@Joe Nation,
What you are up to with that little scheme Joe is one of the endless variants of the Hidden Prince idea. Not that I suppose for a moment that you are conscious of being.
It stems from Polonius with his "be thine own self be true". That inside us all is an inner self fighting with the forces without which are hindering its expression.
To be plausible with the chattering classes it usually takes the form of a good, self-defined, inner self struggling with its own regrettable dark, authentic instinctual urges. An inner self which favours philosophising and cerebration and is hostile to fornication and general orgiastic self indulgence.
To be plausible with Caligula, the Marquis de Sade, and those of that ilk, the inner self battles with cold theological enemies.
Marx and Veblen had versions of it with their "creative energy" and "instinct of workmanship" inner selves being thwarted by the imposed constraints of a social structure.
Obviously, the true inner self is in sympathy with reason and rationality. It is good. What self-respecting inner self wouldn't be. Eh? Especially in polite social gatherings.
Were the inner self to be in sympathy with contingent, blind causal factors, such as instinctual urges, it would have nothing to say to puff up its image because that is the nature of contingent, blind causes: there is nothing to be said about them.
Now that the Darwinian canon has rendered ridiculous the idea of man as a fallen angel and replaced it with the complex monkey idea it behoves us to study monkeys in order to truly identify the nature of our inner selves. I cannot see how a secularist could think of searching anywhere else. The attractiveness of the complex monkey theory is precisely in the identification of the inner self with the lower, animal nature of our non-mental parts.
I conceived the idea of long lie-ins in a morning from watching sloths. And the idea that evolution runs the opposite way to the received wisdom and the highest form of life being the microbe. Humans being the lowest from an evolutionary point of view which is somewhat suggested by our earth wrecking potential.
Adherents to the fallen angel principle tend to be conservative and adherents to the complex monkey idea revolutionaries.
If the frog turns into a prince when kissed by the princess it is a matter of importance which prince it is. The fallen angel might jump her in certain circumstances but would have a stricken conscience. The complex monkey would go looking for a banana.
There is no inner self here yearning to become an Archbishop of the Roman Church in any century. Your attempt to pin me in a display cabinet to show your mates is ridiculous I'm afraid.
