My main purpose in my social media is to help you make better sense of the world and your life in it. I do this primarily by sharing my scientific understanding and my personal experiences. My social media (just two blogs, here and here, and video channel) have now had over 900,000 visits. The main traffic is from search engines. This means that most of my readers are not followers but are finding my work because they are searching for insights not about me but about the topics I write about. And that is just the way I like it.
Perhaps the most fundamental question we have about ourselves and the world is, who am I? This question is of interest not just to me, but to whoever might read this essay.
What, exactly, is the real me? There is no easy answer to this question. Each of us consists of at least two general things: the self that we want to be, and the self that we are subconsciously.
Over the first of these we have a measure of control. We can control what we think, the decisions we make, the kinds of interactions we have with people, the things we say. This is generally the self that we present to the world. Some people think this is a false face, merely an image of what we want people to think about us. But we all know it is much more than this. It is the self that we want to be, not just how we want to appear.
Over the second of these we have less control. We can generally control what we say, but sometimes we blurt things out before we have a chance to think about them. Curses, for example, come from a different part of the brain than regular speech. Most of us cannot control our dreams, either. When we experience things that make us angry or lusty, our heartbeats and breathing become more rapid, and there are other physiological responses that I do not need to tell you about, even if we try to calm ourselves down. These things make up the self that we do not want to be, not merely the things we wish to keep hidden.
Over some things, we have an intermediate level of control. For example, my blood sugar is high, enough for me to require medication but not drastic intervention. I cannot completely control it. It is my cell membranes that do not absorb enough of it from my blood. The main thing I can do is to eat less sugar. Medication and eating less sugar has reduced my blood sugar down from the crisis level it used to be. Blood sugar level is the result both of things I can control and things I cannot.
I suggest that the real me, and the real you, are the first of the two. They are the most highly developed systems in our evolutionary history. The second “self” has an ancient origin that goes back at least to the origin of the vertebrates. At least, I think so. Do fishes get angry?
Another way of dividing ourselves up into the selves we want and the selves we hide is to consider the things over which our DNA has direct control. Our DNA does not control everything about our bodies. It controls the structure of our brains, nerves, muscles, bones, and systems such as the digestive system. It controls, basically, everything that is within our epidermis and mucous membranes. But it does not control what is outside of our bodies, which includes the things that are in our digestive system.
The contents of our intestines includes not just the partially-digested things that we have decided to eat (which is under our conscious control) but also trillions of bacteria and other microbes. We cannot control what those microbes do. They metabolize, to get energy and nutrients for themselves, and eject their wastes into our intestines. These wastes include carbon dioxide (odorless), methane (odorless), and hydrogen sulfide (the smell of farts). Though we can to a certain extent influence their timing, neither we nor our DNA can control our farts. The cosmos inside our intestines is a wild world over which we have no control other than diet (yogurt helps) and medicine.
And our digestive system responds not so much to us—our nervous system, or even our DNA—as to the wild world in our intestines. When the bacteria in the food produce a lot of gas, they expand the intestine. Local nerve networks take care of what happens next. Intestinal nerves detect the expansion, then cause the smooth muscles around the intestine to start contracting, which will push the food and the farts along further down the line. One result is that when a fart is on the way, you can’t stop it. Another result is that when you gotta go, you gotta go. Your brain can control the muscles at the end of the line, the sphincter muscles, to try to hold it in, but success is not guaranteed.
So another view of yourself is that the real you is what the DNA controls, and the secret you is what your bacteria do.
So when an honest biographer says, regarding the subject, which might be you or me, “he or she tells the true story, warts and all” (maybe farts and all), this is not really being honest. Warts are caused by viruses, and farts by bacteria. Your honest biography would be what your DNA does, and what you decide to do, rather than by the random, uncontrollable activities of your bacteria or your subconscious mind.
The bacteria and subconscious mind are not always bad. Having written what I just wrote, and living a more relaxed life, both the products of the real me, have an effect on what my subconscious mind and even my bacteria do.
I hope this helps. And tell your bacteria that I said hi.
