Four-tiered anthropology

Dear Readers, I've had something of a revelation. It's of great personal significance and, given I've never had anyone explain it like this to me before - perhaps it is of worldwide import.

Maybe you, like me, have always considered the human person in terms of a 4-tiered architecture. The body is the equivalent of the hardware and OS in a computer system. The memories and the deepest thoughts - the database. The personality would equate to the logic or, if you will, business rules layer. And the way we act with respect to the outside world equates to the presentation layer - whether that is the mere CSS of a set of clothes and a haircut, or the rendering of html and javascript to define the actual way we behave.

Now, to me, the most important layer was the Database layer. That, I believed, was where the true Burton resided. Tucked away from the world, containing neither redundant data nor duplicating keys - that is how I truly am. The behaviours I wrapped round my personality were just the presentation layer - to be changed at will, always provided the data forms I needed to process or display were already designed into the database. I know that some think of me as merely a bland and boring finance systems auditor. But to me, being the master of the spreadsheet was merely my outward display to the world, to be re-skinned as soon as I found a better visual designer.

But I have begun to doubt. I can't help but think that if the presentation layer defines how I react to and treat other people, and is my only interface to the real world - whatever that means - then is my entire personality stack upside down? Have I prized the pristine nature of my inmost thoughts and neglected my W3C accessibility and webservice error handling? When people think that I have something wrong with me - is it possible that it's not just because they handle the Javascript badly? Maybe - in short - the way that I am rendered is more important than the way I am stored?

It is, I am sure you will agree, a disturbing thought. But I exempt my interactions with the Archdruid from these ponderings. Whatever my own problems may be, that's one personality that's still running IE6.