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user-inactivated  ·  2680 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: You Are Not Your Mind

The more I hear about it, the more I come to the conclusion that there's no coherent, objective "you". What seems most obvious to us a unit of human soul is, in fact, a series of ever-changing patterns. You're not the person you were five years ago; not the person you were even an hour ago.

And yet, "you" isn't entirely plastic as such a view would suggest. We can't will a 180 from an introvert to an extrovert, or from conservative to liberal. We can come close to embodying those ideas but will never be comfortable with being them as much as "native-born" such people are.

From what I gather, the answer to the nature of "you" lives in the crossing of genetic characteristics (what is entirely innate to us) and the patterns we've absorbed throughout our lives (what is learned into us).