From the beginning, we have collectively asked. Who are we?
More to the point, “Who am I?
Let us start, aforementioned query, with my good friend, Sigmund Freud.
Sig, if I might be so bold, developed a theory of the Human Psyche, Soul, Heart, define it as you will, the following:
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Ego, well, one’s opinion of him/herself.
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ID, a mishmash of reptilian brain desires, wants, and needs. Kind of like me watching the 24 year old across the street with the too short shorts, half her ass hanging out and bending over every chance she gets. So my “ID” says. “Poet nail that hot babe.” Which leads us to the:
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Superego, Conscience. Can’t do that shit Poet you be a bad boy!!!!
Freud theorized that that Superego starts with the parent’s remonstrations to the ego and id infested dick weeds that are the infant human. Of course that evolves into peer pressure, social mores and the friggin State’s, dare I say values? Back to the infant, well, “Don’t stick that fork into your brother’s eye Poet that is “bad” Savvy?
That is what infants are, a frigging pain in the ass!
Every mammal infant is born with a too large head and very large eyes, which evokes in all us the collective, “isn’t it “CUTE!” Check it out yourself! Look at a baby Raccoon or whatever.. Especially you Babes, you girls are hardwired for that response; else we would kill them! All the friggs do is cry, “I’m hungry”, “wipe my ass”, “My tummy hurts” “WHINE!”
We would certainly kill them if they were not so “cute.”
As an aside, I toss to you Freud’s book “Future of an Illusion” where he denigrates Religion as an “Illusion” Not sure if it was he or Marx who called Religion the “Opiate of the people” Of course Sig was snorting massive lines of unstepped on pure friggin coke. And as he was wincing over the “drip” he continues…… “The Illusion which is Religion”….sniff…sniff…snort….snort….” Yea, letting a coke head tell us who we are is not always a good idea.
Nice try Sig! Sorry, close! But you have not “nailed” it!
Moving on.
The Behaviorist.
Well, these Dudes and Dudetts believe that behavior (us) can be reduced to stimulus and response. Given the proper stimuli a predicable response will occur. They are in the ballpark at least. B.F. Skinner noted “Behaviorist” invented the “Skinner Box” of course he really didn’t because a lot of people before him did the work but he gets the glory. Kind of like Pompey being feted and having his Triumph through the streets of Rome while the poor frig who actually won the war winds up being dead. Such price glory.
They do interesting thing in Skinner Boxes’ like: put a lab rat in one, with 2 levers, one which when depressed, delivers food, the other, “poor unstepped on Freudian coke.” Hmmm…. I wonder… Well the rat presses the coke lever every friggin time and will starve to death. That is the nature of addiction; you constantly chase that initial instance of euphoria. The brain does that naturally with Dopamine, a neurotransmitter; However, Dopamine and associated neuron synaptic firing required to produce euphoria are destroyed in the process and you are left with your “Drug of Choice” chasing “that”, which you can never again have. Well Death and over dose follow. I have heard the ‘song” too many times. Close friends…………………..
Moving on… (Almost done, hang in there. I will tie it up complete, ribbon freely given, in a nice little package! Have I ever let you down?)
Finally to the “I wonder what would happen if…” Scientist, who decides to see what happens if we stick electrodes into a rat’s brain….Hmmmm….
Well necessity dictates I get a bit gross here. In the beginning they probably just jammed an oversized electrode into the Rat’s unanesthetized brain; which had the living entity writhing in extreme pain. “Can’t do anything with this sucker Bill”… flush….Next!
So they eventually discover you had to anesthetize it, peel the Rat’s skull open, expose the entity’s brain and gently place the electrode into the brain and find truth! Of course you can not initially go to a medical supply store and ask for a “rat skull puller offer” and get an “aisle 6, half way down, right side” response. No, you have to make that shit up as you go. Of course they fried a few brains before they got the proper charge right. Eventually they go: “Look Fred if I stimulate this section his right foot moves, this section “Look the frigger will not stop eating” They have a good time with that and they all take turns pushing ‘the” button till the rat dies of overeating. Its’ satiety response of course muted by the friggs! Is that not the nature of empirical scientific inquiry? They have done this on Humans. Do not doubt me! Inmates, military people and indigents. Had a friend who was in the military who was experimented on. He hung himself and is no longer with us. Another sad song I can sing.
There is even one section of the rat’s brain that, when stimulated, will produce a Liberace, meets Fred Astair with John Travolta on steroids Salsa dance. I mean the frigger is on his hind legs and dancing the night away. Well, I am fluent in several animal languages and they tell me this.
What does this mean? Well the Scientist seeks to define the indefinable! They seek truth and find only knowledge. It is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. They know one fact but, by knowing, they can not know anything ELSE!!!!!!! As much as they try to quantify, alphabeticize and categorize us, they can not!
You see we are nebulae, enshrouded in mystery, contain therein, is an ember, faint, yet glowing, in the darkness of our night. It is the spark of the Divine!!! YES!!!!!! We are a thread in the weave of the universal cloth. Call it the “Soul” if you so desire. We are indeed Divine and we do live on when our hearts stop pumping, when we “shed off this mortal coil”. It is you! The Poet, the Musician, the Painter, the Storyteller that sing our Truth, our Divinity. And it only you, who can teach us and tell us “who we are.”
So wield thy Quill Poet! Sing your song Musician! Paint your masterpiece and tell your story. Then and only then will we truly know Truth!
Artist!… Is that not what you do?
I take my leave with Yeats haunting words, “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” Ahhh! Is that not Beauty?…Truth?…..
I remain, ever constant,
The Oddest of Poets