Does a "True Self" Exist?

[Salacious B. Crumb]

You don’t feel that your critical thinking skills, beliefs, or your actions define you more so, than your emotions? Everyone experiences joy, sadness, anger, etc. I lean more towards your critical thinking, beliefs, and your actions defining you more than your emotions. How do you feel about that?

Some people actually want to experience sadness or hold a grudge all the time. It seems to me that that urge to want to feel those emotions, says more about the person, than just the emotions being experienced themselves.

Aren't your emotions at the core of your critical thinking skills, beliefs and actions?

It’s arguable, but almost every single person on this planet feels those type of emotions, except for the most extreme sociopaths. I feel that how a person harnesses, conveys, or reacts to the emotions he/she experiences, says more about the person, than just the automatic emotional response caused by our brains experiencing our environment around us.

I’ll throw in another added example. Most people, when they lose a close family member that they truly care about, will become sad or devastated by such a traumatic incident in their life. One person, will still treat others around him/her kindly, but one person, may use this event to constantly guilt trip others around themselves or even treat them with disrespect, with no regard for the other person’s feelings. To me, that says more about the person, than the emotions experienced does. In your defense, I feel that there are instances where people can be judged upon their instinctive emotions. If, someone falls on the ground, and gets seriously hurt, and someone laughs, not because of the initial comedic mishap, but because the person is actually injured, then you have more of an idea what that person is about, when compared to the people that are trying to offer assistance. It seems, that both types can be used as a judge of character, but I’d defend that, more often than not, that how I define a person, would be a more efficient way to define someone, but I can see where you’re coming from.

EDIT: Maybe a better topic for the thread would have been, "What defines a human being?" or "What defines who we are?" (Not atoms or quarks) The video says that these aspects are our 'true selves', but, to me, these are good arguments for someone's character, that is subject to change over time.