Consciousness has densities. Would that be the right take on that? It’s like a saying I once read that we differ from God only in degree. Were the ephemerals at one time less ephemeral?
Semantics. Call it the happy trail or anything that indicates optimization. 
In what way? In that you’re not true to yourself, to others, a combination of both?
As delicate as a grain of air, water, earth and fire in a never-ending universe.
I don’t think so, but for practical purposes it doesn’t matter much.
OK, it might be semantics. But if I were to use ‘high road’ to describe my choice, it would mean I was choosing to be good, out of care for others (at least, also) while I choose out of practical concerns and primarily selfish ones.
Well, if I pop and let out emotion, I can feel guilty if the other person finds it hard.
If there are densities of consciousness then I think there would be degrees of ephemerality. In the marionette context, the marionette would be lighter or heavier. That would be a consideration for the marionettist. For example, you as the marionettist are keenly aware of when to ‘back off’, aware of the, “delicate stuff”. You are aware as you’ve noted of the varied sentiments your actions may elicit from others. Those are degrees of regard.
Practicality is not necessarily selfishness. Let’s say I’m climbing a large rock formation. I’ve got the equipment: ropes, pitons, climbing hammer, etc. Along the way I pass a free climber using nothing but his hands and feet. I wouldn’t feel selfish about that.
Would you feel guilty telling a friend who was a hard drug addict that it was killing him?
And on the other side of the coin, did you ever meet up with someone who expressed concern and regard for you in some manner only to later find out it was actually a disguised selfishness of some sort on their part? Would you hold off on telling them what dirtbags they were because they might find it hard?
Considerate round pegs, square guilt holes.
It’s possible.
Yes, and possibly. Though for self-care reasons.
By the looks of it it’s time to wrap this one up.
Who is the Marionettist? Who is the Marionette?
Best I can tell from the experiences which make one question the marionette/marionnetist arrangement, is that it’s either a split experienced by the individual, or that the marionnettist is an ‘other’.
Those in the absolute determinism camp will nod and say that the marionnette, for all its self-entitled individuality, is nothing more than an automaton with a snowball’s chance in hell of being a free agent. Laugh, cry, fart, it doesn’t matter, it’s all been programmed. Even your thoughts about free will have been scripted.
The free will contingent will say it’s a split (though some of the more rebellious will not even admit to such) caused by the individual’s capabilities in dealing with problematic experiential elements. You call the shots, but now and then you’re going to get hit by shots from elsewhere. From there it’s how you recuperate whether a bit more determined or a bit more shy.
I can see the merit of both views but neither seems particularly conclusive.
Absolute Determinism (AD) is one of those things that serves traditional and modern sensibilities in tandem: “It is written”, “It is destiny”, “It’s the will of God”, stuff that you would have never heard Bob Ross mention while painting ‘happy trees’.
Modernistically, many divest AD of it’s traditional referencing in favor of a more impersonal view, one where the Cosmos is so vast and its dimensions so unknown that assessments about its deterministic superiority are more speculation than actuality. It’s like a bubble in the middle of the Pacific Ocean regarding the ocean as absolute in its presence but it doesn’t realize that thousands of miles to the east is a continent which has wildly different opinions on the matter.
Relative determinism. Yes, that’s an easy way out but I would tweak it a bit and say it’s more a phasing through deterministic degrees. I’m not getting into a discussion with determinists here whether of absolute or of the 99 cents store variety. I’m just focusing on the marionette/marionettist arrangement.
Personally, I think the marionettist may be of an epigenetic character. I use that here not only in the sense of transgenerational inheritance, but also as transgenerational projection. Examine that connection and one begins to see the, shall we say, ‘marionettic’ aspects as described in the OP re child/adult combinations. The marionette is basically a ‘scout’ sent into the unknown by the marionettist. The marionette goes through its local phases of the child/adult combinations but in the larger picture the marionette is accruing information for future scouts. Whether the marionette becomes a marionettist is debatable. For all its ‘individuality’, once it exhausts its existential management it may simply rejoin the marionettist plurality from whence it came.
Looking at the above from a different direction, if the premise holds that humans evolved from single-celled animals, then the marionettist process has been in effect from around 3.5 billion years ago. Each scout accrued information about the ‘unknown’ which was then employed to the point where we as humans are now. Thus we can regard the M/M arrangement as variable in terms of ‘who is which’. For it to be strictly one or the other would seem out of kilter with the evolutionary/emergence impulse.
Two questions linger: How far back does the M/M plurality extend? Secondly, from ‘where’ did it come from previous to the 3.5 B years? Big questions that I will be thinking about now and then provided I’m not otherwise occupied with the ‘strings’?
That’s it for me. Just thought this aspect of it would be relevant overall to the OP.