I wish that was true, but it isn’t enough to think it’s a deal-breaker. The deal isn’t done until we see what we have settled for. We are dealing with our capacity for self-deception by deceiving ourselves until we’ve had enough of ourselves.
Aisi there are several primal drives: anger, power, love, pleasure, fear, and so on. Different people are driven by different mixes of these drives. I’m wary of trying to reduce human nature down to a single root drive, though Buddha’s desire comes close. Is there fear without desire?
That’s the theory. The ‘fact’ for me stops halfway in:
We are dealing with our capacity for self-deception by deceiving ourselves.
I know I am deceiving myself, hundreds of times a day. That I might eventually have enough of myself and that my self-deception would stop then is speculation.
When I was 30 I lost a big chunk of my self. This caused me to lose a big chunk of my joie de vivre. Both seem permanent: Neither my missing self nor missing joie ever returned.
Yes sure plenty of the self I lost was just a silly story, a movie starring: ME! And the joy that derived from the self was a joy based largely in illusion. But subjectively, experientially, the joy was utterly real and, well, joyous.
I think my ‘spiritual quest’ is driven largely by the yearning to find a new species of joy that rivals the joy I lost at 30. Alas, for the most part, the joys I’ve found have been mostly intellectual.
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If there are times when you are not deceiving yourself, they must be too brief to expose the whole nature and structure of self-deception, otherwise you wouldn’t continue.
That I might eventually have enough of myself and that my self-deception would stop then is speculation.
Yes, and thanks for reminding me because I don’t know what, if anything other than awareness, can illuminate the practice of self-deception.
The jury is still out for me. When I engage in irrational thinking, I often know it’s irrational, but that knowing rarely moves me to stop. It’s as if reality and fantasy occupied the same space, were both equally ‘valid.’ Imo it’s where the human brain (not just mine!) went awry.
Yes, when everything is reduced to words and images (thought), there’s no telling what’s real and what’s imagined…one just decides arbitrarily.
This is a description of sorrow
We are once again having this same discussion based on my use of the word “fear” as a shorthand for the “purpose of self” - maybe I should use a word like Dukkha or Fear/Desire.
Fear and Desire are descriptors of the same movement from different perspectives : desiring my favourite toy is a synonym for the fear of not getting my favourite toy .
They are like points along the scale of suffering/self, like hot and cold along the scale of temperature.
I am not meaning to describe the particular emotions that arise from the movement of Dukkha like terror, fright, alarm, panic, anger, desire, pleasure etc All of these arise from the movement of fear (or sorrow aka me, the movement you have so eloquently described in this thread) : Anger is an expression of Dukkha (eg. due to stuff being not being as I desire it to be). The desire for power is an expression of Dukkha (eg. it is a need for security).
The idea that a detailed description of all the particular experiences will lead to a better understanding of self is due to our dependance on accumulation - I mean that the movement of analysis, interpretation, data compilation is a movement based on rationality, which remains within the field of self and progress (ie. dukkha).
It can get us to the moon and thus make us better selves (eg.spacefaring selves) but still subservient to the experience of self.
Thanks for sharing.
Is this in any way related to the ending of adolescence? The brain somehow becomes an adult brain around this age. Which might explain why so many rock stars burnout around this time - Also is Jesus the ultimate rock star? 
If so, it would seem that your rock star drug was intellectual accumulation. No overdose forthcoming, but possibly more and more difficult to reach the highs. Unfortunately the doses available at the library just aren’t powerful enough for the long time user?
So we are left to wallow in the self (or worse just half a self), because there was no complete burnout, and no resurrection in acceptance and forgiveness.
Is the relationship between the map and the territory like the relationship between phenomena and noumena? Is the map all we can know and the actual territory forever unknowable? I can never know the territory (as a separate object), because I am the territory?
The self is the map, the Self is the territory?
Dukkha works for me, especially in its meaning as off, disturbing, unsatisfactory. Fear is too loaded for me, probably because I’m too driven by it.
Mea culpa.
Wallowing half-self, definitely. As far as what ends self-wallowing, all I can do is best-guess. And then Inquiry would sound the “Objection: Calls for speculation!” alarm. 
So it would seem when the intellect substitutes for intelligence.
The self is the map, the Self is the territory?
The self is created and sustained by thought, so it’s a map.