The most intimate sense we have of ourselves is through proprioception, kinesthesia, and visceral sensation. Proprioception is afforded through special sensory receptors in the joints that signal the position of all the parts of the body with respect to gravity. Kinesthesia is the sense of the degree of tension in your muscles. And the visceral sense arises from receptors in the gut that are integrated by the enteric nervous system (a neuronal system in our gut with more nerve cells and complexity than the entire brain of a cat has). Without these internal senses and without an expanded “non-trance” perception of the external world, we simply are unable to know ourselves and realize it is YOU who is focusing on these events whether they are interesting, pleasant, beautiful, ugly, dangerous, dull and so on. Without the unimpeded perceiving of these sensations, it simply is not possible to know WHO you are and what you want and need in life. This is a strong statement, admittedly, but hopefully you will become convinced about its veracity through experiencing the following exercises yourselves. [he then goes on to describe exercises in Somatic Experiencing].
Ponder this. Ponder a philosophy class on Existentialism in which people submit to tapping into their primal nervous system apparatus, in which they chant VOOOO until some of them start shaking or have other powerful visceral sensations. Ponder a class where the answer to who you are is: THAT. The teacher will at that point be fully superfluous and useless, as indeed most philosophy professors are in practice.
Who you are is not an intellectual question, or at least at best perhaps one third an intellectual question. The felt sense of self has NOTHING to do with cognitive operation. It has to do with the EXPLANATION, with the words you use, with the conceptions you offer, the contextualizing. It ENDS there; it does not start there.
I have argued that much of “modernity” can be seen as a poor resolution of grieving, but I would add to that that the better word and concept is probably trauma. The two are related, but different. Bolshevism only truly came into its own following World War One. Communism, likewise. Fascism likewise. Millions dead, for nothing, for fuck-all, for the vanity of kings and would-be kings. For NOTHING.
Surely nothing would be a better master, since It is at least honest.
There is a lot to digest here. Chew on it.
Seriously: ponder the statement “Substantially everything you have been taught about how to live, and what to do and what matters is almost completely wrong.”
Do we not look often with sentimental attachment to primitives, to the “noble savage”? From this perspective, is not their salient trait a continued attachment to the entirety of their selves, of their primal apparatus, and not an effort to paint over and wall off primitive instincts that gain in power because, having lost consciousness of them, we lose control over them, and they in turn begin to control us?
Food for thought.