Genetic Destiny

I was dancing with an absolutely gorgeous girl last night. She wasn’t my girl, I was just keeping an eye on her, but she was the kind of girl that makes everyone else look at you and think “What is this jerk’s secret?”.

While I was doing so, I noticed that she was sweating. Not like she was on trial for murder or anything, but just enough to be shiny. I looked at my hand where I was holding it on her waist, and it was just a little slick. For whatever reason, I found it attractive.

As I rubbed my fingers together, I got this overwhelming feeling that we’re nothing but animals. Meat. It was horrible. I couldn’t help but feel hopeless in the fact that we’re all just slaves to chemicals. I didn’t like knowing rationality can go out the window with the right compounds at the helm.

The only reason I found this girl attractive was some compound moving from one spot of my mind to another. She smelled good. Her perfume (chemicals) went up my nose and released more chemicals to tell me that I find that attractive.

I’m nothing but one big fucking chemistry experiment walking around. I couldn’t help but feeling overwhelming despair at this powerless existence. I was at the control of a greater force. Likely, it was the same force that has ensured our survival for the last million years. It was my body assessing some kind of “carnal compatibility” with the evolutionary specimen in front of me, for the good of the race.

And as I danced, this girl dancing all over me like a common whore, I had the notion that our youth is fleeting. This girl will never be as hot as she was today. In 10 years, I most likely wouldn’t give her a second look if she passed me on the street. The same is true for me. I’m sure. But this is nature’s plan. Our genes have it all figured out for us. It was at this point I realized my fate was not something outside of me, but inside of me.  That my fate was little more than just another science experiment bouncing around in my genes.

I’m extremely troubled by “Genetic Destiny”. Not sure if that’s a real term or not, but it is now.

Atheism tells me that God doesn’t exist. Though I am the result of others, my decisions largely control my path in life. Even though every decision I make is the result of someone else.

We’re all interconnected, and everything we do, or decide, is because of someone else. Still, we’re free to make decisions based on these situations. If you have any doubt about the fact that you reading this very sentence right now is the result of other people, consult your belly button. It’s an artifact of your helplessness to the actions of others. I’m the winner of an impromptu swimming race 23 some odd years ago.

Today, I find myself bothered by genetics, and how un-atheistic it is. Genetics would say that you don’t have a choice in what happens to you. In every cell of my body there is some cryptic order of cells that determine everything about me. How I smile. How I sound. How I learn. And most troubling, hopefully, what will kill me.

Whats bothering me about it most is the lack of choice. My hair was brown before I had hair. I was tall and skinny before I could walk. These are the pages in the book I can read thus far. Maybe I’m dead of a heart attack? Or a stroke? Can’t say yet.

The problem with it all is that their is literally a “book of life”, to borrow from the jews, written for me. And I fucking hate that.

I choose not to smoke cigarettes on the basis that it’s bad for me and will probably give me cancer. However, if I smoke, there is a chance I’ll die from something totally unrelated. Stomach cancer. I don’t know. So I have to live as if my decisions make a difference, because even though I have a “destiny” it was not figured out for me by some benevolent force looking down on me from a cloud. I’m merely the most recent permutation of thousands of generations.

This is what dancing does to me.