Sometimes I get an urge to show what's within me, so that people could see me as I am – as if something wants to get out – to grasp on the "fundamental self". But the more I go introspecting, the more convinced I am that there is no such thing as fundamental self. It's easy to prove your own perception of yourself wrong if you just give it a go, most people won't though, because it's scary. It's easier to stay with the familiar. Familiarity is what appeals to us. That's one of the tricks used by commercials – when you hear a catchy song for about the 7th time, you start to like it – and the product – because it's familiar.
Unknown scares us, and there's a completely valid reason for that, when looking our history. If something wasn't familiar to us in the forest, there was a good chance to at least be very cautious about it. But I would say that in today's world "unknown" has never been as safe as it currently is. Well, it's still valid to be scared of unknown animals and things that you're going to eat, but modern life concerns usually are nothing alike to our hunting-gatherer ancestors – food in the store is 100% safe (excluding potential allergens), animals – in cities, where more and more people are living, confrontations with animals are extremely rare to non-existent.
So, nowadays, instead of animals, we are afraid of job interviews, moving to another city, running out of money, confrontations with unfamiliar faces, dentist, giving speeches, performing in front of audience, and the list goes on... Most of our fears are barely life-threatening, but it's a burden we have to deal with.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark.
Social exclusion though – I think that fear is what we and our ancestors share. And for them it was quite real; if you got banished from your tribe, you had only small chance to survive by yourself, I would imagine.
Anyway, fundamental self. I don't think that is anything but potential, because people around the world have many different kinds of customs, religions etc. that could be different just because you were born somewhere else than you were. Is there the right custom, the original one that all people have? I don't think so. So, is the fundamental human without any customs, rituals or habits? Sounds like an impossible being. Fundamental self wouldn't be but a lump of something abstract we would call "humanity", but even that is just our own invention defined by the norms of any given era. But these constructs, and the belief into them, is exactly what makes us "human".
All kinds of things we can attach to ourselves and call them "natural", "of order that is determined by the laws of Universe". But all of them – money, religion, institutions, capitalism, socialism, friendships – they only exist in our collective beliefs.
Honestly, I don't know where I'm going with this, so I'm not going to bore you anymore than is necessary. I hope you got something out of this random row of thought in the middle of a work day.