I Don't Care About This Post

Sometimes I wonder if I should care about things like the Michigan/Michigan State game.  Then I wonder why I'm wondering in the first place.  I wonder if, truly, all actions are the products of society, or if an independent "self" (as the existentialists call it.  The religious folks call it a "soul," and the scientists, I think, call it a "cognitive thought process") rules our thoughts.

Maybe it's a combination of both.  That's what I've always thought.  But if it is truly a combination of both, where can we draw the line?  How do we establish where we are individual and where we are a product of social forces?  And how permanent is the "self"?  How easily malleable is a "soul"?

I guess these questions all depend on circumstances, but I hate to leave an answer so vague.

Perhaps a person is first created as a "confluence of forces," as the post-modernists have told us.  We act like our parents until we realize they're losers (but only because our peers tell us they are), so we rebel until we realize they were right all along.  But then, how do we realize that, if everyone is pressuring us in different directions?  And how to people break free of the terrible torments of a parent's abuse?

Perhaps, in times of inner turmoil, we begin to question our sense of "self," our sense of identity.  Perhaps we are most vulnerable (Is vulnerable the right word for change?  Certainly vulnerable carries a negative connotation, and surely most growth of personality is positive) to change when we feel most vulnerable about who we are.

But still, this explanation doesn't cover every circumstance.  People are indefinitely changing, even when they don't feel vulnerable.


But I guess assuming "all or nothing" would be ignorant anyway.  I am not a politician.  Perhaps a "ramp" or exponential growth curve maps the relationship of personal vulnerability and malleability.  Perhaps the change of "self" can be predicted given the right data and equations.  Perhaps life is a scientifically solvable problem (not that life is a problem).

But I don't like to think that.  I like to think something a little more substantial than mathematics maps out human existence.

But perhaps that comes in with how we start questioning our beliefs.