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The peg
Stranger
Registered: 06/20/13
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Last seen: 8 months, 17 days
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Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it.
#21689318 - 05/17/15 04:01 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Bare with me I'm trying to think some things through and i'm not sure if it's all connected. (yes get naked then bear with me while I think)
Identity is performance. We recreate our identity with our actions constantly. This changes with the people we are around so it can be viewed as relative.
Our identity is also the product of our past, our memories. We run a narrative through them by which we come to who we are. They are not accurate but represent how we feel about ourselves. And how we feel about ourselves influences our performance of identity.
Here's the question. Would total amnesia of our memories wipe that narrative and identity? A clean slate if you were. So that how we perceive ourselves would be based on newly created memories. Or does our identity somehow rewrite physiology of the brain, so that connections we make in our brains remain before and after a total amnesia event? Would these influence our identity or just how we perceive the world?
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: The peg]
#21689343 - 05/17/15 04:18 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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If you have no memory then there is nothing to identify with to have an identity.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#21689540 - 05/17/15 06:44 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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"Memories, may be beautiful and yet What's too painful to remember We simply choose to forget" - BS
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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quinn
some kinda love


Registered: 01/02/10
Posts: 6,799
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: LunarEclipse]
#21689801 - 05/17/15 09:03 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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blindsophist?
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: The peg]
#21689889 - 05/17/15 09:40 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: If you have no memory then there is nothing to identify with to have an identity.
I'm assuming in this scenario it is a one-time accident that wiped previous memory while retaining ability to form new memory. In that case, I don't see why it couldn't be considered a new identity, but seeing as our identities were already relative and in flux is it really a new one or has it only changed drastically?
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: quinn]
#21690911 - 05/17/15 03:04 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
quinn said: blindsophist?
I may have underestimated you...
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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quinn
some kinda love


Registered: 01/02/10
Posts: 6,799
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: LunarEclipse]
#21691071 - 05/17/15 03:48 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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bush senior? bill shakespeare? then i googled bill shakespeare
it wasnt bill shakespeare
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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The peg
Stranger
Registered: 06/20/13
Posts: 83
Last seen: 8 months, 17 days
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: quinn]
#21692434 - 05/17/15 09:25 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Ok, so if identity can be made new what about emotions? As in, if someone was depressed and wanted to end it all, would wiping their memories adjust that emotion as well as identity? How much does identity play on emotion?
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usulpsychonaut


Registered: 05/12/08
Posts: 2,814
Loc: Northland, New Zealand.
Last seen: 2 years, 2 months
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: The peg]
#21701415 - 05/20/15 07:31 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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In the past I would latch onto an ideology and that would be my identity. I hope that I have moved passed this.
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Thaj
:-)

Registered: 04/30/15
Posts: 142
Last seen: 3 years, 8 months
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Re: Identity really. Questions i'm thinking about it. [Re: usulpsychonaut]
#21704229 - 05/20/15 09:15 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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I believe our real identity to be unique and unchangeable however we are on this planet having this temporary amnesia. Our identity is made of everything since our birth. Upon our death, we will see the collection of identities that we lived and ended during several lives but we got exit the matrix first.
-------------------- There is no real sin but lessons yet to be learned. ----------------------------------------------------
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DoggSnoop
Stranger


Registered: 04/26/15
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Re: Identity really. Questions I'm thinking about it. [Re: The peg]
#21706135 - 05/21/15 12:03 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
The peg said: Bare with me I'm trying to think some things through and I'm not sure if it's all connected. (yes get naked then bear with me while I think)
Identity is performance. We recreate our identity with our actions constantly. This changes with the people we are around so it can be viewed as relative.
Our identity is also the product of our past, our memories. We run a narrative through them by which we come to who we are. They are not accurate but represent how we feel about ourselves. And how we feel about ourselves influences our performance of identity.
Here's the question. Would total amnesia of our memories wipe that narrative and identity? A clean slate if you were. So that how we perceive ourselves would be based on newly created memories. Or does our identity somehow rewrite physiology of the brain, so that connections we make in our brains remain before and after a total amnesia event? Would these influence our identity or just how we perceive the world?
While I can see how one could, in some way, "recreate" identity with his actions - IE eating a chocolate cake because he likes chocolate cake; it's a part of him being represented - I don't think you can change your identity depending on the people that surround you. You could try to eat a chocolate cake, and seem to others as enjoying it, but if you don't like it, you just don't like it and it's not a part of you. Identity doesn't seem to me like something external.
I do belive our experiences and consequent memories play an important role in identity and I find quite interesting the example you put out of someone having complete, wiped out, amnesia. So to answer your question, I do belive that if one suffered from such, he's identity would be partial, if not totally, lost. Some old friend of his would still think of him as he was, but his perception of himself would have probably completely changed, and so his memories, emotions, etc. Not to say that he wouldn't again like the chocolate cake; he would just have a different set of beliefs that wouldn't correspond, on the total, to the "old he" and so he(new) wouldn't be he(old).
I hope I was clear enough and got to your point.
Anyway, if you care to explore a little bit more this topic you could check out some of the sessions on this course at Open Yale (the one's referring to personal identity specifically)
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once in a lifetime
sun child



