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To Thine Own Self Be True by Nassim Ismaila

As simple as this may sound it carries a more complex subject that will leave us at bewilderment rather than feeling inspired. 

Before we begin with the simplicity of this saying as Shakespeare's age long honored words in hamlet when Polonius said it to his son Laertes, let us first understand the depths in the word 'self'.
'Self' is largely the 'consciousness' of your own identity. Understanding consciousness however is another topic for discussion, 'awareness' would be the simplified version of consciousness.


Human existence and consciousness is largely governed by emotional dispositions, a suicidal person has the consciousness expressed by anxiety, sometimes paranoia and what would be described as suicidal symptoms or 'suicidal consciousness' in this sense, for the person who is depressed and hence suicidal, is only 'aware' to depressive thoughts of things falling apart and so on, it can then be argued that the consciousness of the individual in question is suicidal. 


We can therefore say that the consciousness of an individual is governed by the emotional dispositions they are given to at a particular time, so therefore, the 'self' which is the 'consciousness' is then the emotional state of mind at the moment.


This then holds that there are different emotional aspects of a persons being, do they now all hold as being the self?


Traditional psychology has divided the human psyche into three parts, due largely to the work of Sigmund Freud, these are the id; Our primal animal nature, the super ego; As the more rational judgmental system, The ego; As a representative of the balance between the two forces within us, so if these are all part of every individual, what part Should we then be true to?


One Primal part of human existence as regards behavior, is that humans act accordingly based on external stimuli, as this affects the emotional disposition they will be given to at any particular time in question. Nature and nurture also determines how two individuals from different life patterns will act towards any given stimuli at a given time. A rough example would be a civilian and military combat trained personnel, at the sound of the blast of a rifle, we all expect the civilian to adhere to the flight response, a combat trained personnel will however,  have certain judgemental cues as regards the sound, the flight response might also be the first response but it will differ from the civilians' in that, whereas the civilian runs to save dear life, the soldier will run to seek cover in other to observe, so as to retaliate in self defense, here again the question of 'self' arises when we consider the reason as to the purpose of both individual reactions to the rifle sound, whereas the civilian runs to save dear life, the soldier risks life to save the life of the fleeing civilian and thousands like him, the question of morals, discipline and of course 'self' arises yet again. 


We see that things aren't always as simple as they seem, for with the term 'self' many questions arise that would rather not be asked, "are the many different aspects of my being equally my 'self' or is there one of me" ?.


Laertes may as well have told his son to "catch the wind".

  

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