Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The World Was Built With Interchangeable Parts

You think that you're fundamentally "you".

That even without three meals a day, the people around you and the things you've been exposed to, you would still be the same person with the same ideas, morals, values and attitude towards life.

But you wouldn't be.

You would be "them". The great "them" that seem so stupid and alien and far away in other countries.

And they're reading this right now, wondering if they could be you.

11 comments:

Miss B said...

mmmm...two small thoughts here...

(1) "they" don't have to be in far-off countries to seem completely alien and Other (and yes, even stupid sometimes, depending on the day and how much slaughtering of my finer impulses I've allowed to take place in any given moment)

(2) do you think that there is somehow a Self which exists entirely apart from your ideas, values, morals, and attitudes -- some minute and hidden and discrete thing, pocketed away in every tiniest cell, in the hollows and spaces in between; some "you" which exists entirely apart, even, from the you which can pose this question about it -- that might be the same, still, either way?

I don't know -- sometimes I sort of halfway wonder if I could be me...

(thanks for the email contact -- the next time I have something to say which is worth saying or worth hearing, it will be headed in your general direction)

Me said...

I think many people don't like the idea that they could be anyone but themselves, regardless of what's happened to them when often, we are who we are because of what happens to us.

The idea that I might not be "me" removes me from the center of the universe I've constructed for myself and means I'm just as important, in my own mind, as anyone else.

Which is a good thing.

aish. said...

*reads post*...damn! you got me!

Anonymous said...

this couldn't be more true. i want everyone, everywhere, anywhere, to read this...

Anonymous said...

I think I understand what you're saying and you're right. But this is the only me I've got right now, I can't change what's happened to me in the past and looking to the future only gives me anxiety.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, that's a really beautiful picture, where was it taken?

Anonymous said...

I wish you could know how much I thoroughly enjoy reading theses. I am not the person who you are hoping to find this but I still can identify with and feel connected to everything you say. I never close the page, and refresh it from time to time hoping for a new entry to fall in love with. thanks.

Anonymous said...

:) everyone is stupid, no exception.

Anonymous said...

how can someone help hoping that their someone they love has been secretly creating something so beautiful and poignant for them? even though I know this isn't for me, I wish in some small part of my heart it was.

shara said...

this is such an incredible thought. so many people like to think of themselves as so important and all knowing but if you take them out of their comfortable lives and put them in their next door neighbors shoes well see how they think then.

Anonymous said...

When I read this, I believed some of it to be true, but some of it conflicted with what I think. I do believe that as people, we are influenced by what is around us, and often our surroundings can change us. I do not believe, however, that the outside world determines the inside you and inside me. This would basically mean that every person who ever lived, lives, or will live is a blank sheet of paper to be written on by all the things around them. People are unique in the sense that they can act as sponges, but different people soak in different things in different ways. People are intrinsically unique; I am me. No one else in the entire world will ever be me, and that isn't because they are exposed to different things than I've been exposed to. It's because my mind, my heart, my soul, my fingerprint, my DNA, the way I think things, is what makes me who I am. We are not a page to be written on, we are the pens. We leave our marks on the earth, and on each other. That's why you'll hear people say things in all earnestness that you would never say, even if you had lived the exact life that they had. That's why there are people who hold beliefs that you would never even consider, no matter how many ways people attempted to make you believe. And that's why, when placed in identical situations, you will not always get the similar results and methods from people. And this is what makes the world the way it is. Rather than the world giving bits of itself for people to consume and become, it is people who make this world what it is. People are born into existence and they are already them, their surroundings just smooth out their rough edges.

Please don't get me wrong, I really love this blog, but when I read this entry, something inside me didn't agree with it. (I guess that's just some part of me, spreading itself onto the world.) I hope you don't get offended or anything, I just want to share my point of view on this topic.

Anonymous said...

But what if I enjoy being someone else?