multiple self .. and advertising

The brainstem and the mammalian brain. Deeper and wider than the new, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart neocortex. What we think of as 'mind' is only a sort of jumped-up memory machine, piggybacking on the older mammalian mind and the positively ancient reptilian brainstem, but our cortex and our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things. 
--mostly william gibson

... and from someone else:"For it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again."