Friday, 21 April 2017



The fourfold hormone/neurotransmitter system as mapped to varieties of motivation provides a good but partial picture of the wheel of life, that is, the internal dynamics of the life-illusion that maintains the integrity of the dream. Characterisations of the poles, however, tend to stress passive descriptors and miss the sense of how each provides a distinctive system of desires and a corresponding colouring of truth. They each have their modes of satisfaction, but also of outrage, of high and of low intensity. Still, you can begin with a rough list: the dopamine system: risk, novelty, creativity. the serotonin system: sociability, prudence, conformism. the testosterone system: skepticism, assertiveness, directness, decisiveness. the oestrogen system: empathy, imagination, trust, practicality. Doubtless there are more that would be needed to gain a full picture, to say nothing of the cultures associated with each of the chemicals, endogenous or exogenous, that screws around with the balance. The point is that they suggest an elusive but plausible grasp of inner variability. If you could just pin down the churning between these systems you would be less surprised by how what seems true or desirable in the morning seems false or repulsive at night and vice-versa. The gestures of understanding that you come upon which seem to reconcile opposing tendencies, or to sublate one in another would suddenly seem less profound. If we lacked a peripheral synoptic view of all our constitutions we might even slow down the movement, being tossed from one to the other, but as it is there are few things we like better than the tranquility we imagine we are experiencing as we recollect one passion from the heart of another.

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