It appears neuro-scientists, brain researchers, have determined that there’s an innate sensibility, a pre-language understanding that all humans and some other mammalian species have in common. The theory is that this sense of existential commonality could only have occurred after the evolutionary neural development process that first produced a ‘self-model’ or individual identity in our early ancestors and that through observation and mirroring their cave mates, social connectedness and empathy developed from which cultures and civilization followed.
So, I’m beginning to understand that what I am, who I understand myself to be, my personal identity is little more than a particular aspect of neural development no more or less significant in the greater stream of consciousness than the world experienced through my sensual awareness.
Along with the sense of personal identity I’ve inherited self-consciousness, moral second guessing and the anxieties that go along with the desire for social inclusion as well as all sorts of other desires that have a tendency to pre-occupy my consciousness, all of which temper the positives a bit.
One could romanticize, I suppose, that a step back on the evolutionary scale would offer a simpler mental engagement. At the very least social media wouldn’t be an issue.
