Indeed, when we were young some of us may have had (was this the title of the recent movie) The Sherman Show fantasy wherein the world was created as a playground and/or testing ground for "me" ... whoever that "me" may be. God put parents here to birth me, siblings -- and later friends -- to play with "me," a spouse to pick up my shorts or fill the gas-tank, and a whole lot of others to act as background, as extras-on-the-set, as "I" go through my various trials, mischiefs and incarnations.
Perhaps, such a fantasy became necessary when our ancestors developed the capacity to reflect on their own conditions, ..., to be aware. It's not so easy to accept that we're not the Center of the Cosmos. After all, when I twirl around? The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (young Joseph's dream in Genesis) have all alligned themselves about me. When I listen? All sounds come to my ears. Do we ever get out of the crib where all come to visit "the star" whom the Good Doctor from Vienna called His Majesty the Baby (she-Babies, need I add, are no less Royal).
As we age, moments do begin intruding on this fantasy that "the world was created for me" ... perhaps, first in the recognition that Mom and Dad are not only preoccupied with discussing how best to raise their little Monarch ... "Oh, my gosh ... they have a relationship of their own. They eat, they sleep, they make love, and they may even make other babies." The youngster fights this recognition "toothless but nailed" for years -- some fight the fight for a lifetime. Certain people, those that we think of as ill, create elaborate fantasies in which many are preoccupied with their successes and failures ... we call such fantasies paranoid delusions when they're believed as factual and frighten the 'believer' as potentially destructive to their very being. When they remain just fantasies, we may even be amused by them.
The flip side of this tune (I know CD's don't have flip-sides ... but I'm assuming that all potential readers on this page remember the relationship between the two sides of a 45 rpm) represents folk who are equally self-absorbed. "I'm of absolutely no value. I am the only one, indeed, of absolutely no value." No. Sometime, maybe while Playing in the Third Quarter, we recognize that while we see our joys and pains (Freddie Mercury famously noted that "pain is so close to pleasure") as of great importance in the Universe, our co-travellers have the same experience.
I have used a notion of First among Equals ... Primus inter Pares ... in my own way. I noticed how long a time it takes even for the healthiest among us to recognize that -- while we see our views, children, parents, etc. as Special -- our friends along their own journeys see things similarly -- but with themselves cast in the leading role. I don't know, by the way, if we human-folk could make it as far as we do if we didn't go through phases in which we saw ourselves as the only special ones.
Still, I pause each time I see it in myself and in others. In the playground where fights can break out over who is right. On the playing field. In political and theoretical disputes.
In Latin, in Greek, in Philosophies and in rifts in religious doctrines that caused at least one major split just shy of 1,000 years ago between churches on the position of the Vicar of Rome, the notion of a First among Equals ... a Primus inter Pares ... has been used in many ways, it seems to me. I use it as above, as a means of paying homage to the human inclination to begin life seeing everything related to me ... and a uniquely human capacity to reach a stage in which I recognize that my Firstness ... my Primus state ... is really among Others ... among Pares, among my Peers and Equals ... who see things just the same way.
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