The nPrincess and the nP.

I. It's essentially a question of values and of perspective. You can't be in two places at once, really. You can't see the microscopic and the cosmic at once. What you can do is see the large in the small or the small in the large, if you have fractal eyes to see it.

This is also a life's work. And it will turn out differently for everyone depending on where their starting point is.

We're actually much closer than it seems, which is why we seem to conflict over the smallest grains of sand.
But there's room in the equation for both of us. In fact, I'd be so bold to say that both of us are necessary to solve it.

And I suspect, hope, that the solution is but a processing heuristic, that the universe uses fuzzy logic, but I'm not certain enough yet to stake too much on it.

II. I do believe that there are forces that impinge on consciousness, that shape the limitations of our freedom. But I also believe that we are underdetermined. In the end there is something beyond/(within but not part of) the body-mind complex. We are not simply machines.
If that idea offends you, well, it's certainly disputable and I accept that you might have a different opinion, but I believe in a nihilating free consciouness not trapped in facticity.
The anti-essentialists blame the shape of the world, the essentialists blame the shape of the code, I don't blame anyone but us. We have the power to re-shape our design of what these things are, to give them meaning. No religion, none, not ever, except in a very different sense of the term, as a means to encode our design of what should be, yes, but never to relinquish our responsibility for it.

III. The only way I can understand anything like "God" to exist is in an existential way, as the initial spark of consciousness, "dividing the light from the darkness". The letter B is the most important letter in the Torah in some ways, for understanding this. Not only as the planck moment, but as that which gives rise to a "world" instead of simple mechanism. In some sense, maybe the World, as a world of meaning, is only a few thousand years old, even if there was a bunch of rubbish going on "before" that. Depends on how you define time I guess. Anyway that's not the important part :)

IV. I suspect academia must be jam packed with people who don't want to give any credence to the idea of human nature at all, and it is in reaction to this that sociobiology has become popular among the rebellious types. And why they are so quick to rush in and get all heated up if someone questions anything that sounds like it might deny the prevalence of it.
I've been away from those hallowed halls for a long time, and out here, we have almost the opposite problem. Everyone wants to blame "the Devil" for their problems. The "religion of DNA" is almost a satanic one.
(as a clue to what I mean by that, one might ask "why is spreading our genes around still a good idea?" or "why should we shape our societies to promote fertility?" We as humans have come a long way, but we can go to new places if we want to, it shouldn't be so cut and dried is all I'm saying.)
But there's no escaping choice. That should come as good news, but it's good news people don't want to hear.
Existential mystic? Ok maybe. But I'm no foo-foo radical solipsist, just because I don't buy into sociobiology. It's just not that simple, or manichean perhaps is the word I'm looking for. (I hope I spelled it right, please forgive me it's early for me)