The Invention of the Self

I call the personality a sanctified accident, whose chief function is to insulate itself from information that may prove challenging to its present state.

Self, however, is the attempt to reflect the personality through mass media, be it towards political or commercial interests. To gift a sense of flattering uniqueness to the consumer's heavily marshalled and carefully orchestrated 'choices.' The Self is neither your property, nor your creation. It does not care for you, and its status is dependent on the decisions of executives in reflecting glass buildings with whom you will, hopefully, never meet. More demanding than your partner, more insistent than your children, it is the gorilla on your back that can never be satisfied, yet to you it wears the unblemished mask of Myself Made Perfect. You will probably work for the rest of your life to gratify it.