
Originally Posted by
kallieb
Suggesting we're unique is an illusion we rely upon to soothe our sense of self-importance. It's all that self-actualisation crap the self-help gurus spoon-feed to our psyche while they line their pockets with our money.
I will have to courteously disagree. People who think along with this logic often run into its limitations. The individual self exists. Psychologists have tried for long to "predict" somebody's behavior, and even among the most powerful correlations, it is proven that they are just that: correlations without actual strict rules. What a buddhist monk would kill for, is probably very different from what a KKK member would kill for, even though they could both enjoy jasmine tea. Sure, psychological proof exists that the human believes what is best for his ego, and multiple experiments prove synthetic happiness, but both of those concepts lend credibility that to defend the self against psychological disarray, the unique self has to exist in the first place.
The true illusion is believing that we could all be stereotyped. It's not idealistic to think this way, in ways it's even scientific if one can acknowledge that every single one of us can be a miniature experiment of evolution at work, with extremely unique traits. We still don't know how the brain wires itself up at the very start, but we do know a lot about the different "traits" we are born with, so it's safe to assume (for now!) that every single one of us could be different with the way the brain wires itself up, even at such a fundamental level.
What you see in others as part of yourself, is nothing more than your social skills working with and against our common evolutionary beliefs in order to further the species as a collective. What you see in others as part of yourself, is a subset of the definition of "I" that we all share: the same palette of emotions, the same reasons to survive, and the same consciousness that drives it all. But you will never see your "self" some place else.
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