Back to the Hormones

Since the Proposition 8 issue is dying down just enough to enjoy a peaceful Sunday but the topic is still a large part of daily conversation among friends and peers, I thought I'd try writing my thoughts down since I've got lots of them, but they rarely stay coherent long enough to get it onto paper.

Here's a video a member of our congregation took last week during the anti prop 8 rally against our Mormon chapel in San Francisco. It's a bit long and there's not much that happens, just a lot of shouting. Oddly enough, the messages on their signs are a lot of the messages we hear from the pulpit and teachers every week in church (but without the yelling). If only they knew and would just attend the meeting taking place a few feet away from them. The description of the video on Youtube's website is an excellent defense of our church's stance on the issue.

It peaked at about 100 people or so in between the second and third hours of our meetings while we switched from Priesthood/Relief Society into Sacrament meeting, and while the Bay Ward congregation members were leaving their meetings. By the time our last meeting was over, there were 20-30 people still out there.

I'm no psychological expert, or even a biologics expert, but in looking at my own life and my own experiences I feel I can relate to these people to a small degree, at the least.

In a physiology class I took during undergraduate studies, a quote was read to us by a prominent historical biologist (I can't remember who), that the most powerful forces in nature are the need to eat and the need to reproduce. Makes sense since that is the inherent function of every living creature on the planet: aquire nutrients enough to pass on your genetic code to a next generation.

The need to reproduce is an ever-present part of our brain function from the time we hit puberty until we die or until our reproductive organs quit working (even then, I'm not so sure we lose the desire). Men are ever ready to pass on their genes, and women are periodically ready to do so. This manifests itself in either gender's amount of time fixated on sex. Women tend to desire it the most while they are ovulating. Men tend to have to deal with it constantly. These are tendencies, not true to everybody, I know. 

This is a complex issue. Every nerve in your brain receives inhibitory and excitatory/activating responses from other neurons, whether the next nerve fires depends on which signals dominate, the inhibitory or the excitatory. These gas pedals and brakes are huge complex issues involving a few billion neurons each, and noone understands them but they are the integral part of our every-second thought process. A guest instructor a few weeks ago explained it to me that there is this constant "static" always buzzing around the brain. I asked him if -with his expert knowledge of neuroscience- he believed we have the ability to choose for ourselves our own thoughts or whether our thoughts are enormously complex artifacts of our environment and past experiences. He told me that no one knows. There is just too much "noise" in brain function to determine that. 

I like to think that I choose for myself what I am doing at every moment, or, that I have the ability to choose what I am doing at every moment, including the next step my thoughts will take. Most of the time, we don't consciously choose what we are doing. We act on habits, genetically inherited predispositions, or hormone levels. But when I decide I'm going to type the letter "K" for no reason than to type it, I am choosing to type the letter "K." 

But, an enormous part of our conscious thought is influenced by our environment and by our hormones. We create "ruts" in our brain just like ruts in a dirt road, literally. The nerves that are used most will continuously use themselves more often and will call for reinforcing neurons to solidify that pattern of thought. This is a physical process that has been seen. Continuously fixating on a train of thought causes that rut to get bigger and bigger and harder to get out of or change. It also becomes more powerful in its ability to garner resources from the other departments of the mind to achieve its end.

This sets the stage for those individuals overly consumed with sexuality. An already tremendously ingrained part of our biological makeup does not need help by perpetuating thoughts on the topic, but that is what is out there constantly. When we see it in every billboard, tv show, magazine, activity, game, book, or web site, we further entrench our minds into a fixation on sexuality. Add onto this the reward of endorphins and dopamine hormones in our brains that make us feel great when sexually gratified or even just sexually enticed and there is a potential for huge disaster if improperly handled. 

Pavlov was a scientist made famous for his experiments on dogs. He would ring a bell and give the dog food. If he did this long enough, the dog's brain would associate bells with food and begin salivating just at the sound of the bell. If a sound can activate the physical processes of digestion, how much more can feelings of sexual gratification be activated when engaged in behaviors using reproductive organs? Especially if those behaviors have so few immediate consequences that inhibitory signals in the brain are a mere whisper compared to the activating signals.

