Jay Martin

I once read an intriguing book by Jay Martin called Who Am I This Time?--Martin argued that people tend to believe they have a true persona (shared only with themselves), a private persona reserved for friends and family, and a public persona (or several) for everyone else, whereas the evidence indicated that--to paraphrase a religious conceit--we are really masks all the way down. I think he was basically right; our mind is more than capable of fooling itself and does so frequently enough. Maybe if we are reduced to the level of starvation or our lives are otherwise threatened--the base level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, if you will--our true selves might manifest.

This is the basis for post-apocalyptic fiction like Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, when food has become all but completely depleted and where most people survive any way they can, including by cannibalism. It's a depressing novel for sure. I like to think we would tend to be a little more cooperative than McCarthy allows, even in the face of absolute extinction, but who can say for sure?

Sorry, I know that was a tangent, but I've been thinking a lot about this stuff lately.