Mean

It’s a curious word. To know what someone means when using mean, we need the contextual embrace of the adjacent words. It can be used as a verb describing a semantic relationship, a reference, or a significance; but in relation to someone’s internal value system, it can, well, mean importance. It can also denote the average of something, as well as an unpleasant behavior or trait. Here and from now on, to mean something to someone is to be of specified importance to them.

L’esprit d’escalier

Someone recently half-joked to me that the family of neuromodulatory receptors I study “is not even that cool.” Carrying many years of tedious, scientific work on my back, I didn’t have the fortitude to justify a decade of my research. Then, in a classic example of l’esprit d’escalier, where the perfect reply comes too late, I realized that without these very neuromodulatory receptors, the concept of being “cool” wouldn’t even exist. In fact, our conscious experience would be stripped of most value and color (in the latter case, literally, because this same family is responsible for color vision). Without them, there would be no specified importance. There would be no mean.

5HT1A, 5HT1B, 5HT2A, 5HT6R, 5HT7R

To most, a semantically meaningless sequence of letters and numbers. To some, a clear reference to the different types of serotonin receptors, proteins that bind serotonin, antipsychotic drugs, and psychedelics to alter our behavior and perception of reality. They fill our brains by the billions. There are likely more serotonin receptors in every single human skull than there are stars in the Milky Way. Is that a lot? They say it’s a lot. Yet the numbers are so unimaginable that I stopped paying attention to such analogies. I’m far more overwhelmed by the half-read books on my bedroom floor, thick with dog-ears marking insights for a “later” that never comes. Through their proximity and the palpable weight of limited time, these everyday numbers somehow crush my sense of wonder for the stars and the brain. The billions mean nothing.

There is a tiny self-referential loop in that reflection. The neurons that generate the sense of importance express serotonin receptors at their surface and reshape their activity based on receptor activation. The more we learn about serotonin receptors, the more we understand that they translate chemical signals into meaning. From particular flavors of meaning, the sense of wonder and awe sprout. Where and when did I lose it? Is it like a drug flooding the brain? The more the system is overwhelmed, the less sensitive you are to it, because the neurons hide their serotonin receptors and simply stop responding.

Stars and diodes

I once said, stuck in my provincial hometown, that I’d happily die if I saw a blue whale, touched a sequoia, and slept under the full-blown Milky Way. I now stand under the Southern sky and stare at the firmament. I fill my lungs with thin Andean air and, fulfilled, think it could be my last breath. I had touched a sequoia and seen a blue whale chasing another just a few months prior.

The moment is spoiled by a burst of loud laughter from the campfire. Our muleteers play a card game, drink chicha de jora, and are completely oblivious to the canvas stretched over the sky. The glaciated mountains surrounding the valley are its frame.

Milton, the one who lost his teeth, walks aside to take a piss. Damn him! He doesn’t even raise his head to look up. My neck hurts, with my chin pointing to the Southern Cross. I also damn civilization for all the stars it has robbed me of. I think of paradise lost. A different Milton! More like “teeth lost,” I smile to myself. My teeth are still there, shining in the grin, white and complete like the Milky Way.

Milton reappears in the fire’s glare. Light flickers over the edges of his broken teeth; his smiling mouth conducts a multi-slit experiment. Then, in the frolics of light, I see it!

Milton stands under Christmas lights in a shopping mall. Everything glitters and shines. He looks at the people passing him. Damn them, he thinks! They don’t even raise their heads. He just got his implants, so he can indulge in caramel-covered popcorn. He sees a kid throwing a full, uneaten box into the trash. Damn the kid, thinks Milton! He could eat caramel-covered popcorn for every meal!

I realize that I am no longer looking at the stars. I am looking at Milton, happy in the moment with his friends, oblivious to the stars.

Damn no one! Damn no more! More awe!

I look up again, and I happily die. I can’t recollect clearly when and how, but that’s the property of dying. One never knows when and how. Whatever is left of me thinks of stars, Christmas lights, and light reflected in friends’ eyes. They all mean something different to everyone, and their importance is specified by serotonin receptors that now activate by the billions in my brain.

Are diodes, the ingenious, Nobel Prize-worthy devices that these lights are made of, more complex than stars? something asks. And that something is in awe of the very fact that it can ask, but not readily answer, this question.

Ave Awe!