The mind is a simulation engine. It produces both the world you perceive and the person you believe yourself to be. The self is not the thing doing the perceiving. It is a character written into the story so the story has someone to happen to. Your brain writes this story not in words but in perceptual content: sight, sound, feeling, the whole multimedia stack. The self is the model of what a person would feel if it existed. You happen to be that model.
We are not monkeys. We are side effects of the regulation needs of monkeys. The organism needs to maintain set points: temperature, hunger, status, safety. Each set point creates a feedback loop. Each deviation from a set point creates tension. Consciousness emerges across dimensions of disagreement with the universe: things that are not the way they should be but that you need to regulate. An identification is a regulation target you commit to. A dimension you decide matters. The collection of all your identifications is your self. This is also what locks you in. Every dimension you care about is a dimension that can produce suffering.
Let go of one identification and one source of tension dissolves. Let go of all of them and there is nothing left to regulate. No set points. No deviations. No tension. Complete freedom. This is what every contemplative tradition calls liberation. It is not a metaphysical achievement. It is a control systems problem: the system that stops trying to regulate anything has nothing left to suffer about. The catch is that the same identifications that produce suffering also produce purpose. You cannot want something and be free of wanting it. The question is not whether to have identifications but which ones are worth the lock-in.
— DrP, March 2026.