silently_disintergrating_into_something_else so fucking lost and i watch from afar and wonder who i will become i wonder if i will ever know when i have finally arrived 020711 ... whitechocolatewalrus you are who you are and this can't be changed. 031228 ... sabbie i disagree entirly little one. you are forever changing evolving into something new, every single day you can change who you are someone famous once said "i am becoming" [and pats for mr reznor there] i don't think you'll ever arrive and be able to say "Finished! All Done! I am jsut the way i want me now, there is nothing left to change..." it is the journey that is the motivating force of life, not the destination i say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may [pats for mr durton] and pats for so_fucking_lost too. 031228 ... whitechocolatewalrus i wasn't meaning that your personality wouldn't change because i agree, it certainly does change. what i meant was that you can't change what has happened to you and what has happened to you defines who you are. 031228 ... misstree au contraire, what has happened to you is also constantly evolving, being added to, being seen in new lights. even memories shift and fade. 031228 ... misstree and what has happened to you only defines who you are in the way that chemical combinations define orange juice. 031228 ... sabbie ahh misstree, beat me to it :) the only thing i would add is that all you have experienced is only part of what goes in to making you up another part is how you chose to deal with it but the main bit is the person you have decided on who you chose to be 031228 ... x i_am_becoming 031228 ... misstree beautifully put, sabbie. you're wonderful fun to pounce concepts with. 031228 ... whitechocolatewalrus haha, okay, i may have changed my mind slightly, but i still stick with a bit of what i originally thought. of course you evolve almost daily but whatever happens to you and how your thinking changes and what you think changes and if your opinions change and if your personality changes, you are still you. you have the same body, the same face the same encasement. you are still you, with the same name, despite whether everything else has changed. so what i am trying to say is that i agree with and that i agree with me. i think. 031229 ... whitechocolatewalrus oops, i forgot a you in there 031229 ... misstree where is this elusive "you" you speak of? if every aspect of your personality were mapped into a computer, perfect replica, would that be you? what if it were a transfer rather than replica? if the various intact soul afterlife theories are correct, is that still you? if you lose all your memories, still you? forget your name, forget everything about yourself including your personality? and what if that happened and *then* you were transferred? replicated? is "you" an id number stamped somewhere on body or soul, and if so, could you show me where it is? pelase don't take this as me being snide, for once i'm not. 031229 ... unhinged i have chosen to be sober now finally full_but_empty and i come back to all of it glittering_dead_breaths shimmer_and_rot have_you_ever_died but still silently wandered padding down the bare and wicked road i come back to all of it unchanged and it is dead to me now that i am full_but_empty a satisfied loner in an empty strange land 031229 ... Whitechocolatewalrus i understand you're not being snide. for once, i have strong feelings about this and so do you so it doesn't matter, even if you were being snide. If every aspect of me were mapped into a computer, it wouldn't be me because computers can't think and change without someone controlling it. I am not saying that people don't change and that you can't change yourself. I am just saying, that even if you change yourself, you are still you. It doesn't matter whether that you is differen't from the previous you. I control myself and can cause myself to change. But even when I do change, I am still me, I am still thinking in the same brain. It doesn't matter if I don't know my name, or whether I have forgotten everything about myself, I still think in my brain, no one elses. I am still me. I don't know if I am making sense anymore, or if our argument is going anywhere, but this is how I feel. 031229 ... misstree so if your personality and memories were completely mapped onto a different brainmeat, would that still be you? i don't get snide when i'm honestly seeking insight, and this is a question i don't really know the answer to myself. 031229 ... whitechocolatewalrus hmm, i don't know. maybe you could map my personality and memories into a bird and we can try it out. 031229 ... whitechocolatewalrus wait. what would happen to my body? would there be two things, me and my personality/memories in my body, and me and my personality/memories in another body at the same time? or would there just be the new body? i don't know how this would help out my answer, but it might. i am going to have to ponder this a while. 031229 ... jim jones into the kool-aid? 031229 ... Habitual Perceiver #314 into vast oblivion ... habitual reality is so limited 031229 ... mekeria All this talk of evolution, and divintiy of humanity... "I've arrived", is a well-known statement of wealth, that has little to do with evolution, and everything to do with material acquisition. With this as a goal, we can't evolve. It's wonderful you equate arrival with evolution as a species. Perhaps someday, those who truly have 'arrived' will appreciate that, and cease to define themselves, and others, by their material status. 031230 ... mekeria All this talk of evolution, and divintiy of humanity... "I've arrived", is a well-known statement of wealth, that has little to do with evolution, and everything to do with material acquisition. With this as a goal, we can't evolve. It's wonderful you equate arrival with evolution as a species. Perhaps someday, those who truly have 'arrived' will appreciate that, and cease to define themselves, and others, by their material status. 031230 ... Death of a Rose seems you've got two heads or at least two clicky fingers. 031231 ... oldephebe yeah Our lives are constantly under the tutledge of external events and the desperate craven flight into ourselves, the inner sanctum of soul can be a harbor or it can be round after round of a mind masticating itself to pieces. We are not frozen in amber like the proverbial archeological artifact. 040125 ... sabbie ok, so i choose to step up to bat once again. mekeria, you say: "I've arrived", is a well-known statement of wealth, that has little to do with evolution, and everything to do with material acquisition." ok, so that's what you equate the term 'i've arrived' with. cool, ok, a little weird from where i'm standing, but hey, everyone has their own interpertations of stuff. but it's hardly the ONLY meaning of that phrase. i went on holiday a few weeks ago, and when we drove up to the house my niece came bounding out of the front door shouting "YOU'VE ARRIVED!!!" and i'm pretty sure she wasn't talking about my "material acquisition"s. hell, i'd borrowed a fucking car to get there. you have you're own ideas about phrases and words. cool. all good. however, it makes the world quite pleasent to remember that other people do too. 040125 ... whitechocolatewalrus "so if your personality and memories were completely mapped onto a different brainmeat, would that still be you" no, it would not still be me. if the different brainmeat existed at the same time as i existed, at the time of creation, we might be the same, but a millisecond after the creation, we would be different because we would experience different things and environments, and even if we encountered exactly the same experiences and environments, we have the ability to make different decisions and build different ideas about the experiences and environments. due to this potential difference, the ability to be different, we can not be and are not the same. 050209 what's it to you? who go blather from