Last night, I found myself involved in a glittering conversation about the nature of emotion, artificial intelligence, and the (dis)advantages of being a brain downloaded into a box. Not a particularly unusual Monday night for me, considering the company I keep, but what anchored this conversation in my mind was the fact that I took a contrary position to the one which I have taken all my life.

Every time the subject has come up before, I have been incredibly in favour of the idea of being downloaded into a jar. The idea of life, without the complications caused by the squishy bits. The beauty of logic, pure as the driven snow, untainted by emotion. God, yes. Most of my life, that has been the ideal. But the squishy bits have gotten in the way of the dream, and complicated logic.

Last night, for the first time, I took the contrary position. That the squishy bits of humanity are worth keeping. It doesn’t sound like a big thing, in the grand scheme of things, but it was real, and it was me. I never thought I’d find myself arguing so vociferously in favour of emotion over logic.

For the first time in my life, I find myself in the position where I am valuing my own emotional input. I can look at my emotions, rather than running from them. To the extent that the idea of losing that, far from my previous stance of positively welcoming an absence of an emotional response, engenders a strong emotional reaction of its own.

I realise that contrary to its content, this particular piece is somewhat emotionless. I need to maintain a distance from it, in order to write it. I’m trying to observe it objectively, without emotional bias.

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So much of our emotional responses is beyond the brain, in the outlying squishy bits of the CNS. What would love be, without the flush of blood to the face, without the heart skipping a beat, without the eyes dancing and sparkling in the starlight? What would anger be, without the clenched fist, the pumping blood, the adrenaline rush? What would grief be without the feeling that your heart had been ripped out, without the tears and the emptiness and the unconscious movements?

I use those three, because they seem to rise to the top of any emotional response table. That, and they are the three with which have affected me the most over the years. Most of the problems I have had have arisen from trying not to feel them, from trying to hide from the emotional responses, particularly those from the squishy outliers.

It’s not an easy path to travel, completely changing my personal outlook with regard to my own emotion health. Before, it was a case of hide my head under the bed, and hope it goes away. Now, it’s more complex. Sometimes, it’s still hide under the bed until it goes away. But more often, it’s about actually looking at the whys and wherefores, and managing the emotional baggage.

If I were a brain in a box, without the squishy complications of emotional subroutines, I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t be happier. But I’d still take the money, rather than open the box.