The Superego, The Id and The Ego Walk Into a Bar...

three fools walk into a bar, the superego, the id and the ego and find it hard to really ever be on the same astral plane as one another.

press return The fight for the right to control the mothership that is my brain, is on and has been waged for two score years and four.

press return Why they can't get along, I'll never know, but the procrastinator and the inner critic, the horrible bastard, show their faces from time to time to create disruptions and havoc ad hoc and without a clear distinct goal.

A discussion erupts, as so often it does, when one, unnamed for the records, suggests that their way, of pain, and working through pain in vile practices is the way to find inner peace or to move on,

press return while the other suggests regressing and hiding everything that makes me human, to the point of lying even to myself. While the inner critic suggests that nothing is ever possible when it involves me,

press return for I am a failure. Failed at being an addict, failed at being a recovering addict, failed at being a "Paul".

when does conceit become honest, brutal openness?

press return Surely to sit down and discuss the inner machinations of ones very being is a deliberate approach to something that you are trying to achieve in an unfiltered way. There is always a filter...unless you break it and the water flowing from your tap remains hard and limescale ridden, even that requires deliberate action, does it not?

I could type and scribble and agency would always be at the back of my mind, questioned in underline. Sure, there are involuntary twitches we all do, but if you scratch your back, it's rarely done without some agency, some tiny message being sent from your back to your brain to your hand telling it to scratch that itch.

press return Agency is a mindfield

personal and collective

agency is a mindfield minefield

mob mentality robs you of any unfiltered approach to life, but it's true enough with the individual.

I wonder...on dissociative personality dysfunctions and the truest lack of agency.

When someone says "I don't know why I did it" we all know they are mostly making excuses or don't know why but understand that they did it for a reason,

press return even if the reason has not shown itself yet. Sometimes they don't want to ponder the why. I am interested in the why. Even in the most terrible of situations. Why does someone choose to murder 10,000 people, for instance. Based on the flimsiest of excuses as skin colour, religious beliefs or just because they would not submit to the will of the individual. Really, I often find myself thinking that people kill large amounts of people because they want to kill large amounts of people. There is a point that most serial killers and repeat offenders, when they nullify and sear their conscience so bad that they have no reason not to do something.

press return It becomes a habit. It becomes a "Wednesday afternoon like clockwork" scheduled event.

press return "I need to kill because I need to kill." Still, if they developed faulty reasonings and thought patterns and were abandoned by their mummy or daddy, it's a catalyst to the first kill. Anything beyond that is game, sport, fun, I would guess. I am no expert, and you know when someone says they are no expert that what is said next is going to be highly controversial. It's like saying, I don't mean offence or I'm not a racist/sexist/whateverist - what follows is the thing they sought to avoid following.

I'm not a serial killer because I want to be a serial killer, I'm messed in the head, that's why? When does the excuse become the reason?

Scary, isn't it?

press return Even when you think you have a handle on the whole life thing and being human, the rug gets pulled from under you because someone defies the laws of humanity. In such a cruel and grotesque way. Bad wiring, sure. But can we just simply attribute everything to bad wiring? Bad wiring, shame, lack of control and agency, lack of will power, a lack of will power is a lack of controlled agency, but will power can be developed. So where does the reason start and the excuse end, or vice versa.

That should be questionised which is not a word but should be a word.

press return I questionise everything. Horribly, I am but a Devil's Advocate at times when discussions arise. The why and the what are so tensely intertwined, it's hard to make a proper separation and then throw into the mix, shame and fear and bad wiring. Bad wiring and chemical imbalances - they be the way to recuse yourself of wrongdoing, surely?

When does the decision start and the impassioned impulse end? Is that just bad wiring too? If someone was impassioned and impulsive and killed because they felt an urge, was it a decision they made? Yes. Most definitely. Yes. There was agency. There was a lack of will power. There was a mishandling mismanagement of the unwritten laws of good and bad. The leader, who thinks he is making the better a world place, by killing a specific race or group, is a solution finder, is a doer, not a thinker. Does that excuse them? Oh, they were just following their instinct, their impulse and "thought" they did what was right. Conviction doesn't justify everything, you know.

If I push my glasses up my nose, because they slip, there's agency and reason there, but if I randomly scratch my nose, without an itch, what even is that?

Killing millions of people, even when you think it's right, is wrong. Surely that's not hard to understand? And if there is a problem seeing that, then conviction and justification are blinding everything, are they not?

So, the superego, id and the ego walk into the bar and get absolutely hammered.

press return As a change of roles to feel what it's like to be the other person, the Id struggles to rationalise and moralise all that he wants to do, while the superego can't grasp what the wider audience of the bar wants from him and tries to follow his gut, his instinct, the ego is left to ponder on the mess that will be made, but still feels that twitch to do whatever the hell he wants, regardless of the cost.

Next time you do something, and then think "I don't know why I did that" examine much closer and be honest with yourself. Even if it hurts like hell and exposes the horrible rotting flesh beneath the smooth veneer.

press return Maybe it won't be like that, though - that's a possibility. Perhaps you will find that all you do is for sound and just reasons and the involuntary rattataptaps are purely involuntary with no agency. No agency at all.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: Okay, so I lied. I thought Cryptic in Triptych would be my last entry. Then this happened. I am not one for keeping things to myself. I appreciate it's length. So, anyone that reads this or Cryptic in Triptych will put a big smile on my face and also know how strange my mind is.

Here is the other: