Translations of Freud into English, when his writing first became a global sensation, did not know what to do with the the central terms of his philosophy.

The data types, to use a metaphor, of the human being script, are das es, der ich, und der über-ich. And ultimately the goal of psychoanalysis, the process Freud invented, was to tidy up the human being, to create a situation "wo es ist, da werde ich sein" ("Where it is, there shall I be."). Of course, I probably already sound strange, if you have only vaguely heard of Freud. Freud is about the id and the ego, right? And the id wants to sleep with its mother and kill its father, whereas the ego has to be civil, so it gives birth to a super-ego. Something like that?

Scholars of Freud mostly agree that these Latin terms, ego and id, are not at all helpful to people who are just trying to understand themselves, primarily, and probably trying to understand Freud, too. It is easier to think of ego as who (or what) is speaking, when you say "I am..." Just an "I." Nothing more and nothing less. The "it" is your immediate thoughts and feelings, which come to the fore from you know not where, and the super-I, is just your conscience, which I suppose too is just Latin, but Latin old enough to have become an English word.

In German, "ich" is not a proper noun, which is why it is not capitalized, as all other proper nouns are, so it is fairly striking to call it das Ich or der Ich, to make it into a proper noun. In English, it is also unusual to call a person, "The I," but not as much as the German, because we do in fact capitalize I, and we know that a "person" is some type of noun (person, place, or thing). Translations using ego instead of I have worked out, but I think it has also dated Freud, beyond what degree to which he may need to be dated.

Now more than ever, as the barrage of spectacles calling for your attention multiply, now more than ever it is important to have a map of oneself, in order not to get lost at sea. Freud's model may not be perfect, but it is pretty damn helpful. Especially for forgiveness. Forgiveness of yourself and others. The best type of laugh bridges the tension between the truly awful, and the loveable self. Forgiveness is damn near impossible when you think that any thought you have ever journaled or blogged or written in a Twitter threat is identical to you, and is a reproduced synechdoche of your very being.

Yet as it has become the existential norm for all elite and educated liberal global citizens to be such strivers as to lack effectively any time for self-reflection, and the small void spaces we used to encounter now filled with every manner of entertainment and indulgence, I fear that we are losing a key pillar of ourselves. And here "pillar" is the wrong symbol entirely, because when you're talking about selves and consciences, you are talking about things that get made. They get made through practice, shame, practice, pride, and more practice. They do not just stand there like pillars. Losing the "I" may mean losing a lot more than one's self.

It used to be that only neurotic freaks would whisper to themselves, "I want to kill myself," in the middle of the vegetable aisle at Whole Foods (or wherever people shopped before social media). Now every person is doomed to be a neurotic, because of the ever-present I, the super-I, the I that sees all and is watching. To add to the neurosis is the seemingly limitless diversity of reactions to any given statement, from tail to tail of even a normal distribution, you will get eyes that look at you unlike you have ever concieved of looking at yourself. Except unlike a neurotic, the modern subject, does not have a well rehearsed I script, ready to process the neurotic it trepidations. It is truly a perfect storm.

The older I get, the more I fear for my friends and former friends that they will become deathly serious. In terms of the I, I fear that they will, in a very real way, die prematurely. That the consciences they trained will lead them into bitter recriminations and self-disgust. I have the brain of a writer, and the tastes of a Twitter addict. I know in my heart that I am me, but I am also, and importantly, not me. The thou

Freud is often accused of being all about sex. And as he did believe that sex was a major source of id data, he would probaby fail to deny that in some sense, "everything is about sex." As the sexual revolution, in some ways set off by Freud, progresses, being "sex positive" has become about kink, and Freud was not primarily dealing with kink. He was dealing with upper middle class and elite women, mostly, who had what we would now call anxiety disorders, or some other form of neurodivergence.

The most Kink is about accepting responsibility for acknowledging that the id does not operate on the logic of responsibility. You cannot always be responsible for how you feel, for the thoughts that occur to you at any given time, and the logical labyrinth that your thoughts take you in.

Hegemony changes the subject. Hegemony doesn't want to have this tiresome conversation. Hegemony wants to just be a little bit more positive. Hegemony does not feel compelled to make itself consistent. Explaining is losing. It refuses to explain. As such, it cannot be funny.

The overwhelming seriousness that Nietzsche moaned about, I am so afraid of it. You need to have an arms-length relationship, even to yourself. Because you are more than yourself. Who you wind up being. It's funny. Sometimes you look back at yourself, and you think that you were so hopelessly foolish, demented, clueless. It's funny. It doesn't need to mean that you are next in line for the chambers, and that really is how these people have coerced their egos to act right. It's their super-egos yelling at them, drill sargents at auschwitz. If you do not do your performance, we will manage you out. We will kill you without so much as having the decency to get our hands dirty. You better work, bitch.

I get it. I have spoken to myself as almost every imaginable villanous slave master.

These are all me. I am it, but I am not it. I am I, but I am also it and over-I, and we take turns dancing. It's funny. I mean, God help me, if this cluster isn't funny, then what the hell is it?