Why can't you change yourself? No matter what happens to

>>17680190

speak for yourself.

The "true self" is bullshit. There is nothing essential and unchanging about a person; people are molded by their environment and stimulus. Even if you were to discover who you "really are," that person is inevitably going to change a year, five years, ten years from now.

Knowing who you are is a day-to-day process of defining and re-defining what's important to you. It does not come as an epiphany.

>>17680232
Not OP but I agree.

I think we're constantly changing. It's just that so much of that change happens "under the hood" that it's imperceptible until X months/years have passed.

With that said, OP's point is that we're never not our self. We can't be anyone else because we're each one person. I think he's working an existential/metaphysical angle in his post.

People have gotten electro-shock therapy which wiped out much of their memories and left them more or less a blank slate. Consciousness is completely clean of any "personality," it is simply a thing that observes. All the experiences and memories and learned behaviors/characteristics, those are what you call the "self" and it's not necessarily a real, permanent thing. Talk genetic determination all you want, we learn behaviors from our parents, those around us, our environment. It can be unlearned, or replaced with different mechanisms, but that takes time and dedication. You can change yourself. maybe try LSD?

>>17680248
>With that said, OP's point is that we're never not our self. We can't be anyone else because we're each one person. I think he's working an existential/metaphysical angle in his post.

I'm bipolar, and I am definitely not always myself. It fucks with my sense of identity because I made decisions that I never would have made normally when I'm manic. There's no permanence of the thing I call myself because it can be erased and rewritten with craziness.