You can only ever be yourself. It's not that you should be yourself, it's that you must be yourself.

I will give you a hint: Leviticus and Romans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PXqVmaPG8

Oh goody! A guessing game!



I find all this talk of being true to yourself to be just so much philosophical, psychological and semantic rubbish.


@jonb:

Do you believe you have a "true self" ? What is it, how do you know about it, and why is being faithful to it of any instrumental utility, psychologically or practically.

I find talk of being "true to yourself" as nonsensical as the cult of self-esteem or the so-called "Laws of Attraction."

(November 13, 2012 at 7:05 pm)apophenia Wrote: @jonb:

Do you believe you have a "true self" ?

Yes, but I have no means of defining it. (Which is actually a very different answer from no.)

(November 13, 2012 at 7:20 pm)jonb Wrote:

(November 13, 2012 at 7:05 pm)apophenia Wrote: @jonb:

Do you believe you have a "true self" ?

Yes, but I have no means of defining it. (Which is actually a very different answer from no.)

When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT8t5BWniFE

I can see a cloud, but it is impossible to define where its edges are; does that mean it is not there?

(November 12, 2012 at 9:23 pm)Gooders1002 Wrote: There are parts of myself I want to suppress (nothing illegal, well in the first world anyway). Mostly to encourage other parts of me to grow but also to blend in and be Normal (at least forgettable in the street). Can anybody help? (No religious bullshit please, that does not work).

What are you trying to suppress? Pedophilia? Whatever it is, don't suppress it: find an avenue where it will hurt nobody.

(November 13, 2012 at 8:18 pm)jonb Wrote: I can see a cloud, but it is impossible to define where its edges are; does that mean it is not there?

Do you want a technical discussion of the philosophical fields of vagueness and mereology? That the boundary between two states cannot be rigorously defined both does not evade the fallacy of the beard nor prove that the self you would have us believe in is like the cloud. Does the self have vague boundaries? That seems like a partial definition in and of itself. Much of the past two years I've been studying the question of the nature of mind and self, from scientific, philosophical, and religious, primarily Buddhist, perspectives. I find your reply most unsatisfactory and the appeal to the sorites paradox simply an apologia of a clumsy and inchoate, and possibly false, notion.

You're using sophistry to evade the charge of having fuzzy and incoherent beliefs. Is this really who you are, at bottom?

Next thing you'll be dusting off the Ship Of Theseus paradox and grinning like the proverbial cat who swallowed the canary.

I take "be true to yourself" to mean: don't make a bad habit of pretending to feel or believe things that you don't actually feel or believe.

Now, that's how I interpret it personally but how am I supposed to know that that's the correct interpretation when it's so vaguely defined/ill defined?

Because on the face of it, yes, it's complete nonsense. We have to be ourselves by definition, so to advise people to be themselves or to be their "true" selves is silly nonsense unless it is clearly explained what is actually meant by such a rather weird piece of a "advice". To simply throw it around as if it actually means anything and that people should automatically know what you are talking about despite its vagueness and seemingly tautological redundancy, or its nonsensical idea that the "true self" is different to the "self" - is a mistake in my view.