Bertrand Russell in the Problems of Philosophy mentions: "It does not seem necessary to suppose that we are acquainted with a more or less permanent person, the same today as yesterday, but it does seem as though we must be acquainted with that thing, whatever its nature, which sees the sun and has acquaintance with sense data" This is central to something that I have been thinking about for a while now - how does one enforce change on an individual level? Not in some bs personal motivational level way, but more so because increasingly I have found that when I push the limits of my thinking and focus it very much seems to me like a new person takes posession. Particularly, I find myself iterating my versions increasingly faster on a weekly, daily and some times hourly basis. How does this happen and how do I move forward from this? This passage seems like the ideal way to integrate such iterations. The body that I am ofcourse is the same one that wakes up every day and sees the sun, but the mind is not because it can quite literally altered on a philosophical or biological and chemical level. {paradigm shifts (no, I dont use this because everyone does, but because Kuhn started it) or neuroplasticity, whatever you want to call it.} This seems like a nice thought, because the "Je" that is talked about then in "Je pense donc Je Suis" (Ignoring all the other crap from idealists) can change quite a bit. This has some weird moral implications then I guess, but I will like at other times focus on the progressive outlook. What this means is that you dont have to be at any point of time "there" mentally or physically. This is like eudaimonia being a state of activity and not a state of mind. That kind of an approach works beautifully because then the goal of "flourishing" life is one where we are constantly in this state of activity where "Je" is akin to the ship of Theseus, one that constantly undergoes changes so that it probably is not the "Je" that started out. This is quite inspiring in terms of everything that you could then achieve in one life, and in my opinion is the perfect ideal for a truly free will kind of approach towards what you can do. Maybe this is just some elitist fucked way of saying the journey matters more than the destination, or maybe this is something deeper that focuses on the individual rather than some abstract journey to the centre of the earth, only time will tell which one then.

Inspirations: Bertrand Russel, Aristotle, Descartes, Paul Graham, Plutarch.

First written 16th Oct, 12024 18:55.
Updated 16th Oct, 12024 18:56.