Emotions and Desires as Luminescent Specks of The Endocrine Constellation

The idea that man is fallen and as a consequence bound to meaning until death has been contemplated upon for millennia. Everything I am to list below flows from this simple fact, and nothing makes sense unless this presupposition is accepted as truth. For the longest time, I wrestled with the thought of the basic idea of meaning and, why for example, Buddhism (at least in its modern practice) rejects the very notion of desire. Suppose every stimulus, thought, sensation, emotion, want, and behavior fundamentally exists on the same neutral plane - why do then monks live and practice within nature, usually at higher altitudes, away from urban noise and filth, exercise to retain inhuman concentrations of carbon dioxide through meditative breathing, and devote their entire lives to arguably one of the most meaningful “callings” on Earth? The theoretical then seems to lie diametrically opposed to the very real biological and metaphysical benefits derived from CONSCIOUSLY DISCRIMINATING BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULI TO BRING FORTH A STATE OF HARMONY, HEALTH, AND EFFORTLESSNESS CHARACTERIZED AS THE HIGHER REALM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Buddhist monks may see the idea of “desire as an internal compass” as futile or unnecessary, but their lives are led precisely in a way as if someone with a few sensibilities and a sound mind had been granted the choice to desire and then architected the closest thing to an Edenic garden on Earth. It’s an amusing coincidence then, is it not, that what we desire (when properly interpreted) tends to be good for us? This is the greatest asymmetry of living, where torpor or stasis is degenerative, and movement (in its abstract sense) is generative. Light and darkness may be two sides of the same coin, yet the former is life-promoting, the latter a detriment. The dichotomies that constitute being and the living experience do not change, but our choices of what we actively relate to, do, and thus desires and emotions continuously act as a source of clues in helping us complexify life with pleasure, creativity, intelligence, beauty, and love.

The ability to endure unpleasure and pain without becoming embittered and seeking refuge in rigidification goes hand in hand with the ability to receive happiness and to give love. As Nietzsche put it, he who would ‘exult to high heaven’ must be prepared to ‘grieve unto death’. However, our European social philosophy and education turned adolescents, depending upon their social situation, either into fragile puppets or into dried-up, dull, chronically morose machines of industry and ‘business’, incapable of pleasure.” - Wilhelm Reich

I see desires and emotions as of similar origin. Bertrand Russell’s definition of the former is “the thing which will bring a restless condition to an end is said to be what is desired”. Desire towards an object/subject (a thing, an experience, an animal, a person) is then the affirmation to oneself that the thing that is being desired promises to bring “normalcy”, or better yet, a state of being/discovery/complexity that had not existed prior. Russell was careful to point out that what is often the object of desire is usually misplaced. The desire for sweets (for sugar and saturated fat specifically) is healthy, for example, but sweets themselves are oftentimes laden with nonfood ingredients (desire acted upon in this case leads us to a sicker place). A similar thing happens with drugs and addiction (article).

Feelings inform a great deal about us, but it seems to me the biggest problem with them is the general inability to properly interpret their origin and remedy them accordingly. I don’t like lists, but they can sometimes aid in simplifying complex topics.

Helplessness, ruminations, inability to cry: These tend to arise with increased exposure to serotonin from the intestines (when carbon dioxide production is low, platelets release serotonin into the bloodstream allowing it to travel to the brain), when supplementing with SSRIs and tryptophan, and when you find yourself psychically or physically restrained and unable to take control of circumstance. At my lowest point of health, lost in rumination, I’d think to myself that this is precisely what Nietzsche meant when he warned about the abyss, the nothingness that man gazes into. In hindsight, this despair about the extent of the depths of hell to a significant degree originated in the intestines (interesting to note that Nietzsche suffered from digestive problems). As a tree roots down into the decomposing ground to then grow towards the skies, so does man reach towards the Heavens with a metabolically active brain.

Anxiety: Low-grade background anxiety that seems to constantly shadow around (from approaching a stranger to publically making a fool of yourself to the nervousness before a speech) is usually a result of an increased secretion of adrenaline (endotoxin and low blood sugar are most common); why beta blockers work so well in turning off stage fright or performance anxiety.

Fear: Fear is the acknowledgment that the organism does not have the energy reserves to meet demand (the object of fear) adequately. For example, lowering high aldosterone/cortisol abolishes agoraphobia (Kijima et al., 2023).

Nostalgia: I see the feeling of nostalgia as the yearning to return to health (hence why it usually exhibits itself as a longing for a distant childhood past), and I think the idea that it is a deep want for a specific place or time is misplaced. In my experience, feeling nostalgic completely disappeared as my metabolism increased. It used to be thought of as a mild form of insanity, made worse by digestive issues, cured by “allowing the patient the free exercise of his will and improving the tone of the stomach and bowels by generous diet and tonics.” (Nostalgia, 1863).

Despair: Broda’s famous line “It’s not your mind, it’s your liver” should be rephrased to “it’s not your mind, it’s not your liver, it’s your thyroid”, where healing the latter leads to improvements in both liver and mental health. Personally, taking 3-4mcg of t3 completely dissolves any thoughts of despair.

