The New Maturity

When I refer to the self we cannot help but be I am speaking of the last self civilized beings realize themselves to be. We cannot help but be this self formed of and informed by cells all bearing the same unique genetic formula. Through the years I have perceived myself being advised by this instinctual, intuitive being and called it my invisible friend as a toddler, my soul as a teenager, my self as an advocate of Ayn Rand's DIY approach to personal ethics in college, and my genetic memory upon reading Daniel Quinn and E.O. Wilson.

For a while there I entertained the theory that, essentially, I am no more than the play-by-play announcer hired when the hometown team was first formed and I've observed them play the game so long and can predict what play they'll run next so well I've fooled myself into believing the team obeys my orders. In stark reality, we go through life knowing only what our team of individual cells tells us they encounter, thus guaranteeing the uniquely coded variation with which we each and all perceive the same objective world.

Lately I think of this indelible collection of my bodily cells as a biological system from which an invisible observer receives my thoughts during the day to form an image of the world at the scale it must inhabit, just as I do from each of my cells about the world closer to  atomic they inhabit to get a world view at my scale somewhere between the atomic and galactic.

The self we cannot help but be is the last to be realized because satisfying the requirements of civilization keeps us so obedient to external authority we turn against its often contrary, better advice just to get along with the politically correct insane asylum society is. The last to be realized for the same reason a glass breaks on the last bounce and can no longer be contained behind the reflection it tries to maintain like a toady to the world.

As a kid, I was told that adults didn't have to go to school because they'd learned how to obey. As whatever I am today, I think adulthood occurs when one finally stops behaving and forever after remains free to be as spontaneous as born equipped to be without looking it up in someone else's book. The mythology of the modern world is explained in its bibles and encyclopediae, taken to be fact.

Not exactly what one who is supposed to
understand humans would come to expect