What is constant is the taking things for granted, the good faith in doing so, the feeling of being right, of being basic, - where right and basic are understood to be equivalent designations - of inhabiting a self-evident reality assembled out of the elements most ready to hand; the framing is constant and not the actual contents chosen, which vary tremendously without our noticing it. The persona both understands and presents itself as a free response, as the always and only most reasonable response given the events as they appear to it, but it is unwilling or unable to question these events, to see them as factitious constructions of its own and of the collective imagination. To do so would apparently defeat its purpose. This is the source of much of the comedy and the tragedy of life, indeed of our incorrigible  presumption that when we express something we will be understood. Although others, with their evidently absurd presumptions may appear ridiculous, we are at the same time assured of a sympathetic response, since, being the same kind of egoities as us, they are sure to know the same vexations, to immediately feel their force. This is of course far from the case since those same others are also, with their histories and predispositions, events in our world as we are in theirs. The illusion of free will is thus equivalent to the basis of the persona and of its presumption of perfect self-expression. The robustness of the latter in the face of endless absurdities is understandable on the basis of its pragmatic advantages over its negation, and this contributes to the persistence of the former.