ot, brain work...

[manoeuver]

 

chiggitty-check yerself. babies and toddlers improve. doubt they're trying. they're sponges. the same goes for some teens and adults. imo, you'd have to purposely try to not improve.

wait, didn't you just say not all who strive improve?

 

comparing my own growth to my 19-month-old's growth over the last year, they're very different. hers was leaps and bounds and seemingly effortless. Mine was incremental, not as obvious, and {censored}ing painful.

[cdawg]

wait, didn't you just say not all who strive improve?

 

i was thinking about folks who are stuck in the same ol' patterns, and use them as a crutch out of comfort.

that's an external. a learned quality. denying new things is trying to not improve. sort of like this:"Mine was incremental, not as obvious, and {censored}ing painful."

 

that was improvement despite external factors. you don't seem to be the person i'm talking about. you purposely strive, albeit painful. i do too. i think most "intelligent" people do.

 

back on track, remove externals to get to the basics of humanity.

[RockStringBendr]

it means too much to you, time to let it go

[manoeuver]

back on track, remove externals to get to the basics of humanity.

I'd like to hear more specifics on this idea Chris. Externals being what- people, material goods, others' ideas?

[cdawg]

ok, keep in mind this isn't a "sound idea." it's my thought/idea. feel free to punch whatever hole you'd like. in fact, i'd welcome it.

 

my interest and study of philosophy and psychology began due to my depression. i was first treated when i was 16. as most know, with good psychotherapy, you delve into your own past, thoughts and being. it took me about ten years to recognize that i've had depressive thoughts and social anxiety as far back as the age of four. (i remember being in pre-school, sitting and looking through a hole in the wall for my mother to pick me up. i knew it was too early, in fact, i knew the highway i was watching was not the road my mother traveled. i sat quietly and sang made-up songs under my breath. i can still imagine the wind coming thru the hole.)

 

so, that's my recognition of my illness. separation anxiety, maybe. but judging my current bi-polar diagnosis, i doubt it. plus, i never fought going to school. did i dread it? sure. but i still went. keep in mind that there is a gray area with a lot of these illnesses.

 

now, when i speak of externals, i say eradicate them. they're too obvious. you have family, friends, tv, music, books, school, etc. they all aid in your progression, but you are something before any of that. when i think of my early childhood and compare it to my son's, i can't help to think that chopra's suggestion is faulty. a beginning and end to each part of life? definitively? i can see transitions, but not finalities.

 

i'm getting a bit derailed here. i have to learn to keep my statements short.

[cdawg]

seems to be a big focus on externals here, and in an effort to move away from them, i'll attempt to address them.

 

i keep saying externals are obvious. most can name a ton of them. but in my thoughts, i figure to recognize two types: hard and soft external influences.

 

examples of hard external influences would be:

advertising, cold war, politics, competitive sports, most workplaces, noisy places, fighting, etc.

 

not bad things, per se, basically things that are more aggressive in nature.

 

soft external influences:

discussions, nursing, spending time with family (assuming you love your family,) fishing, bird-watching, laughing with friends, etc.

 

now, you can add to each category, and there would be different examples in each category depending on your personality. hard vs. soft is NOT good vs. bad. in fact, there are positive and negatives to both. these are just influences.

 

now, lets move on.

[soundcreation]

 

