A Wilderness of Mirrors

What you are most afraid of is losing your-self in such a place. The neuroscientists say there is no self. They say the self is a figment of synapses and neurons, environment and genetics. Smart fellows to say there is no self, yet still silly to puff themselves up with the conceit that they are actually saying anything. The self that is born of human generation is useless - little more than the personality we attribute to a dog. This is how Celine can say Love is the infinite placed within the grasp of poodles. This self that attaches to a person through his consumer activities, the 'work' he does, the education he has acquired (for most, this is essentially a trade school education - designed to get them out in the world and making money, hence we differentiate little between the Phd-ed Bio-engineer and the little tart who went College to be a Beauty Consultant) is the life of the self that Christ asked us to leave behind and follow him. Almost all of us are whores though. We wait for advent of a propitious time of year for the throwing over of things that we ought not do or desire in the first place. We delude ourselves. We are little puppies who pretend to forget their bones until they want to chew on them again. This is the self the neuroscientists mean.

But the true self that is born not of human generation is incapable of such self delusion. It sees its fellows preening in the wilderness of mirrors. lording it over others with the impestuousity of a child, preening like a little organ-grinder monkey. This self cannot envy these hominids, debased as the day they wandered out of Africa, or Cain slunk off after murdering his brother. The self of the neuroscientists is the one that plays to the crowd in the funhouse mirror. The mimicking and aping of TV shows and insipid self-actualization books, 'management' techniques, NETWORKING. Those who put their faith in the immortality project of homo economicus must necessarily perish without any reference to a self that is before God. Like those in the deepest pits of Dante's hell their names will not pass on in the upper worlds. Unlike those in Inferno, they'll die incapable of any shame that their self can't rationalize away.