...and I came up with this awesome concept of souls, or the human idea of "souls", that I hesitate to share because I've used it myself in some short fiction. So - promise not to share it? I've copyrighted it. Additionally: I likely won't be able to explain it wonderfully, because I'm somewhat better in person (hard to believe, right?).

Anyway, Jung and Adler and Campbell (who is my newest Yoda, thanks to the heroic cycle and all his netflix lectures) all sort of think of humanity as sharing a sort of uber Jungian "collective unconscious", or a shared culture. See: motifs repeated independently of one another throughout dispersed peoples and cultures. Anyway, my basic metaphor for the soul is simple: human beings are each a sort of radio receptor for the shared, collective unconscious - our brains being the antenna - and the distinctive manner in which we receive the signal is what people classically refer to as "the soul". It's not some ethereal entity residing within us, but rather the way in which we interpret and recontribute the collective unconscious (i.e. culture, i.e. "God" ). This is sort of the same idea (though I guess, reversed) as the concept of the various pagan or Indian Gods being different representations of a singular God. Culture is everything: morals, religion, education, personality, and so on. And from a meta level (I constantly say to people "go meta", and hope that it sounds smart when I'm at a sticking point) we all share a culture, so our individual reception of that shared culture's signal (and/or the collective unconscious, which may be the only thing close to the human God) is what we would call the soul.

Anyway... I'm going to watch Tarkovsky now and hope I can snag some ~23 year old at the wedding I'm going to tomorrow.