While genes are pivotal in establishing some aspects of emotionality, experience plays a central role in turning genes on and off. DNA is not the hea… - Thomas Lewis

DNA is not the heart’s destiny; the genetic lottery may determine the cards in your deck, but experience deals the hand you can play.

Recordings of encephalographic electrical waves show, amid their jagged spikes and hieroglyph swirls, a signature downward dip signifying that a neuronal mandate for motion is under way: the so-called readiness wave. While the motor cortex produces motion, the readiness wave appears to signal intent. So we should look here for will. When experimenters placed their subjects in front of a clock, however, they found that the conscious experience of a decision to move occurs after the readiness wave has already passed. What we feel as the conscious spark of resolve in this case proves to be an afterthought, not the majestic nexus of initiative we might imagine. Just where and how the early glimmers of intention coalesce, like glittering dust motes into the swirling jinni of action, remains beyond the ken of today’s science. The more we discover, the more we find that we do not know.

Because other mammals have expressions, does that mean they have feelings — a subjective experience of the emotional states they display? That idea was scientifically risible not so long ago. Now some emotion scientists endorse the proposition that other mammals possess emotional consciousness — that they feel. This reversal delights animal advocates eager to make an argument for panprotoplasmic parity. But when the zoophile Mark Derr writes, “The question of whether animals possess consciousness, intelligence, volition, and feelings has long been settled in the affirmative,” he must be reporting the consensus from a species other than our own. Animals may have decided the matter to their own satisfaction, but human beings, as far as we know, are still debating it.

Will lectures on the evils of chemical dependency deter teenagers from a life of substance dependence? Don’t believe it. While their end is worthy, such talk targets the neocortical brain, not the limbic one. Pain is too potent a motivator for facts to undo. Pretending otherwise is a threadbare illusion convincing only to those who already feel basically well.