ok, keep in mind this isn't a "sound idea." it's my thought/idea. feel free to punch whatever hole you'd like. in fact, i'd welcome it. my interest and study of philosophy and psychology began due to my depression. i was first treated when i was 16. as most know, with good psychotherapy, you delve into your own past, thoughts and being. it took me about ten years to recognize that i've had depressive thoughts and social anxiety as far back as the age of four. (i remember being in pre-school, sitting and looking through a hole in the wall for my mother to pick me up. i knew it was too early, in fact, i knew the highway i was watching was not the road my mother traveled. i sat quietly and sang made-up songs under my breath. i can still imagine the wind coming thru the hole.) so, that's my recognition of my illness. separation anxiety, maybe. but judging my current bi-polar diagnosis, i doubt it. plus, i never fought going to school. did i dread it? sure. but i still went. keep in mind that there is a gray area with a lot of these illnesses. now, when i speak of externals, i say eradicate them. they're too obvious. you have family, friends, tv, music, books, school, etc. they all aid in your progression, but you are something before any of that. when i think of my early childhood and compare it to my son's, i can't help to think that chopra's suggestion is faulty. a beginning and end to each part of life? definitively? i can see transitions, but not finalities. i'm getting a bit derailed here. i have to learn to keep my statements short.

 

 

 

but it's an impossible question because there is no way to eliminate all externals. The question of "are we something without external influence?" needs some parameters. If you literally mean "are we something if we were to exist in a vacuum?" Then the answer would basically be no...we wouldn't be anything. (yes we would be a mass of respiring cells and DNA; for those that want to be picky).

 

Take for example linguistics and language acquisition. Chomsky basically theorized (and I believe his is still the most widely agreed upon theory in the field) that we all come into the world pre programed to accept language input. Basically it's hardwired into our DNA. No specific language mind you. Just the ability to accept it. It's why you could take a white baby from the US and send it to china and it would learn mandarin perfectly.

 

From my (admittedly limited) study of psych, and biology I believe this to be true for nearly everything/skill we "acquire". We are hard wired to accept information and skills. But those skills only ever come externally. So really with out them we don't exist as much of anything except in a purely biological way.

 

Now to try to bring this back to the Chopra thing I suppose I can kind of understand what he is saying.

 

If he's implying that we literally become different beings, well, that's just nonsense. The 7 year cell regeneration thing is BS. Not all the bodies cells regenerate. And while memory is a very tricky thing, and quite unreliable, it's still good enough for people to know who they have been all their lives.

 

But if he was being more metaphorical then yeah...I'd agree. Because memories are so unreliable it's hard to know how much of your distant past is the true memory or just a vague picture filled in by old photos and other people's stories. I would love to see an experiment that used video to record some young kids during significant moments then lock it in a vault and when they turn 30 or 40 ask them to recount their memory of said event. Then pull out the video to see how accurate they are. My guess is generalities would be no problem but specifics would be pretty far off. I do think though that yes we do "leave" portions of our life behind for sure. And in that metaphorical sense we are different people.

[cdawg]

i know he was speaking metaphorically. i was just in disbelief of the idea that there are definitive beginnings and ends to points in our lives. "chapters," if you will. unless you retroactively make a conscious effort to make this distinction, how could there be?

 

you can have traumatic events, birthdays, etc, that mark specific dates or rites of passage, but these just stand out in your mind as bookmarks in your mind. they are NOT resounding determinations that change your basic being. this is why i'm attempting to move from external factors. they're just too messy.

 

i don't have the basic being worked out; that's why i'm discussing it.

 

sound, you're right about externals. human ones, anyway. unless you take a baby from the womb and raise it in a black box, we'll never know the outcome. but even the black box would be an external. my theory is, it would still be something. probably not at all pleasant, but something. i love chomsky, but child psych shows that dna determines certain developments. even in deprivation situations. the "black box" idea is pretty damn extreme, but i doubt there'd be nothing.

[JakeTheSnake]

If you want to read some more about "the self" like this, look into writings from Heraclitus, Locke, and Kant. I'm reading a book right now called Think by Blackburn as well (part of the coursework in my philosophy class), some pretty interesting stuff.

 

"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."

"Nothing endures but change."

 

both from Heraclitus

 

 

 

edit: maybe some writings from Parmenides as well for contrast

[JakeTheSnake]

 

sound, you're right about externals. human ones, anyway. unless you take a baby from the womb and raise it in a black box, we'll never know the outcome. but even the black box would be an external. my theory is, it would still be something. probably not at all pleasant, but something. i love chomsky, but child psych shows that dna determines certain developments. even in deprivation situations. the "black box" idea is pretty damn extreme, but i doubt there'd be nothing.

