Shadow Government--Of the Self

The conscious mind is analogous to the president and administration of the United States.  Whatever the president says and does appears to represent the United States.  If the president says he wants to build a wall, the world says, "The United States wants to build a wall."  If the president bows before Islamic leaders, the world says, "The United States bows before Islamic leaders."  Yet all things apparent are matched by an equally formidable hidden and slowly changing shadow government: the administrative offices, the appointed leaders, the secretaries who have been running things for 40 years, the policies set in place and the habits of protocol that have been in place for ages.  Likewise with a man, there are habits, there is body memory, there are preferences that are set in place for ages, there are subconscious assumptions, there are fight-flight-reproduce policies set in the amigdala and social structures that rule with an iron hand.  Merely making a personal decision to change one's ways will not, in itself, change the ways of the hidden structures of one's life, or the shadow government of the United States.  For the most part, the people and offices throughout the United States will do their best to keep things at an even keel and wait until the new initiatives blow over, or else are sold to them: think of Obamacare that crippled the insurance system without coming near to insuring the uninsured, or making everything unisex in personal and married life.  Or think of one's body, when one decides to go on a diet, or to speak politely instead of swearing, or to stop gambling, or to get up a half hour earlier each day: the shadow government of the self will strenuously object, and will cause the new initiatives to come to naught.  Unless the conscious government of the self persuades the will and emotions and physical body to come into line by a combinations of work-arounds, strength of will, subversion of pockets of resistance (including surgery, fasting, or other direct attacks on pockets of resistance).

This has been a summation of the principles at play here.  The following is how it may apply to people in the Austism Spectrum, those with autistic spectrum disorder, or in the words of a title of a popular book, Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate (available at fine retailers everywhere and online).



One thing I've been reading is something you might have an interest in: the neural connections of sexual interest/ideation to the consciousness.  The topic came to my attention by observing that autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) people have a mind-blindness to consciousness of one's own emotions. 

What I've concluded is that in ASDs there is a competing center of government in such a person, so that matters of spirituality and God the Holy Spirit, or or sexuality, or of beauty, or of music, will all send signals for the self (not the conciousness) to attend to; but that the consciousness, the CEO/administrators of the self (seemingly separate from the executive function), will not acknowledge that there is this second agenda, this second administration in the self.

In a non-ASD, the person, the Self, gives representation to all these other voices.  In an ASD, the incoherence of one's life resembles the USA under the administration of Barack Obama, and then under the administration of Donald Trump.  

Reading on the subject, some entry level possibilities:

Plato, The Republic 

Cynthia Kim, Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate 

One that I think would reward rereading with close attention is this:

Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Series in Affective Science) (available at fine retailers everywhere and online)

I see that there is a new volume by Panksepp which might be even more helpful:The Emotional Foundations of Human Personality: A Neurobiological and Evolutionary Approach Hardcover – March 20, 2018by Ken L. Davis (Author), Jaak Panksepp PhD (Author)