I am re-reading those days one of the most influential and controversial books I have ever read. I won't give away the title until I am finished with it. I'll just be giving you some excerpts and my related thoughts. So here we go:
"... I had to wonder what happened to every human in the two decades between seven and twenty-seven to turn a kitten into a cow. Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety filled and diffused?"
"What if the development of a sense of self is normal and natural, but is neither inevitable nor desirable? What if the sense of being someone represents an evolutionary error as disastrous to the further development of a more complex creature as was the shell for snails or turtles?"
"Adults rule and they reward patterns. Patterns it is. And eventual misery".
This book made me realize how much of a prison a stable self is. Everybody tells you, yells at you, to be yourself, meaning one well defined automaton, with well defined consumer habits, another personality that can be described with statistics. If you are flexible and swifting you are described as childish, rebellious and\or unstable, you are scorned and reprimanded.
It is society that has come to force us into a single monolithic self. It didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen in the last 100 years. This is a remnant of the past, and society has evolved to the point where the single self is troublesome. It leads to misery and neurosis. More on that to come...
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