Identity dynamics
Who are you?
I’ve been consuming a lot of content on self transformation.
A lot of mental frameworks
A lot of actionable advice
A lot of people bragging about the things that they’ve seen, done or have.
Investing in yourself and others, affording nice things in life and how to spend it.
It’s all kinda messy in my notes so I want to spend some time to organise the things in my head.
Who you are is part physical and part conceptual.
I would classify them under Being, or what you are.
It’s a bit hard to isolate the essence of being a Human being, so it might be helpful to carve away at what isn’t.
Doing
I want to be a human being, not a human doing
-John Paul Larkin
What you do does not affect who you are. It is more likely that your actions arise from the person that you are. These comprise of your values, priorities, interests and personal qualities.
Some might attach their sense of self to their occupation. This way of quantifying who you are, runs into problems when you are not in that specific context.
Who you are is guides the actions of a human, not the other way round.
Doing good things doesn’t make you a good person, but a good person does good things.
Having
If you possess something but you can't give it away, then you don't possess it... it possesses you.
— Frank Sinatra
Just because it is an expression of who you are, doesn’t mean that it is who you are.
What you have can be seen to be a physical manifestation of your actions.
What you do will have consequences, and will result in a change in your material possessions.
By attaching who you are to physical objects, there’s a few issues with that.
Should a future or alien civilisation retrieve data from the Internet. It is very likely that they will conclude that Humans worship the Boxes in our hands.
Why?
It appears in a disproportionate number of our photographs. I’m talking about the glass and metal box that is most likely in your hand right now
Observations
To acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
― Marilyn vos Savant
How many times have you seen someone resting of their laurels of what they have done?
Bragging about the experiences that they have gone through.
Or people locked in the cage of their own narrative.
Those who blame what was done to them for the person that they are.
What I like about this quote from Marilyn is that I’m quoting her out of context.
There’s some other pieces of the puzzle, but you assumed that’s all you needed to know.
No I’m not going to tell you what the full picture is.
If what you are is what you see, hear, touch and consume.
You, my friend, are one of the NPCs
If you are incapable of filtering what goes into your body.
Be it information or nutrition,
There’s little difference between you and an animal.
Relations
Health isn’t wealth.
Health is a Being trait, whereas Wealth is a Having trait.
Sure, one leads to another but they sure ain’t the same thing.
Doing converts your Being into the Having.
Observing converts your Having into Being.
The optimal system has plenty of all these 4 since reality favours change.
As such your identity is made of all 4, always changing.
They’re all interconnected but distinct concepts.
TLDR
You are already dead to me if you’re too lazy to read, enjoy the rest of your NPC life.
