matter how i break it down, i am still tied to this vessel, this bag of water. it is mine, but it is still fleeting. not even in the sense of death and all that. i could just fall off my bike, hit my head, spill some blood on my brain and do some serious shorting out.

then who would i be? it would depend on what i shorted out. it might only be motor functions, leaving my sense of self intact but unable to really function physically with my body. or i could hit up my frontal cortex and basically become lobotomized. who would i be then? would i even know? the fact that i can’t know is what makes this self so impermanent. i think that there is an illusion of some type of permanence in all of this because wherever you go, there you are. i can’t just leave my mental self at the side of the road (in a sense, i’m not thinking about things like schizophrenia or anything), just like i couldn’t do it with my physical self. even when i do dream and feel like i am leaving my body behind, i am not. the structure of those dreams are tied to my physical being, which is supplying all the energy and nutrients i need to let my mind do something abstract. but maybe i’m putting too much importance on the factory here.

but here we come back to balance, one not existing without the other, the seeming duality of everything. but the way i’m looking at this now, one could not exist without the other. so how could there be duality at all? jesus, i’m not even gonna try and touch on that one at this moment. for now though, one cannot exist without the other, my mind and my body. the operative word there being “for now”. which may be a root for why this is all so tough to hash out. we have so much technology that is running parallel to ourselves, mimicing and modifying our “self”. it seems like we are so close to breaking the ties to the physical we can taste it. mastering our physical so completely that it is integrated into the mental. break the ties that hold our mind hostage, achieving freedom beyond our wildest dreams.

i’m swimming way out of my depths now though, and it’s tough to wrap my mind around that concept. it sounds so liberating and esoteric, but it’s about as unfathomable as losing my consciousness. the prospect of it doesn’t even get me all excited. it just sounds different. it’s not like freeing ourselves from one shackle will lead to fulfillment and understanding, it will only lead to more ideas that are considered limitations, and finding ways to break free.

but that’s a total gut reaction, there’s no way i could know. and there’s still a lot of ideas to sort through here.