untitled

1. What effect does introspection have on personality?

2. Just because the hat fits is no reason to wear it.

3. Someone else is to blame. I blame the missing link.

4. What is the identity of an amnesiac?

5. What happens if a vegetarian is reincarnated as a cat?

6. Do you believe in individual identity because society tells you to?

7. Pick a tribe, any tribe.

8. The identity of a group is different from the identity of its members.

• The relationship between the individual and the group is like that between the aspects of a person and the person as a whole.

• But the group may speak with many voices simultaneously.

9. Identity is the name given to the differences between people.

• We do not say of a man 'He is the breathing type'.

• If you are the same as everyone around you, do you have an identity?

• If there were only one person on Earth, what would their identity be?

10. If you were me, you would do as I do.

• If you were only in my position, you might act differently.

• But if you were me, you would do as I do.

11. To define yourself against something is to be defined by it.

• Can 'us' make sense without a 'them'?

• To be different for the sake of being different is also to be defined by convention.

• Even hatred of oppression will distort your features.

12. Whose opinion of you is right?

• If everyone agrees, are they right?

• Which is more valid: My image of you or your own?

• If neither, who are you?

13. Identity is defined by thoughts and actions.

• It is only known by actions.

• What does not speak, is not heard.

• Suppose a character trait is never exposed. Is it real?

• Do the things that only you know about yourself count?

14. We exist only in the moment.

• To live is to change, to change is to die.

• The movie picture looks solid although it is constantly redrawn.

• Cells die and are replaced. The physical matter of which you are made is gradually changing.

• If all of it changes, are you a new person?

• When your personality changes, does that mean the old you is dead?

• If so, is voluntary change equivalent to suicide?

• Do you owe anything to your future self?

15. Identity is a false generalisation.

• I think and behave differently in different circumstances. Therefore I am a different person in different circumstances.

• We extract identity from the patterns.

• Is what I do when I'm drunk the real me?

• Each of us is many people. That is why our actions can be contradictory.

• If I am consistently kind then I am a kind person.

• If I am only kind to Alice, then I am not a kind person.

• If there is only me and Alice, am I kind or not?

16. The conscious mind only thinks it is in control.

• We have all done things which afterwards we did not understand.

• We also do things which at the time we do not understand.

• We are only free to do as our natures dictate.

• The conscious mind is like a boat on the ocean.

• The currents and winds control the boat.

17. You are not responsible for your nature, but you will be held responsible anyway; that is the law.

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