Which is Your True Self?

[atanu]

How can you say that? :O

I stand defeated. ..... wait wait .... where is the squat?

 

[Kirran]

I stand defeated. ..... wait wait .... where is the squat?

It is squatting!

(NB that particular tiger cub was rescued by the post office in Mexico when it was found tranquilised in a parcel - it was OK, just needed to drink some water)

 

[atanu]

It is squatting!

(NB that particular tiger cub was rescued by the post office in Mexico when it was found tranquilised in a parcel - it was OK, just needed to drink some water)

It is such a cute child. Eyes are sad.

 

[Jumi]

I'm actually neither, but I'm not acting to be something I'm not. If I don't put that part of myself that others can see on the line, how can I improve? I would be forever stuck being what I thought I was.

To the question of someone suddenly displaying a negative side, I think most of us do realize that everyone has bad moments.

 

[Srivijaya]

I have only one 'self', and that is that I am Brahman.

Does Brahman agree with that?

 

[Sakeenah]

Suppose you're an easy going guy offline, but a real perkle-squatting tiger in online debates? Many people would say your perkle-squatting tiger self is your true self coming out, but is that so? How would you determine whether your easy going offline self wasn't your true self coming out but your perkle-squatting tiger self was? Why couldn't it be just the other way around?


On what basis do you decide what is your true self and what isn't?


BONUS QUESTION: Why do so many of us seem to assume that, when a person displays negative behavior, that's their true self -- even if they mostly display positive behavior?

Personally, I think people do have a true self -- in so far as people (and others) often enough recognize when they do something that is characteristic or not characteristic of them. I also think we each of us "contain multitudes" as Walt Whitman expressed it. We each of us have multiple selves that tend to vary with circumstances. And they can be contradictory. In some circumstances, we can be habitually generous. In some circumstances we can be habitually stingy. None of us, so far as I can see, are a consistent and coherent whole. Yet, for all that, there are still things we now and then do which are not characteristic of us in any sense. Such as when we are stingy in circumstances that we are normally generous in.

Interesting thread

I believe we have a true self, but like you said, each of us have multiple selves that tend to vary with circumstances. It's possible someone is easy going in one situation, and be the opposite in a different situation.

I think in the early days of the internet, our online behaviours did not reveal much about our offline personas. Each person on the internet could pick and decide which characteristics of themselves were shared with others, which created an environment where true thoughts and feelings(good and bad) could be expressed. So yes back in the day we could say our online personas were closer to our true selves.
Now our online activities are no longer separable from our real lives, but an important part of it. Social network has changed the role of the internet. On a lot of sites, a person’s offline identity is connected to their online actions( which isn't always a bad thing). I think for many people their online identity doesn't really reflects their true selves, but rather the person that they think friends, family and other people should see.
Hmm not sure if this make sense?

 

[Sakeenah]

How can you say that? :O

Awww

 

[Sakeenah]

My true self is everything, my worst and best self all in one. On any given day, that's who we really are, if we're honest.

This is very true.

 

[Araceli Cianna]

Online people don't have to filter their thoughts, so the 'real them' can come out, but I think the truth of the person really lies in the mix of both the internet persona and the real life persona.

 

[Fool]

Suppose you're an easy going guy offline, but a real perkle-squatting tiger in online debates? Many people would say your perkle-squatting tiger self is your true self coming out, but is that so? How would you determine whether your easy going offline self wasn't your true self coming out but your perkle-squatting tiger self was? Why couldn't it be just the other way around?

On what basis do you decide what is your true self and what isn't?


BONUS QUESTION: Why do so many of us seem to assume that, when a person displays negative behavior, that's their true self -- even if they mostly display positive behavior?



