03:11. Unable to sleep. Windy night with a scattering of rain.

The May 11th post, Self Portrait at 100, included the phrase: “My “progress” may be nothing more than wishful thinking.” This points to the difficulty of a cognitive process becoming fully cognizant of its own processing activity and garnering the ability to successfully place that activity within a larger perspective, or context. That larger context requires that self identity be independent of the cognitive activity of the subject.

This is not an insignificant problem. Lord Acton’s aphorism “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” speaks directly to this issue. If you enjoy sufficient power then issues of self identity, and the enactment of the self, no longer present an issue. You may, however, be blind to your faults. You will be able to act but you will not be able to know yourself. The fundamental issue of concern impacts the realms of epistemology, political theory, and sociology.

Thinking back over the Time Evaporated post, I realize that the work documents, the performance reviews, evaluations, and letter of reference, all serve to document someone who no longer exists.

The “me” who performed that work and earned 100% on his evaluations is gone and may never return. Not yet dead but as good as buried.

The “me” that remains cannot function in the same way, cannot perform the same work, cannot perform the same cognitive functions, cannot think, or perceive, in precisely the same way.

I have lain awake listening to the final staccato beats of the rain against the window trying to come to grips with this thought dilemma, trying to understand the balance between the two people I refer to as “me.”

I have a sense that I am attempting to trace a mobius loop in a search for the other side. A Klein bottle may be a better analogy. Trying to understand what I am trying to understand is giving me a headache. Better just to listen to the heavy raindrops of spring as they splash against the last of the dark.