Thank you everyone who participated in class today. Thank you also to all of you playing at home, following Theory of LTC in your own time. Huge shoutout especially to Julie, for participating online and commenting on last week’s question!
This week’s focus question is:
What constitutes the self? What makes you, you?
Please leave a comment below with your answer. Don’t be afraid to respond to other people’s answers in your own.
Remember the two rules: Use your initials instead of your real name and enjoy the ride!
Here are a couple of quotes, one from someone we’ve looked at in class and one from someone we’ll look at soon to get you started.
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
– John Locke
… yet something, or an infonite number of things, die in each death- unless there is a universal memory, as the theosophists have conjectured. There was a day in time when the last eyes to see Christ were closed forever. The battle of Junin and the love of Helen died with the death of some one man. What will die with me when I die? What pathetic or frail form will the world lose?
– Jorge Luis Borges
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
I think the thing that actually constitutes me as me, is the past and future of what and who I am, have been and will be. I think it is all about history and future that makes you different from being someone else. Not one person has exactly the same historical past, or the same future as another person, which constitutes one person from another person, and what makes me who I am.
I believe that what makes you ‘You’ is your thought patterns, ethics and beliefs.
If you were ‘transported’ and the original you was destroyed, you would still be the same person. You would still have the same beliefs, morals and thought patterns.
The self is centered around the mind and the body is only a vessel to transport and care for the mind.
The self is a combination of the body, the mind and, depending on your beliefs, the “soul”. The mind is a channel of the soul, and the body is a channel of the mind, so it is impossible to have one without the other two. The self is not one of these on its own, as they cannot be separated, but a combination of them all. The soul is the “essence” of yourself; your beliefs and experiences. The mind is your consciousness, kind of like the soul’s minion. It controls the body which is essentially just a tool for the other two.
SO!
Your self is like a military base, kind of.The mind is the command center of the body, right? Right. But where are the commands coming from? The soul. So it comes from the soul, to the mind, then to the body.
The self is a consciousness. A consciousness formed by amassing experiences. Influence by consciousnesses surrounding it. A consciousness that remains itself regardless of vessel. A form through which the world is experienced, unique to each individual, developed over time.
I am my mind, body and soul combined and am governed by my mind’s thoughts, my soul’s morals and work within the perimeters of my body. I am a conscience which is in a physical vessel and I am me because I think that I am myself. The past, present and future of myself are all different “me’s” although all of these “me’s” make up my person.
The soul creates the minds way of thinking through time and experience. the body is the vessel which holds both the mind and soul. if you were cloned your original “scanned” self would be the real “you” and the clone would be someone close to you for a certain amount of time. then you will split to two different people and “you” would still be the original “you” with your own soul, mind and fate/ destiny. The path that you travel through time, the single stream you travel with your mind soul and body is what makes you “you”.
Souls exist!! The Prestige is a good movie, the ending was really creepy. You die when the original body (with the soul) dies so the drowning himself each time was really sad. So, the soul constitutes the self and everything else just contributes to the soul, that’s what I think.
What makes me, me. My DNA from both of my parents, altered by their own experiences within the world and their ancestors experience in the physical world, the environment i was raised in and the nurturing i was given whilst growing up, the information I have had access to and taken in, I think of it as a sort of giant braid where each string (experience, information, DNA) starts somewhere different but makes its way into the whole rope-like braid (me), somewhere along it. It might not stay for the entire braid, it might stop and start again or not, but its made its way in and has influenced the look, strength, and general make up of the braid and so the outcome will be different from other braids depending on the strings available and started with.
What makes me, me?
My appearance? No.
My body and all biological aspects? No.
I believe that what makes me, me, is the subconscious. The ultimate decision making element within my mind, soul, and body. This subconscious may be influenced by my biology, my appearance, my experiences, my nurturing/nature of development, but in the end, this subconscious is me. It’s what I live every day by, and it determines my life. So that is what makes me, me. The condition of my subconscious.