Love (a physical sensation in the chest emanating outwards): I’ve posted about this to the point of exhaustion but I will repeat it once more. The feeling of love has been especially perverted by the political class in trying to achieve a sort of culturally degenerate underclass where everything is permitted on the grounds of “love”. Love (as an abstraction) displays itself in multiple ways (as duty, sacrifice, protection, etc.), but I think the feeling itself is central to it; without the sensation that every cell is radiating with energy, any action in an of itself turns into a mere concept, “something with a definition” that must first be rationalized and then forced. The state of calm alertness is the sensation of being fully integrated into your surroundings, OF THE INVOLUNTARY READINESS TO JUMP INTO SPONTANEOUS ACTION GUIDED WITH NOTHING BUT LOVE, A FORCE WHICH WORKS ITSELF THROUGH YOU.

Thyroid hormones regulate emotion in a variety of ways, but I find their ability to mediate the act of crying especially noteworthy. Inducing hyperthyroidism had been shown more than a hundred years ago to lower the brain threshold, causing people to cry at the slightest stimuli (Crile et al., 1915). In hypothyroidism or cretinism, this threshold is higher and the ability to cry is lost. I think crying is a healthy emotion when the stimulus that elicits the response is truly of significance and deep meaning. Thyroid after all allows us to perceive life with all of its subtleties and details, and sometimes the only response to the overwhelming nature of being is to weep (Heraclitus was a peatard, and stoiks are all probably constipated).

It feels proper to note that it is by no means my intention to reduce complex human behavior to solely chemical interactions and hormones. This is simply my attempt at trying to understand my own experience through the lens of biology and endocrinology. Why for example, did I notice my perception of myself change in the mirror in parallel to supplementing thyroid hormones? Surely the sum of the parts had stayed the same, yet it seemed the change in the flow of energy had shifted my feelings toward myself in an effortless sort of way. Why is it that when I leave my chicken lamp-illuminated room am I instantly flooded with negative memories of the past? I present these rhetorically to paint a picture of the reasons behind my [seemingly] reductionist explanations in the face of what are otherwise very unconvincing interpretations and estimations provided by both mainstream and alternate sources. Is it reductionism to suggest that the Biblical phrase “be not afraid” works to lower serotonin to reinforce a non-fearful attitude towards life?

“Through the endocrine constellation the soul touches the body and vice versa…emotional disturbances act on the thyroid, love and passion on the gonads. Even the fervor of prayer and the movements of the imagination have their glandular reflexes. Many mysteries of childhood derive from hormones, many destinies are determined by them, and thus by vitamins. We may ask ourselves if the destiny of all those children who were growing up in the first half of the twentieth century was not already written in those disgusting spoonfuls of cod liver oil.” - Piero Scanziani

Biology unequivocally influences culture, but so does what we see and interact with configure the vigor of our “internal secretions”, the plasticity and capacity with which we carry on in life. Persinger found that “death occurred sooner for those pensioners who decreased their activity after retirement relative to those who demonstrated no change in activity” (Cameron et al., 1983). Young men with high blood pressure report few recent life events and higher resting adrenaline levels (Theorell et al., 1986). What a culture presents and reinforces as meaningful is paramount to staying alive. Actively punishing good samaritans, disincentivizing pair bonding, ceaselessly revisioning and shifting an individual’s relation to his/her future by turning culture into a series of transitory affairs and happenings (rather than a permanent yet ever-adapting organism that’s constantly finding homeostasis at higher ground) lowers the metabolic rate, turns on adaptive processes, and limits energy expenditure. Restraining yourself from helping a woman being mugged because it’s punishable by law to intervene (or getting memed into thinking it’s simpish white knighting behavior) is nothing short of self-castration of your physiology as it works to imprint epigenetically from within - “Experience is stored in our tissues, and is passed on, but not as Darwinian ‘gemmules’. What is stored is flexibility, potential, and energy capacity. The mate who can challenge by complementary perceptions arouses deep energetic processes, felt as desire, and as knowledge projecting itself into the future. The hormonal and probably electrical changes, the subtle structural changes that appear as increased stickiness, hysteresis, are part of the individual’s organismic development.” - Ray

Along these same lines, if a culture actively works to ideologically separate the sexes, to distance the individual from his/her ability to directly impact and guide his/her future, it works to increase the helplessness reflex, to increase serotonin and constipation, and to drive down thyroid function. Looking forward to life with excitement, and having people to care for and love are deeply powerful in trying to oppose both this artificial culture but also the natural degeneration that comes with living. Following what the heart desires then, appropriately interpreting your emotions from moment to moment to best guide your soul and organism through time is an inescapable characteristic of life, one which we must bear with love and patience.

References

Cameron, K. A., & Persinger, M. A. (1983). Pensioners Who Die Soon after Retirement Can Be Discriminated from Survivors by Post-Retirement Activities. Psychological Reports, 53(2), 564–566. doi:10.2466/pr0.1983.53.2.564

Crile, G. W., & Rowland, A. F. (1915). The origin and nature of The emotions: Miscellaneous papers. Saunders.

Kijima R, Tesen H, Igata R, Okamoto N, Yoshimura R. Agoraphobia and panic attacks complicated by primary aldosteronism improved by treatment with eplerenone: a case report. BMC Psychiatry. 2023 Oct 27;23(1):787. doi: 10.1186/s12888-023-05275-w.

Nostalgia. Chic Med J. 1863 Feb;20(2):83-84. PMID: 37411908; PMCID: PMC9767624.

Theorell, T., Svensson, J., Knox, S., Waller, D., & Alvarez, M. (1986). Young men with high blood pressure report few recent life events. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 30(2), 243–249. doi:10.1016/0022-3999(86)90055-3