# Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions Frequently Asked Questions ## No Instinctual Passions, no Hormones?
| ‘The arising of instinctually-sourced feelings produces a hormonal chemical response in the body, which can lead to the false assumption that they are actual’. (actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/feelings.htm). From the above phrase I understand that feelings (out-sourced by the instinctual program) produce hormonal substances, not the other way around. From the TV documentaries I’ve watched, it is because of the physical hormonal substances in the body that certain good/bad feelings arise. Scientists have managed to identify and link certain hormonal substances to particular feelings, giving the impression that a feeling cannot arise without an associated body-produced ‘chemical’. Richard, if you experience no affective feelings, does it necessarily mean there are no hormonal substances (of the type scientists associate with feelings) in your body?
| What I have to comment in regard to the above is that I distinguish two innate unintelligent reactive systems, one based on the instinctual passions (affective in nature, giving rise to emotions that translate in the ‘fight, freeze, flight’ response of the body) and one based solely on bodily reactions (the ‘startle’ response when touching a hot plate). The difference is that one is the ‘quick and dirty’ way and the other is the ‘quick and clean’ way, but the aim is survival nevertheless. So, what you’re saying is that the body can very well react, defend and survive to danger by generating a quick reaction without the ‘psychic’ survival program. Okay, but in doing so does it use the same hormones/chemicals as the ‘quick and dirty’ way? These hormones clearly allow for spectacular feats of the body when the situation demands, physical actions that are impossible in normal circumstances.
| I understand from that description that your body produced an extra quantity of caloric energy and no hormonal substances. Does your body produce any hormones at all and if yes, what type of?
| Richard – I see a few flaws in your description of a lack of adrenaline (now called epinephrine). First of all, can you detect exactly the forms of the molecules that flow through your body? Furthermore, epinephrine signals cells to increase cAMP levels, Triacyglcerol mobilization, and glyconeogenesis, all needed for increased energy availability. This IS the signal for more energy: you still insist that ‘necessity’ gave you the energy you needed?
| ... what happens when you eat meat? Meat that certainly has some degree of said hormones, because epinephrine is flowing constantly in animals, particularly strong when they are being killed. All epinephrine is is a signal for increased energy production – if you need more energy, you will tell your cells this by the hormone known as epinephrine. In fact, it is even debatable whether or not a human heart can even function in the absence of epinephrine. Otherwise, get medical assay tests done to provide evidence to the contrary ...
| You wrote [Richard[: ‘An actual freedom from the human condition is a freedom from the instinctual passions – not the instincts per se’. [endquote]. I am asking you without their passions, exist any more instincts? Instincts are very powerful for the reason that they help surviving reproducing etc.
| So if feeling being in body A affectively/ psychically affects feeling being in body B, such as feeling being A experiences anger and body A has the resulting hormonal secretions, and being B experiences fear, and body B has the result hormonal secretions, isn’t it so that those hormonal secretions are actual? And regardless of the affective nature of the emotions that cause them, doesn’t that mean that the hormonal secretions are not only actual, but also actually linked (transmitted, connected)?
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