Registered: 02/12/15
Posts: 1,807
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Re: Identity really. Questions I'm thinking about it. [Re: DoggSnoop]
#21706845 - 05/21/15 03:26 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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i like the book identity by mila kundera and the song identity by burning spear,
true identity of life is oneness with the universe, and there are unlimited, infinite variations on this, to quote sci-fi, infinite variety in infinite combinations.
there's a story of a man who when he was a child believed he was a dinosaur, but his parents and society told him he was not, and he became an accountant, lived his life, kinda felt something was missing, then as he grew into old age. . . he developed alzheimers, and then forget he wasn't a dinosaur; then in the sunlight on the sand, he knew he was a dinosaur again and was very joyful. . . just, feeling that sunlight, feeling that sand, felt so good on his dinosaur skin
-------------------- Innocent, Oldfield & Hegerland Julia Delaney, Bothy Band Rasta Girl, Sister Carol Genesis, Jorma K I Wish You Peace, Lawrence Laughing Do Your Thing, Moondog large . . music garden . . veryall peace them hiStarhouse - main Time Traveler's Guide
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The peg
Stranger
Registered: 06/20/13
Posts: 83
Last seen: 8 months, 17 days
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DoggSnoop do you not act differently around different people? In a sense that is an external performative identity. For me personally depending on situations I will act or be different. Meeting new people we put on a front and what not. There is a point most people experience that they can finally be comfortable in front of other people. Would this not be a different identity?
Similarly some other cultures have relative social roles and identities. I am the son of him the brother of him. I would call that an external identity. But as you said in that case an amnesia event would not change these at all, just their own perception as they would not know where they fit in.
Once in a lifetime, that story is similar to what got me thinking about this. My mother thinks she is bad at drawing because someone once told her she was. So she doesn't draw. But what if we forgot these negative things, could we move past them. They are only stored in our memories and they are not the most reliable things.
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DoggSnoop
Stranger


Registered: 04/26/15
Posts: 6
Last seen: 8 years, 5 months
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Re: Identity really. Questions I'm thinking about it. [Re: The peg]
#21708882 - 05/22/15 01:25 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
The peg said: DoggSnoop do you not act differently around different people? In a sense that is an external performative identity. For me personally depending on situations I will act or be different. Meeting new people we put on a front and what not. There is a point most people experience that they can finally be comfortable in front of other people. Would this not be a different identity?
Similarly some other cultures have relative social roles and identities. I am the son of him the brother of him. I would call that an external identity. But as you said in that case an amnesia event would not change these at all, just their own perception as they would not know where they fit in.
Once in a lifetime, that story is similar to what got me thinking about this. My mother thinks she is bad at drawing because someone once told her she was. So she doesn't draw. But what if we forgot these negative things, could we move past them. They are only stored in our memories and they are not the most reliable things.
Yes I think I probably act different sometimes around different people, but I don't see actions as equivalent to identity; they can represent in some way your beliefs, emotions, memories, etc but they are not your identity - what you are, in essence, doesn't change whether you are in England, China, Pakistan, Mars, Jupiter, ... On the cake again: even tho you can fake enjoying the cake to make others around accept you, (they are a group of cake lovers, who despise anyone who doesn't like them! ) if you don't actually enjoy it, you can't enjoy it! It's hard coded on you! Saying "he's my brother" or "he's my father" is just like saying "that's an olive tree"; something you use - language - to represent objects in the real world. But with that saying, you aren't actually saying much, if anything, about the thing itself. You could have 100 different names for that tree for 100 different countries/languages, but that wouldn't change what an olive tree is!
And about your mother, to quote Thoreau: "Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
I don't think you are actually talking about identity here, but perhaps I'm not understanding, and if so, my apologies.
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