Personally, I think people do have a true self -- in so far as people (and others) often enough recognize when they do something that is characteristic or not characteristic of them. I also think we each of us "contain multitudes" as Walt Whitman expressed it. We each of us have multiple selves that tend to vary with circumstances. And they can be contradictory. In some circumstances, we can be habitually generous. In some circumstances we can be habitually stingy. None of us, so far as I can see, are a consistent and coherent whole. Yet, for all that, there are still things we now and then do which are not characteristic of us in any sense. Such as when we are stingy in circumstances that we are normally generous in.

The shadow, said celebrated Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung (see my prior post on A Dangerous Method), is the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality–-dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness. (See my prior posts on anger and greed.) Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow, the counterpoint to what Jung called the persona or conscious ego personality.

 

[PureX]

It's all us, online and off. We are defining ourselves through our circumstances. That's what life is for.

 

[crossfire]

Id, Ego, Superego, Shadow, Anima, Animus, Personas, Self archetype, etc, etc...: The throne remains empty.

 

[Aupmanyav]

There is no self called 'I' that is Brahman; there is only Brahman itself, appearing as the world; as you and I, just as there is only gold, appearing as the form of necklace. The problem we have is that we confuse form for things, where 'things' are empty of self-nature.

I am Brahman, 'you too are that' (Tat twam asi - Chandogya Upanishad), since every thing here is Brahman (Sarvam Khalu Idm Brahma - Mundaka Upanishad)) because 'What exists is one, there is no second' (Eko sad, Dwiteeyo nasti), no, no, no, not in the least (Nasti, Nasti, Na Nasti Kinchana). This I is totally, absolutely non-exclusive.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Does Brahman agree with that?

What do you mean by that? 'Do I agree with myself?'

 

[Willamena]

Your "true self" is what people will point at when their biases are confirmed.

 

[Thief]

The self that can be spoken is not the true self.

ARRGH!!!!!!!!!

 

[Thief]

Excellent.

no it wasn't....

your op offered a staging point (two actually)

so here you are.....on the stage, under the lights
and then later .....out and about doing other things

same guy?

yes you are

what you REALLY want to know is.......
are you the same guy suffering an event that has blindsided you
an event that will cost something.....of yourself or someone else

wanna look at the facet of sacrifice?

 

[Thief]

Never! My beloved cousin was a high school principal and a strict grammarian! She'd disown me from her grave if ever I was so ungrammatical as to capitalize the generic "god", or fail to capitalize the specific "God"! And if you knew her, the last thing you'd want is to be haunted from the grave by the ghost of a Latin teacher turned principal and born a grammarian!

would that be a capital 'b' for the word ....Boo!

 

[Mock Turtle]

My true self is being an impudent imp - you might have noticed - all the rest is just bluster from an over-confident nature - which is as unexpected at this time in my life as expecting to be correct in anything - but I am willing to admit defeat occasionally. Not that this happens often.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Suppose you're an easy going guy offline, but a real perkle-squatting tiger in online debates? Many people would say your perkle-squatting tiger self is your true self coming out, but is that so? How would you determine whether your easy going offline self wasn't your true self coming out but your perkle-squatting tiger self was? Why couldn't it be just the other way around?

On what basis do you decide what is your true self and what isn't?


BONUS QUESTION: Why do so many of us seem to assume that, when a person displays negative behavior, that's their true self -- even if they mostly display positive behavior?



Personally, I think people do have a true self -- in so far as people (and others) often enough recognize when they do something that is characteristic or not characteristic of them. I also think we each of us "contain multitudes" as Walt Whitman expressed it. We each of us have multiple selves that tend to vary with circumstances. And they can be contradictory. In some circumstances, we can be habitually generous. In some circumstances we can be habitually stingy. None of us, so far as I can see, are a consistent and coherent whole. Yet, for all that, there are still things we now and then do which are not characteristic of us in any sense. Such as when we are stingy in circumstances that we are normally generous in.

My true self is the observer. That part of me which displays behavior, offline or online, positive or negative, is the actor which is driven by the ego self.

That said, I don't really make a distinction between my online or offline behavior. I'm as much of an ***hat IRL as I am here.