Moblog 1 - Ethics and the Chocolate Factory
Posted @ [20 Aug 2005, 01:11:38 PM]
Pop question:
What do 'love' and 'salt' have in common?
Chemistry.
The article I just read tells me that their similarity lies in the fact that they both can be defined by their chemical formula. Only that NaCl is much easier to derive at compared to the many many chemicals that apparently causes the feeling of love.
To most of us, love is something abstract, a warm fuzzy feeling when you get close to the one you feel attracted to, and you get sweaty palms start to stutter and feel extremely nervous. and yet all this can be explained through chemistry. One well-known love chemical is phenyl ethylamine or 'PEA'. When you are infatuated or 'in love' with someone and are in his/her presence, our brain will begin to excecrete increased levels of PEA. Another euphoria-inducing chemical in your brain, norepinephrine, stimulates the production of adrenaline and makes your blood pressure soar when near the person you are attracted to. This explains why you might experience a pounding heart or sweaty palms. during strong surges of emotions, there's actually one part of your brain running the other - the cortex is where your brain controls logical thinking while emotions are processed in the limbic system. When too many happy chemicals like PEA and norepinepherine flood your brain, they head straight for the limpid system.
Sources of PEA include chocolate. (Think: why people adore the semi-sweet and totally nuts Willy Wonka). the romantic tradition of arriving at one's door with a box of chocolates has scientific and logical proof after all. Just think about it - she goes home from a date with his chocolate, she eats chocolates and thinks about the chocolates and that is likely to lead to thinking about the prince charming who gave her the chocolates. Chocolates increase PEA levels; she experiences a mild sensation of love; and than she connects the sensation with the random guy she went out with. Tada. Chocolate and cupid are now best friends.
But while this is all fascinating and appealing to our desire for logical rationality, I personally find this fact disturbing. Technology has progressed this far, so far as to being advanced enough to tell us the scientific and logical explanations of why certain things happen they way they do. perhaps as an arts student, the way I see it is that (taking the example above) if you could use chocolate to control the PEA levels of another individual, doesn’t that mean we are inherently also controlling the person and the person's freedom of choice. The poor girl doesn’t really have a choice does she? Since PEA is a chemical that invariably acts according to its scientific rules.
If you take this a level higher, or a step into the future, where technology has gone even further as to calculate the formulas of other emotions, we can possibly predict human reaction. 
Take for example, the fact that I’m writing this post on impulse. My trigger: the article I read about concerning love and chemistry. The trigger is an external factor, but my reaction to this trigger is due to my human nature. Soon enough, though,, genetic technology will purport to tell me exactly what my human nature is. Now than, aren't our characters molded by a combination of genetics and external factors or environmental factors? Yes, but our initial reaction to those external factors that later developed our character is still based upon our genetic code and how we were programmed to react to certain things. And this begins at age zero. Our character will perenially change, but the constant in that equation is our genetic make-up.
I don’t think I’m wrong to say that external factors all have a predictable future, i.e. if a tsunami was supposed to occur, it will occur, and that the only thing that can change it is human interference, which again boils down to the combination of genetics and environmental factors.
Of course we don’t have the technology to predict our future and maybe we will never have because we will never be able to predict the the occurrences of natural phenomenons even if its destiny is set. Nevertheless, this logic may not be wrong just because we don’t have the technology to work it out. What this does imply, is that our future is already pre-destined down to the last detail. We are than no different from organic robots, with no freedom of choice, with no control, only visualizing our future through our own eyes. Any attempt to change our destiny is probably part of destiny’s course for us.
The way the matrix put this was that it only seems like choice, because we are unable to see the big picture and are only able to see things from the perspective of one individual in the midst of 6 billion others.
It is thus why I like to not believe technology. We are supposed to be irrational beings, that defy all forms of logic. And even if there is a logical reason to why we defy logic, I’d rather not know. i do suscribe to the belief that the reason why technology will never be able to explain who we are because there is a certain metaphysical, almost spiritual aspect to us that no science can comprehend, and that is why we still are humanly human.
I am very aware that there will be many a person who will disagree with me, but that's what forums are for, right?
For now, I’d just like to stick with studying econs, and ultimately learn how to establish a chocolate business. C=