Emotional States and Chemical Changes

As I mentioned over to The Rundown, I am amazingly disorganized. And I use that word specifically; I am not unorganized - I am disorganized, meaning that I have "A System" and I have files and folders and cabinets and shelves, they're just in such a state of disarray that I can never find what I am looking for when I want it, and tend to come across stuff I've completely forgotten I even had at random times.

Today was one of those days.

I was (and still am) looking for notes on the S.A.F.E. RPG system for the website, and I came across a page of notes from some research I was doing a year or so back which I found interesting and pertinent to the recent conversation, re: poltergeists, Dæmonic infestation, Elementals, and so forth.

I was apparently thinking along the lines of the sometimes controversial and thoroughly modern scientific belief that emotions are caused and controlled by chemical changes within the body - something with which I stringently disagree. The priests of the great god, Science, have been trying for years now to reduce human life to a binary code - a series of chemical processes and switches in which there is no spirit, no real free will, no such thing as "being." I disagree with this in principle, and not necessarily on any socio-psycho religious basis, though those beliefs I hold cannot be completely divorced from the matter; suffice it to say that I believe people have a soul or spirit - even if you just want to call it a “personality” - which may have some scientific structure and can certainly be pondered from a scientific standpoint, but is not a fully scientific matter.

In my notes, I say, “If an agitated state at the time of death is associated with prolonged spiritual attachment to the prime material plane - and a haunted site is said to be likewise emotionally impacted - this proves that emotions are not chemical reactions. Unquestionably, emotional states result in chemical changes, but these chemical changes are the result of emotional status, not vice-versa. This then points toward emotional status and emotions [in general] being atmospheric in nature - occurring naturally on their own [separate from any internal chemical influence], but affected by other atmospheric influences.”

What this means is that, for example, you don’t get mad because your body suddenly dumps a load of Testosterone (that didn’t come out exactly right, did it?); your body produces Testosterone because you get mad. This sounds basic, but Science has been trying for a very long time to posit the reverse. Science is trying to tell us that we have no soul, no spirit, and no real individual personality; we are nothing more than a series of chemical reactions, and this simply is not true.

We are each possessed of an individual spirit which, though affected by our environment and experiences throughout life, are somehow formed when we are born. You can see this in the individual actions of children! This is important for many reasons, but goes a long way in proving the existence of Evil as a force unto itself.