Now consider the number of ways that our society has created to achieve sexual gratification without actually participating in biological reproduction and it becomes a black hole of brain power and thoughts. No reason to stop the thoughts and every reason to promote them.  Unfortunately our brains are not very capable of creating strong inhibitory signals if the consequences are not immediate. They take huge efforts to overcome. 

I believe strongly that certain sexual fetishes (and there are many more than just homosexuality) can be present at early ages due to genetic predispositions or early exposures to certain behaviors, but they are weak impulses until acted on, encouraged, and sought out. If the environment imposes those impulses onto such a mind, the disposition flares up like a can of gasoline and a lit match. If we as a society encourage the pursuit of sexual gratification merely for gratification's sake, we risk exposing the innocent members of our society to it before their minds are capable of handling the overwhelming complexities of it in a rational manner and they become enslaved to their thoughts before they are strong enough to escape the temptations. 

Pornography is an enormous problem because it exploits those already ever-present predispositions in every human mind and creates Pavlovian associations with non-sexual behaviors. Instead of bells, we become activated by clothing, everyday items, and members of the same gender. It sucks victims in by turning the world around the viewer into one sexually enticing festival of innuendos, suggestions, and intimations. This is overwhelming, not just to young minds, but to adult and mature minds. 

In the flotsam and wreckage of this tsunami, the self-esteems of spouses are demolished. The self-esteem of the participant is destroyed. Marriages and families fall apart. Those without families further lose their ability to build healthy relationships that are not based on sexuality. All thoughts in their mind can become preoccupied and tainted with obtaining gratification. In their spare moments they seek out ways to satisfy this desire, similar to a substance addict. They resort to the gathering places of those afflicted with their same situation, almost like lepers: congregating with each other for company and shunned by many of their neighbors and society. Unfortunately, these crowds are not often the remorseful kind and seek out ways to afflict others since misery does love company and there is the feeling of safety in numbers. As they do, they gain strength and encouragement and convince themselves that perhaps they are not afflicted, but proudly chose this way of life. 

Choose it they did. But not through any great effort on their part. Their choice warrants no merit, nor deserves any reward of perseverence. They allowed themselves to succomb to the most base desires of biology and then allowed their entire world to become polluted with this desire and in the process lose some ability for rational thought. It seems the two emotions that are the easiest to become ensared in are hatred (either of self or others) and hormonal addiction (substance abuse is an addiction of hormones as well). Often, the two emotions go together (an example is the video above). I'm sure there is an underlying biological factor connecting the two together, but that's for another time.

It is a sad story, and one that has always existed and will always exist while we live on this earth. The only way to end the story happily or to end it with any hope, is to never hate anybody, but hate the act only. If we know a better way, we should promote it. If we know someone who puts up a defensive wall, we should attempt to show them their way around it. Perhaps they always wanted a way over the wall, but never had the means. If given the means they will get over it when they want to. Often it seems when others defend their actions with a rationalization, it is a roadblock they themselves ran into at some point and never got over themselves (not that they didn't try).

Alienation of the person is a terrible thing. However, alienation of the act can only be brought on internally by overcrowding of better things and by long, arduous retraining of those nerve pathways that have so innately paved themselves through the highway system of the brain. They must teach the brain itself to break apart those associations and physical connections that have been made. Just like a leak in a bucket, trying to stop the leak while full of water is extremely difficult, and though it may hold for a time, it will always be a weakness that could open up if not consistently reinforced. 

For many, it will be a lifelong, painful, and embarassing battle full of minor victories and overwhelming defeats. But the strength of self gained by continually fighting the internal fight will overflow into all aspects of life and improve the quality of each individual world using the skills gained from the fight itself. It excercises the brain and body in a way very few things can, and the defeats mean nothing in the long run despite how overwhelming they are at present. The intellectual insights and enhanced brain function gained can be worth it.