Split Brain

[Rhetorical hypothetical introduction:]

The door opens to my inner mind and I am greeted with an person with two heads… err… Two distinct people? Two halves of the same person? Not sure.

One looked up at me with eyes of pure wonder, like I was the first thing they had ever seen. Their eyes almost shined like two bright beacons scanning the world for boundless beauty. This (half) of a person emitted the aura of ideas incarnate, where possible’s probabilities are forgotten. A tireless child climbing from tree to tree, forgetting each fall but never one laugh…

… My train of thought is interrupted. Seemingly by the other half-person. Their sharp, skeptical eyes were a virus of pragmatic paranoia. All labels of morality, quantification, ‘good’, ‘bad’, or even Bayesian-denied potentiality are absorbed by the gravity of a hole marred black with skepticism. An insomniac by day and night, constipated with empty anxieties, and chronically afflicted with questioning.

Each extend a hand to greet me

“[In unison:]Hi, I’m Rusty Bucketz”

[conclusion of said rhetorical hypothetical introduction]

One interesting abstraction of ‘conscious life’, perhaps just a figment of living in a ‘narrative-heavy’ era, is the bifurcation of the ‘self’ not into ‘male’ and ‘female’ archetypes as Jung did, but instead into ‘actor’, and ‘critic’ roles. The variety between how the two are represented to oneself as well as their exhibatory manifestations are as numerous as our variety in physical characteristics. But being that life now is viewed as a spectacle of sorts, we could then enumerate how our inner dichotomy plagues our everyday life.

Some inner-actors are concerned deeply with the opinions of the critic, others have far less concern. Some just lack the executive vigor, some the preparatory routine, others battle off-stage neuroses that only a fine balance can make a fine act.

Naturally, the critics too are a diverse, even polarizing crowd. Some are tasteful, some quite lazy, most are nitpicky, erratic, and dramatic with any turns up and down but especially so with a straight line.

Our critic should be sympathized with though, after all, it is them and only them who bears our pain. Anxiety, bloodshed, and loss all need an observer to be felt. Burdens from our entropic universe must fall somewhere, be borne by someone. It’s natural for that to produce some cynicism, one can only hope more _C_ynical than cynical.

The actor feels, acts, and does. But bears no consequence for the spectacle they create. All the suffering, joking, and experimenting is done for the audience’s bemusement. The weapons, tools, or patterns their act creates are only used by and on the audience who is thrust into a new reality.

Our struggles in introspective walks (read: mediation) can be thought of as this inner chaos between our idealist creator of pain, and our bitter observer and feeler of that same pain.

Toward whom do we display our dissatifaction? To which shall we cast our retaliation? Who is due to be forgiven, who must not now be forgotten?