 

 

Even then, one still wouldn't be able to have control over the outcome. I'm not sure if that's what you're aiming for though.

[cdawg]

 

Even then, one still wouldn't be able to have control over the outcome. I'm not sure if that's what you're aiming for though.

 

 

no, it's more about determining the fabric of being, minus the external factors.

 

i was contemplating the idea that we are the same people that we were since birth. (aside from external factors.)

[JakeTheSnake]

Then physically, I would say we are not completely the same as at birth. Your DNA is your DNA, mine is mine, ad infinitum; so, in that regard, we don't change (rather, our DNA doesn't).

 

If we were exactly the same, physically, how then would growth be possible? But I still think I'm missing what you're going for.

[cdawg]

yep.

 

i'm speaking of, for lack of a better term, our personalities. let me see if i can use myself as an example.

 

say i was born with the innate sense of kindness. for the sake of argument, this is inborn. throughout my life, there were no external factors that interfered with this trait. you could, in theory, drop a point at any moment during my life and find my kindness intact, in the same way it was when i was born. a straight line of kindness from day one until now. same trait.

[JakeTheSnake]

Then without these "externals," there would be nothing to influence this sense of kindness: no experience. Blank slate.

 

Am I on the right track?

 

Because if that's the case, then yes, you would still be the same; however, you probably wouldn't have led much of a "life" up to that point due to the lack of external factors, good or bad. Just more of an "extension in space" kind of thing but applied to the mind.

[soundcreation]

 

yep. i'm speaking of, for lack of a better term, our personalities. let me see if i can use myself as an example. say i was born with the innate sense of kindness. for the sake of argument, this is inborn. throughout my life, there were no external factors that interfered with this trait. you could, in theory, drop a point at any moment during my life and find my kindness intact, in the same way it was when i was born. a straight line of kindness from day one until now. same trait.

 

 

It is true that some people could be born with stronger traits than others. And that those traits do "exist" in you. That's how evolution works. Favorable traits are selected for by nature. It's totally NON random.

 

But all those things like kindness, hostility, empathy, etc....they are a result of nurture. Unless how ever there is a brain chemical problem or whatever...like some sociopaths are born with an abnormality of the frontal lobe. But even there just having that abnormality would not guarantee one would turn out to be sociopath. Nurture can correct for it.

 

Your "kindness" trait is irrelevant (though yes it does exist) without some way to express it, and the only way to express it is through external influences. Further to that your "average" human is born with the capacity to show all different kinds of characteristics fairly equally. Hence the "acquisition" thing I was talking about earlier.

 

In short...no there is nothing uniquely "you" (aside from the code of your DNA) if you were to live in a vacuum. Even some slight differences in traits, like kindness, wouldn't be measurably different than anyone else.

[manoeuver]

yep. i'm speaking of, for lack of a better term, our personalities. let me see if i can use myself as an example. say i was born with the innate sense of kindness. for the sake of argument, this is inborn. throughout my life, there were no external factors that interfered with this trait. you could, in theory, drop a point at any moment during my life and find my kindness intact, in the same way it was when i was born. a straight line of kindness from day one until now. same trait.

I don't think it works that way. People are self aware and change themselves. If I do not have kindness and decide I want it (whether or not it's externally influenced) I can cultivate it and add it to my personality. It's not even nurture- that's self-directed choice.

[cdawg]

 

Then without these "externals," there would be nothing to influence this sense of kindness: no experience. Blank slate. Am I on the right track? Because if that's the case, then yes, you would still be the same; however, you probably wouldn't have led much of a "life" up to that point due to the lack of external factors, good or bad. Just more of an "extension in space" kind of thing but applied to the mind.

 

 

*facepalm* you're focusing on the externals. that's not my point.

