Say that minds were nodal points in one overarching 'mind-at-large', forming in and sustained under conditions of flow and multiple interaction. Then the so-called sense of separateness would be a nodal parameter that could vary on a scale from close to zero, giving a form of global consciousness compatible with a soft individuation, to a maximum of one which would correspond to a psychotic state of paranoia. In any local regime of such nodes there would be a distribution of this parameter, probably somewhat skewed towards the high end. This would be determined by conditions of contagion and reproducibility resulting in certain strongly supported optimal values, one or more norms or modes, stabilised by feedback effects for deviations from these; indeed driven into (slowly changing) local maxima of viability by the unforgiving hand of evolution. The point of this speculation is to try to understand why the ideal of overcoming or 'seeing through' separateness is so unattractive, at least on second view. Separateness has all the best songs, it favours the aesthetically rich over the veridical and the virtuous, even in its douleurs.  It is a case of “Le coeur a ses raisons que le raison ne connaît point.”