The Feudal Self

defensive moat around Caerloverack Castle Scotland

Do you experience primeval behaviors in yourself and others? In nature you have an ancestors to man such as the famed fossil Lucy who thrived 3.2 million years ago. In the self, there is an essential being a product of DNA, morphology and environment that appears much like a boson or fundamental element of matter, as a watershed in the lifecycle of creatures. It may evidence itself before or after the advent of consciousness. You either know it or fail to recognize it in yourself. Let's say you were a hyperactive kid who couldn't control their impulses. Intelligence itself need not be a factor. However you may have been the kind of child who immediately raised their hand when the teacher asked for the answer to a question. If you were not called on, and it's likely you would not be since human beings are animals who can smell a so-called needy or overly desirous individual a mile away, you would call out and then find yourself counting tiles in the wall outside the classroom after you'd been kicked out. You would have suffered the humiliation of having other teachers or students who might be walking the halls to go to the bathroom seeing you marked like Heather Prynne. In fact, an overly anxious individual can easily walk away from childhood with what is known as a "Hester Prynne Complex," which in itself becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Not everyone demonstrates this kind of pathology but it's an example of something profound that can follow an undiagnosed or diagnosed individual's early life. The primordial self however need not be a handicap. Naturally there are those whose most elemental projections are that they're loved and desired. These kinds of people walk around with an a self-confidence and insouciant indifference that is libelous and downright obnoxious.

See Francis Levy playlist forThe Kafka Studies Department, Largehearted Boy

and read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse