Threeman the One I'd Sailor

The parent, child and holy ghost, the ego id and superego, the I and the reptilian brain and the prefrontal cortex. The rule of threes.

How much of our perception of the world comes out of the war between the reptilian brain and the prefrontal cortex? How much comes out of those two parts (on the one side) and the singularity of the first person nominative singular pronoun?

One “I,” two brains. One I to rule unruly both. Two selves warring from which to produce a single unity. One I’d sailor.

Even God is three: Parent child and holy ghost. Freud claimed that the self was three, ego, id and superego. All these overlapping threes.

I sometimes think I’m most myself when I’m deepest in love. But that is when I’m least human, if human is what separates me from the other fauna of earth. I’m least in my reasoning brain. I say I can’t control myself. I must be my pre-frontal cortex, myself must be my reptilian brain. My ego can’t control my id.

If I am my I, I am not myself (said Alice). Myself am not I. But if my I is something I own—if it’s mine, it isn’t me. Nothing I own is me.

But that’s just words. That’s just the language and the structure of my language, which so often fails to organize being as being really is—assuming there is (which I doubt) any organization of language that would be able to map it. To me that is the fundamental fact. There is reality, which even to name “reality” is to misrepresent, and there is language which (among its several tasks) represents it, maps it, grids it.

Which tells me I have it wrong but doesn’t help me get it right. Who am I, myself? And who are you?