comment: >
  
  We are not reacting and adjusting.  We are simply a complex collection of chemical, physical, and electrical reactions transferring energy.  Our consciousness is simply one of those reactions.
  When water flows down a hill and runs into a rock, the water doesn't just stop, it flows around it.  It didn't decide to go around the rock, it just did because of the chemical, physical, and electrical properties of the rock and water.  We are unimaginably more complicated than a rock and water, but we are no different.  
  When the electrons from your phone screen reach your eyes and causes a chain reaction through your optic never into your brain, your brain will set off another chain reaction of chemical and electrical responses which in turn will cause other chain reactions and other reactions.  Eventually your muscles will move and they will do so because of all those reactions and they will type out words, or scroll past or whatever they are supposed to do in response to all those actions....not at all unlike the water flowing past the rock.
context: This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.
  Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
  (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)
  Rule-breaking posts may result in bans. >
  
  You aren’t constituted of the atoms that make you up, but rather the relations between them. This is why you are more “alive” than your parts individually. >
  
  But the relations between my atoms are the same as the ones between a rock’s atoms. They still exchange electrons, they still answer the physical laws in the same way. But my relations, differently from a rock, have a sense which is literally trying to go against the universe thermodynamic fundamentals: we constantly try to overcome entropy. Why a rock doesn’t do the same? >
  
  Your parents lied to you and told you that you weren’t just a rock. You’ve believed them since then. A rock has complex lattice systems, but no sense of inside or outside. Why run from entropy when you are the environment into which you decay? The only reason you continue being you is your decision to deny the fact that you are not (your parents made this decision before you did). You are an instance of temporary and extremely local organization and complexity, but you ultimately serve to push the universe further towards entropy with your actions after all is done. >
  
  Life is just a set of very, very complex chemical processes. 
  The disconnect here is just our intrinsic understanding of life as a holistic quality rather than as the sum of a metric fuckton of chemical processes. >
  
  Just like I mentioned in a previous comment, there is a curious aspect about these chemical reactions. You see, a rock will decade eventually and so do we, but our reactions constantly try to adjust to the thermodynamics instead of following them. A structure in our body was broken by giving it energy? No problem, so long as I feed the system with new energy I can rebuild the damaged part and make it back to what it is not supposed to be anymore. It’s even more curious knowing that this can’t happen forever but does happen.