From my personal experience, I feel anxious all the time because I was diagnosed with chronic anxiety disorder. In other words, my neurological homeostasis is throttling a little higher than the normal mid-range. The lower end of this spectrum would be euphoric relaxation. This may not be an accurate description because there are overlapping conditions caused by different natural internal chemicals like adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, etc.
My anxiety drives me to search for reasons why I feel the way I do. Lo and behold, they are everywhere. Poverty, oppression, exploitation, discrimination, corruption, typhoons, plagues, I reap the emotional reward of vindication by seeking out and sharing the problems in our society. By finding them I can rationalize my emotional state. I may be putting the cart before the horse, but there is still the horse, an irate old arthritic stallion.
This was a sudden revelation to me recently because I read a post about the details of a video game character that could get a passing grade as a college essay. I was astonished that anyone could devote such an effort to entertainment when the world is crashing down around us. I guess if people believe they are comfortable and have a guaranteed future in the status quo, they should have no problem devoting so much time to fun.
It occurs to me that our homeostatic emotional states determine our social media habits, perhaps not directly, but through a series of conditions through which we are guided by the natural levels in our bodies of dopamine, serotonin and the like.
I know it's more complicated than this, having to do with synaptic receptors and such, but it seems our genes determine everything about us, even ultimately our emotional homeostasis which guides us in our decisions throughout life. From this I might believe we were all locked into Fate were it not for the likes of Timothy Leary.
