A thought about identity

[pandora_parrot]

Identity.

The definition of which I am.

What if what I am cannot be defined in the moment? Perhaps "I" am the sum total of who I aspire to be, who I am becoming, and who I've been.

Perhaps identity is the convergence of past and future into the present.

Comments

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

Neuroscience has located an area of the brain which is responsible for conscious awareness of self. (The medial prefrontal cortex, I believe, though I admit that I haven't read deeply in this area.) It organizes memories and experiences as being "about me," and does not activate when thinking about other people.

This would suggest that one's sense of self and personal identity are a web of feelings, ideas, and experiences that are knitted into a consciously apprehensible whole by the actions of this area.

So, well, yeah.

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

Heh. You've simply said, "Identity is over here."

My contemplation here is "Yes, but what is its composition? What feelings, ideas, and experiences feed into the definition of self?"

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

What feelings, ideas, and experiences feed into the definition of self?

All of them. If you don't want some of them, you have to work to root them out, after the fact. Even the contemplation of stuff that you don't consider part of "you," as by rejecting those ideas you are confirming a view of self that does not include them.

Of course, some have a stronger impact and more lasting effect than others. Individual variation and all.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So with well-placed use of a ball-peen hammer one could make tea-partiers into socialists? Hmmm..... :)

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

If only it were that easy...

[pouchedfox.livejournal.com]

I think of our lives as a big 4dimensional caterpillar that snakes through all the places ive been, constantly growing in different ways and i'm just a point along it - a slice of a moment

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

The most important thing Billy Pilgrim learned on Tralfamadore.

[veedub.livejournal.com]

i think we are everything we have ever been, but some parts may have moved downstairs to the subconscious, so we don't remember them. like putting unused clothes, books, old photographs, broken furniture and such down in the basement for storage, but not really getting rid of them.

...death is the cosmic Goodwill pickup.

[tarathene.livejournal.com]

Who we become in the future changes how we think about the past as well. We are eternally, recursively reshaping ourselves through our learning, our gathering of new knowledge to construct new processing methods for our past experiences.

[(Anonymous)]

there's two parts to identity i think. there's a global and an individual identity containing the processes that everything get's filtered through in determining the relationship to the individual, but only after it's first won the attention enough to provoke potential and achieve awareness of the relationship. but that's not all- because awareness of a relationship doesn't necessarily equal a cohesion that amounts to identity. things that are threatening to existence and self promotion - health,life, etc not only do not self identify but are contrasting and determined seperate from self. so i think identity is what is determined to promote existence of the organism.

[ellie-l.livejournal.com]

Wonderful questions. :)

I hope you find the answers you're looking for.