The self doesn't exist...

[Azure Flame]

So here's a ted talk about the self.

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_baggini_is_there_a_real_you.html

This brings up several questions in my mind:

Do we actually choose who we want to be?

Or

Do we choose to shape ourselves into who we already are?

I think the video was basically just saying, we are a collection of processes. So in mbti terms, my "self" would only be Se Ti Ni Te Ne Fe Si Fi. (this is my personal function order).

So to me, in my life I've chosen to capitalize on my strengths but I don't work on my weaknesses all that much. To me, this really seems to be the only choice I have. When I try to be more Fi-Ne in behavior, I actually start getting neurotic and frustrated, which makes me believe I don't have much of a choice other than to be what my function order allows me to be.

Ideas?

 

[Lark]

Yeah but the suggestion as I understand it is that you are not even those traits which you are habituated to.

This is an out growth of behaviourism and cognitivism, also with a strong influence from so called meme science and cultural theories, we are only animals who will respond to stimuli, like any rat in a maze.

I reject the entire hypothesis, its reductive in extremis, I also believe that it will find a huge following among people who believe that it is the recognition by researchers of beliefs held dear by buddhism which is ill defined and adopted the western mind in my opinion. I've no idea how maladjusted and emotionally troubled you have to be to want to be divested of your self and memory altogether instead of simply being troubled by them or upset by them.

I cant treat any of these concepts as credible at all, there's a lot of evidence heaped up as validation for these theories, the new athiests hark from the same place, the opponents of depth psychology, analysis all hark from the same place too. There's social and personal consequences to all this too, the sort of individual and the sort of society which will emerge from embracing these theoies will look more and more like the one predicted by Aldous Huxley.

 

[En Gallop]

Yeah but the suggestion as I understand it is that you are not even those traits which you are habituated to.

This is an out growth of behaviourism and cognitivism, also with a strong influence from so called meme science and cultural theories, we are only animals who will respond to stimuli, like any rat in a maze.

I reject the entire hypothesis, its reductive in extremis, I also believe that it will find a huge following among people who believe that it is the recognition by researchers of beliefs held dear by buddhism which is ill defined and adopted the western mind in my opinion. I've no idea how maladjusted and emotionally troubled you have to be to want to be divested of your self and memory altogether instead of simply being troubled by them or upset by them.

I cant treat any of these concepts as credible at all, there's a lot of evidence heaped up as validation for these theories, the new athiests hark from the same place, the opponents of depth psychology, analysis all hark from the same place too. There's social and personal consequences to all this too, the sort of individual and the sort of society which will emerge from embracing these theoies will look more and more like the one predicted by Aldous Huxley.

Good. There's nothing wrong with the society in Brave New World - except the savage reservation still existing...

 

[Lark]

Good. There's nothing wrong with the society in Brave New World - except the savage reservation still existing...

Well, we feel very differently about that book.

 

[En Gallop]

Well, we feel very differently about that book.

Feelings have nothing to do with it. It seems quite a logical way to run a society. A little too perfect to ever happen, however, as there is no corruption in the system (unlike 1984). Good book.

 

[Lark]

Feelings have nothing to do with it. It seems quite a logical way to run a society. A little too perfect to ever happen, however, as there is no corruption in the system (unlike 1984). Good book.

Its meant to be a dystopia, 1984 was wrote in some ways as a response to it because while Huxley's overlords buy off the population Orwell felt that violence would always be the means future elites would use to control the population at large, they are both hellish prospects.

Huxley wrote some other books Island, Ends and Means which were follow ups discussing how to avoid that state or alternatives to it.

 

[En Gallop]

Its meant to be a dystopia, 1984 was wrote in some ways as a response to it because while Huxley's overlords buy off the population Orwell felt that violence would always be the means future elites would use to control the population at large, they are both hellish prospects.

Huxley wrote some other books Island, Ends and Means which were follow ups discussing how to avoid that state or alternatives to it.

I've sent you a PM so we can continue the conversation there. Or you could start a new thread? I don't think it's that relevant to the OP lol.

 

[En Gallop]

Oops double post.

 

[roman67]

This seminar of Julian baggini is wonderful and create so many questions in your mind.

 

[zago]

If it's a TED talk it must be wrong.

 

[WALMART]

Then who's arthritis is this?

 

[Quinlan]

I think for good psychological health it is best to focus more on your preferences, for instance being the best ISFP you can be, rather than the best EISNFTJP you can be, the later is a recipe for frustration.

 

[Galena]

Riso and Hudson write this exact message to type fours in Wisdom of the Enneagram.

It's a good question. What I took from it is that each experience, choice, belief, gene, or other discrete building block of you puts its own little limits on the person you can become from there, but there is no single central entity within that sets all of your parameters.