Writes Joshua Rothman in "Are You the Same Person You Used to Be? Researchers have studied how much of our personality is set from childhood, but what you’re like isn’t who you are" (the internal quotes are from Galen Strawson).
"Whether you perceive stasis or segmentation is almost an ideological question. To be changeable is to be unpredictable and free; it’s to be not just the protagonist of your life story but the author of its plot. In some cases, it means embracing a drama of vulnerability, decision, and transformation; it may also involve a refusal to accept the finitude that’s the flip side of individuality. The alternative perspective—that you’ve always been who you are—bears values, too.... The same me, however altered, absorbed it all and did it all. This outlook also involves a declaration of independence—independence not from one’s past self and circumstances but from the power of circumstances and the choices we make to give meaning to our lives. Dividers tell the story of how they’ve renovated their houses, becoming architects along the way. Continuers tell the story of an august property that will remain itself regardless of what gets built."
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I blogged a different quote from this article back in October, here, but I was drawn back to it this morning when I was out running and it came up on Audm — because I'd stopped in the middle of it — after something else ended.
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I suggest following up with a post on identical twin research and contemporary genetics. The notion of fixed, rigid personalities is a strawman that's been attacked again and again since the 1950s and 1960s. But there's a lot of hardwired nature and stability in us all.
Everything from postmodernism to social construction to Wokeness follows from putting a heavy or one-sided emphasis on change, instability, and the potential to set one's own destiny (vs. biology / nature / constrained science). The notion of change cheers activists and creative types, but doesn't provide a complete perspective on human choices, life decisions, and probabilities.
"Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it."
LOL. What you are like is pretty much exactly what you are by definition.
I am pretty much the same person I was at 18 (38 years ago), just wiser is all. I made a lot of mistakes that I wouldn't make if I could do it all over again, but you don't get to do it all over again, so I don't dwell on it.
The progressive clash of reality with handmade tales is a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, social dissonance, and queer trials.
I'm looking for a solution of the 32x32 Costas array problem. This consists mostly of keeping my laptops running but no narrative.
This sounds like UPBS*.
*My coinage: acronym for Ultra-Pretentious B***S***
The Significance of the Passage of Time ...
When you think about it there is Great Significance to the Passage of Time ...
I assume you're listening to it as an audiobook. Reading, the words are very cumbersome. The quote doesn't scan well. The narrator must be good. As someone who likes to read aloud, I definitely wouldn't want to tackle that paragraph.
Was the person responding to the news Elvis died the same person responding to the news Lennon was murdered?
Hear podcast "Slightly salty deep bite"
Proust had a lot to say about how we see different aspects of people at different points in our lives.
Is that because they change, or because we come to see who they really are, or because circumstances change, or because we change, or because we never see who they really are?
You'd have to get someone who did more than hear the abridged version on audiobook to answer that question.
After many decades, life can beat you up physically and psychically.
One can only make so many adjustments...
I recently wrote a short essay for my friends and family about how you not only are not the same person you were when you were younger, you are not the same person today to each person you interact with. In other words, every person you interact with views you differently from every other person, and all of those are different from your personal perception, and all of these perspectives are valid.
Everyone is many people.
While top-down scripting/planning has it risks, an unsteered "what does my context demand of me to avoid pain" mind, even a clever one, is defective. (I consider myself in the partly defective category)
According to modern millennial moneyball neuroscience, we are meat puppets shaped by our generics we inherent from our ancestors and the environment we've been shaped by along the way. But Dan is right, we each play a number of different characters depending on the audience and environmental situation. If that's too much to adsorb into your beta monotheistic operating system, fortunately G_d blessed you people with denial so you can invent a single "I" character and keep telling oneself you have always been that...
More Walden Pond philosophy:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
Paul Simon "Capeman" was about not being the same person and when you are or are not allowed to be a different person. The studio CD version of its "Trailways Bus" is superb by the way. Not so much the live youtube version.
Somebody put up the CD version of Trailways Bus Trailways Bus. The guy who was a murderer in his youth is finally released from prison and taking a trailways bus from NY to Arizona. Lyrics are good.
Paul Simon interview with Imus on what Capeman is about, its point
Simon: ..well I think it's a story, the facts of the story are riveting, born in poverty, grew up in the poor house in Puerto Rico, migrated to New York in the great Puerto Rican migration of the 40s and the 50s, prison system, politicized, radicalized, it's an American story, it's just not a real sunny story from a privileged or middle-class point of view..
Imus: ..it's not Grease then..
Simon: ..yeah it's not Grease..
Imus: ..it's 15 after the hour and we're talking with Paul Simon about his new musical the Capeman which opens on January 8th on Broadway, go ahead I'm sorry..
Simon: ..but back to the question of redemption or forgiveness, because Salvador Agron stated in interviews, that, now they said, well what would you say to the parents of one of the boys, they said how old are you now, he said I'm 32, they said well they would have a 32-year-old son, but they don't, so what would you say, so he said, well I would say that I'm not that person any more, who did that, that I've changed, that I'm, that I don't, that I've taken, I understand who I was and I've changed and that I'm another person now. So that answer is on one level is understandable and
on another level although understandable isn't satisfying. And the reason it's not satisfying is, it poses this question, changing your behavior after you do something that's terrible, is that the same thing as atonement? Is this begin to address the question of redemption, simply saying well I'm not that any more, I understand now, I was wild, I was an abused kid, I was 16 years old, I was furious, I came from a terrible background, and I was stoned the night that I did it, and I was in the height of adolescence, and I was stupid, and I'm not, now. Is that enough. Well I think a lot of people want to say, I don't care, I don't care about that. I still feel that you, that's not enough for me. So now I begin to like [unintelligible] and I begin to address this question, well what is enough, or is there an enough, because I don't think that we're a society that believes in forgiveness, I mean it's a society that is supposed to be one of the most religious of all the countries on the planet, but I don't think people believe in redemption, or not to the degree to which people believe in religion, but that's what our religions tell us..
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