[MD] Ever redefining self

[Gene M]

For a while now I've defined the Self not as what a person is at any given
time, but as the sum of the changes they have undergone and are undergoing.

Self doesn't endure changs. Self is defined by those changes.

I think it's an interesting definition.

-Gene

On 7/11/06, Heather Perella <spiritualadirondack at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Gene,
>
>      Gene said:  "Take the detective, trying to
> re-create events passed on the clues available. They
> fit what knowledge they have together into a coherent
> and probable pattern, then work with that until some
> new information doesn't fit. Then they tear it down
> and re-organize it all over again. It's all about the
> patterns we put our information in."
>
>      Gene, this is the 'ever defining self'.  My wife
> is a history teacher, and she says in history
> interpretation changes history all the time.  In a
> time in history when many interpretations, by
> historians, are given for an event, the more
> interpretations the more probable the event did happen
> in such a such a way.  Then you have archaeology and
> its' interpretation of the same historic event, which
> could either support or disagree with such an event or
> any details in the event.  Then somebody comes along
> and finds a document from the time period that has a
> different interpretation of an event, such as the
> Judas papers found in Egypt in recent decades.  These
> Judas writings have such a unique bend on the times of
> Jesus, that any such analyzing of the event of Judas
> in relationship to Jesus stirs controversy.  Then
> science steps in when many question what evidence do
> we have that the Judas papers are more correct than
> the traditional perspective written in the books in
> the King James version of the Bible.  For science to
> be able to make these writings more highly probable
> than the King James version would be difficult indeed,
> and yet what if other documents surface, or even
> something else found in the dirt that changes this
> speculative event, more speculative by some than
> others.
>      What is speculative is the digging into the
> culture, thus, the beliefs, the norms, and values that
> people have from time to time, and any historian when
> looking into the past, yet, living in a different
> culture in the present, these historians have to wrap
> themselves in as much data and information of any past
> event more and more to include 'how would these people
> have viewed the world at the time?', 'how isolated or
> in touch with other cultures where these people?' and
> on and on.  What we know now is very different from
> what people in past knew, and no matter how correct or
> incorrect these people were, its' exactly how these
> people thought and explained the world, if that's what
> you want to know, that you have to except as fact for
> their time and place on this earth.
>      And then all changes in time, and to understand
> this 'self', that has to endure changes, and with the
> flood of information now a days then many changes does
> the 'self' endure and must try to settle with
> something static from time to time even thought
> tomorrow that static pattern could be deemed incorrect
> by the 'self' and all changes for the 'self' once
> again.  This is how we blindly walk in this world just
> doing and being at times and how hindsight, after
> jumping into the abyss, is so near and dear to us and
> how luck plays its' part from time to time, too.
> Thankfully, much of our basic survival skills have
> been given the term wisdom over time and passed down
> to us.  Yet, even what our parents have done, will not
> work now a days. and that pressure, like all new
> generations especially fastly innovated ones, has
> become such a fact of life, not in some cultures past,
> but it has in this culture.  So a historian must not
> know a past event well and all the complexities of it,
> but this culture, too, in order to know what
> information is of this culture and make boundaries as
> to not include something of this culture with a
> culture of the past.
>   So much goes into this 'ever redefining self'.
>
> Thanks,
> SA
>
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