 

i'm trying to ignore them, for my argument. thus, my example. i'm trying to say, there is an underlying "thing" that makes you, you. it will never go away, and will, most likely, will not be affected by externals. (barring some horribly tragic brain injury.)

[cdawg]

The "fabric of being" cannot be determined without the external factors though.

 

true. it's just a theory.

 

 

 

But all those things like kindness, hostility, empathy, etc....they are a result of nurture. Unless how ever there is a brain chemical problem or whatever...like some sociopaths are born with an abnormality of the frontal lobe. But even there just having that abnormality would not guarantee one would turn out to be sociopath. Nurture can correct for it.

 

i call bull{censored}. not even psychotherapy and drugs can correct for it, most of the time.

 

 

In short...no there is nothing uniquely "you" (aside from the code of your DNA) if you were to live in a vacuum. Even some slight differences in traits, like kindness, wouldn't be measurably different than anyone else.

 

 

and, i call bull{censored} on this. YOU CAN'T PROVE IT. it is supposed. we will never know, and it is egotistical for chomsky to make that jump about human nature.

[cdawg]

 

I don't think it works that way. People are self aware and change themselves. If I do not have kindness and decide I want it (whether or not it's externally influenced) I can cultivate it and add it to my personality. It's not even nurture- that's self-directed choice.

 

 

it was an attempt to explain myself to jake. a poor example, admittedly. that's why i said, "for the sake of arguement, this is inborn."

 

i'm just trying to get my point across, and i knew i'd get beaten-up about the externals!

 

i'm trying to grasp this myself!

 

how do you explain a baby's "personality??" my son sure has one, and did from a very young age.

 

 

 

 

tell me, why is it so easy to imagine a baby in a vacuum, but so difficult to think of removing externals, for the sake of consideration??

[nklarow]

There is no fabric of being without externals - this is a good point.

 

Externals shape our being, and are required to do so. This much is true.

 

So, basic conclusion is something to the effect of:

 

Externals ARE the fabric of being. Experience IS the basic essence of life. Without it/them, you have no life, and without a life you have no experiences to live upon, to shape you, so to me it seems pretty simple. There is no "basic" fabric of life, because it cannot exist without its basic component; the "externals" you keep mentioning.

 

Just my opinion.

[nklarow]

 

 

 

Because it's like trying to imagine and understand the size and shape of the universe... As humans, living in the 3rd dimension, we cannot ever truly grasp the true nature and workings of the universe... Same as your question. It is difficult, because... Without external factors, there is no life. We cannot live inside a vacuum, and also cannot live without externals. This is why it is so difficult to comprehend.

[nklarow]

With extreme emphasis on "Without externals, life ceases to exist." Take away basic "externals." Friends, family, technology, news, experiences, memories, etc... Now take away physicals... Dirt, rock, air, Earth... Now take away any remaining externals you may have, and what are you left with?

 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You cannot divide by zero.

[cdawg]

^ have you read ANY of the previous posts??

 

i'm sorry, i don't mean to be insulting. but i'm damn tired of arguing about externals. this is disrespectfully SO far off topic. i've kindly entertained this topic for bloody pages.

 

in an attempt to put this back on topic, i will try to restate:

 

what is your (the general "your") consideration about the progress of the self, or being, throughout one's life, in respect to what remains intact from birth to death? i think i'm basically the same person i've been since i was since i was three, at least. (this is as far back as i can remember.) through this deduction, i assume i was the same person from birth, as well.

 

judging from my interaction with, and observation of my son, i feel even more strongly about this.

 

thoughts??

[cdawg]

oh, yeah-- next person to make a redundant comment about externals without consideration gets a fork in the eye.

[nklarow]

I said what I said because I was making a point, BECAUSE I read all of the other posts - that the subject you're trying to discuss ISN'T POSSIBLE without including the externals, dude.

 

It's just not possible. You CANNOT break it down any further.

 

I get what you're trying to figure out, but don't you get it yet?