The Cracked Acorn: Self

It was in the summer of 1849 that Phineas Gage, a railroad construction foreman was standing on the wrong place at the wrong time. A dynamite blast went off and sent a tamping iron through the air. It passed through Gage’s head, and he survived. Before the accident he was an efficient worker and shrewd businessman. The accident changed him and made him a profane person, with little regard for others. He also could not make plans for the future. His friends remarked that he had become “the other Gage.”

This and other incidents have prompted research into what is our “self.” Scientists are searching to explain the complex cohesive neural process that explains why we are happy or unhappy. Children up to the age of 12 years are in the SELF learning process and tend not to be bothered by changes in routines and life in general. Adults do not react the same way once SELF has been formed. Sources note that once the brain is fully formed that an action has a programmed response.

Like computers our thinking system is not only programmed to think and act but in the background there is also the planned response. We put a lot of time into SELF. If a test is given with an equal number of questions on SELF and questions about others. Later we can recall the SELF questions but not those about others. How people can become less SELFish and learn to live and contribute to the lives of others is one of the wonderful traits of being human, never to ever be learned by a machine with artificial intelligence.

How we react to our daily lives and how flexible we are to responses from our fellowman is the key to the peace and tranquility we all seek. We all know of individuals who are still at a later time in life trying to find “SELF.” They are reaching for everything that can tell them that they are alive. Some need the thrill of skydiving or cliff jumping to say “Yes, this is the SELF, I have been looking for!” Whatever future studies show, the study of our SELF and how it drives our lives will continue to be interesting reading.

Books that have been written on SELF are: A Self Less Ordinary, Is Self Special?, The Lost Self, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How It Changed the World. These are just a few of the many books written, to understand our SELF. It all started with the following Biblical Verse.

Genesis 2:7 – And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.