Everyone’s brain believes there is a better person in there than the one now showing. The religiously wired see the situation as there being a more spiritual self, hidden under their sensual one. The civilly programmed see it as there being a more cultured version of their uncouth persona waiting to be developed, and the fews’ view is that there is a more stable, insightful and individual form of consciousness lying dormant within the din of their ordinary state, (which is also man’s natural one).
In practice, men believe that the discovery, activation and nurturing of this better self requires outside assistance: the teachings of a church, formal education;, lessons from the arts, the guiding influence of social norms.
Man alone is programmed in his neural wiring to believe that he can be better than he perceives himself to be. None of the other purely instinctive creatures are made to consider that they could in any way be different from how they are, but with consciousness comes thought and civilization. And the more civilized a man becomes, the stronger becomes the thought that says he should be that better person the thought says is within him. The operational perspective is that, although the better self is private and personal, it can only be realized via public, collective enterprises.
A man’s natural, genetically/temperamentally tied consciousness produces thoughts that are not individually his. His brain is the medium for thoughts that all of humanity share. There are variations from man to man, but the major themes are the same for all.
Each man believes that the better self somewhere inside of him is unique, and will have views of life that are totally different from their prevailing ones. The religiously wired believe that their realized, spiritual self, will totally repudiate the routine life of the flesh. It is the thinking of a Religious Person, (the better person). will be the complete opposite of mundane thinking, and the culturally inclined conclude that the consciousness of a sophisticated man will be the antithesis of a less civilized one, and the would-be mystical expect that enlightened perception will see white where everyone else sees black.
J,