In summary, I do "things". I might make a cup of coffee, stroke the dog (this is not a euphemism, it is a real dog) or even decide to change my t-shirt. I know; I'm a crazy bastard. The part which worries me ever-so-slightly is that I really have no idea how to do any of those things. I can walk down stairs, but I don't know how to walk down stairs, as evidenced by the wobbling that happens if I think about it too hard. I know the basic components and I know how to want to do them enough that they end up happening, but the sheer volume of steps between my choices and the results are gaping chasms of mystery.
The electrical currents that fire the synapses that fire complex entanglements of nerves into action simply to grasp a few fingers around a cup handle are unfathomable to me. That's not even taking into account that in each of those synaptic firings there are whole processes that the cells must go through at the molecular level to allow any of it to happen. That's all before I've even boiled the kettle.
Just by reading this sentence your mind is doing millions of operations that, if it knew about them, would blow itself. It's hardly surprising that science is now revealing that the desire you feel to do things may not be your own; that your brain could have made the decision seconds in advance and sent it your way to perform; a super-villain / henchman relationship in which, I am afraid to say, you are most definitely the bitch. It has long been understood that the body is essentially a message-passing system between your mushy parts and the outside realm; a conduit allowing the real personality inside to operate in the bizarre landscape known as "the big room". Or to keep the explanation classy, like Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ask your grandparents.
But to think of the brain as a parasitic entity, instructing you to take certain actions while doing its own secretive work in the background, and to think that using the very organ whose motivation I am currently questioning, is quite a concern. What if it can hear you reading this? What if mine can hear what I'm writing? If I was it I'd be pretty annoyed at me right now. Perhaps you're not concerned? Then consider the possibility that you have been passed a message commanding you to dismiss it as a concern. True enough, it is enabling me to type all this but perhaps that's what it wants me to do. Am I giving it the excuse it needs?
After all, the mind's work is not always in one's best interest. Just take its well-established trend of playing terrible tricks, especially when it has some extra juice to play with while you are idly watching television, driving a well-known route, washing dishes or - deity help you - playing Angry Birds. Thoughts are constantly being formed and tumbled, covering all kinds of topics that you may not be interested in. But your brain is interested in them and that's really all that matters. Some of these thoughts will buoy to the surface, bringing with them a net benefit as you end up working through a problem or coming to a satisfying conclusion about an event in your life. Some of them, on the other hand, could send you crazy. These might mould themselves into dreams and get you while you sleep or simply pop into your head in the middle of a mundane task and make you analyse them in ways you never wanted to.
You are a captain, convinced he is at the helm when in fact he has been drugged, locked in a cupboard and is actually sitting in his own filth, happily navigating on a toy wheel.
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