How to "define" yourself

[Rakshasa]

How do you define yourself?

This is a question I've been struggling with for a long time. How are you supposed to do it? On social networking sites? Forums? Resumes? Psychological evaluation? And merely to have a strong sense of self?

Are you supposed to define yourself by how you interact with others? Like "Condescending," or "sarcastic?" That seems petty you're more than your social self. Or are you only what others see? Would Einstein be a great man had no one learned of his brilliance?

How you are alone? Your emotional qualities? How you like to behave or think?

I've been thinking about this for a long time, however I've never posed the question to anyone else. Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[Black Rose]

engaging in any action tells how you something but contemplation no being really part of the environment could if thought of as being the inner life of what worth being aware of.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Why would you want to define yourself?

Seems restrictive to me.
Probably chafes.

 

[crippli]

Would Einstein be a great man had no one learned of his brilliance?

Yes, but only in his own mind. Or not, if he hated on himself. Not easy to say at this point. Perhaps something in the middle? Like in a war. One soldier isn't to be ignored. But a billion is to be feared. So global recognition will get you more leverage to what one likes to accomplish.


I think one defines oneself in relation to other organic material, normally. You could try to somehow monitor your subconsciousness, perhaps through drugs, or meditation.

Jung had some interesting ideas with the anima theory. It's something I think fit for a lot of people. If we compare with a house. This could be the foundation. Then more and more consciously one builds on this. A solid foundation, and you can build a fortress, right? Or just leave it as an open landscape. I think it's human nature to build, at some point. For security.

 

[Amagi82]

Why would you want to define yourself?

Seems restrictive to me.
Probably chafes.

Exactly what I was going to say.

I don't define myself- I am myself. Nobody knows the full scope of who I am- not even me.

 

[crippli]

Why would you want to define yourself?

Seems restrictive to me.
Probably chafes.

Exactly what I was going to say.

I don't define myself- I am myself. Nobody knows the full scope of who I am- not even me.

You are already partly defined, or fully as far as the government is concerned. Name, number, nationality, sex, medical records + more. With resources it probably wouldn't take much to profile you, relatively accurate, not full of course, but enough for them. So if you don't make an effort, what you do, is let others define you. Often after arbitrary set of rules.

Defining yourself I consider to be better. The alternative is it appears really only to let others define you, weather you like it or not. Or live in the woods.

I presume you are relatively comfortable with the basic definitions?

 

[Amagi82]

People can try to label me all they want- that doesn't really concern me. I am not my name, a number, nationality, etc. A much more accurate, but still incomplete way of defining an individual is through a sample of his/her DNA.

 

[crippli]

Yes. I agree. But I mean 'real' stuff. Like if I want to be a UK citizen. In a game I can be whoever, whatever. But the bastards who let people into the country, for them I am just a number. Letters on a paper. If I use another name they get really grumpy. I also did that with the police when asked to identify myself. So harsh reality have made me realize that other people have opinions too. And sometimes they^even think theirs count more then mine.

You will also have your track record that will identify you, if traceable. Of course DNA. But my argumentation is that everything identifies us. These posts we made here have solidified our identities a bit more.

 

[Amagi82]

It's been my experience that battling all the little things about governments that irritate you, by simple disobedience, is a fool's errand. They don't care. You'll sit in a boring-ass jail cell. It took me a while to realize I really had to change my strategy, and just pay lip-service to the bullshit.

 

[Words]

I'm just going to point to planck time since we, subjects, are experiential/temporal beings. Who you are at one irreducible point in time is the only time wherein you can "truly define" yourself. A set of time would require averaging, which means ignoring contradictions. With that limit in mind, we can remove[up to planck length] your environment and [if you want] your body, aside from your brain, as factors that define you. It takes at least that much in order to "truly define" temporal things.

I think the reason why people people are generally confused about concepts like this is because of the misconception that averaging a person's traits or averaging anything over time is enough in "defining" something. No, averaging means ignoring contradiction, and ignoring contradiction is ignoring truth and facing "uncertainty." There is uncertainty because there is change, and change can come at any rate. If you want to be hyper-openminded and brutally rational, then consider the idea that there is a different person, who is just very identical to you at this very irreducible moment in time, in every irreducible moment in time. This idea is quite opposite to the "don't restrict yourself" perspective, but it kind of produces the same effect.



But In order to truly answer this question, you'd have to question, "How do you define temporal objects general?" and in order to answer that needed question, you'd have to question "How do you define objects in general?" What does it mean to define anything?

My answer is that any presumed existing "thing" can be defined by looking at its distinct properties in relation to other presumed existing "things." Distinction is given by a state of inequality. If something is unequal to another, in any amount of inequality(1 or 1 million) or in any form or state(including perceived or non-perceived), then you have different, and therefore, identifiable objects. Relationship with other objects is important because a common mistake in grasping essence is incorrectly treating one object as two things and vice versa. Relationship, or "intrinsic relationship" rather, is also the basic 'element' of "intrinsic order." [oh man, that's really confusing, isn't it?]


The search for "the best way of defining an object" is something I don't have a clear answer yet. Though I'm confident that there exists a pattern of the sort of components and properties an object requires to be it's own object or to have "object-ness."

 

[Jennywocky]

To really complicate things, how you define yourself also defines something else about you. One can't escape some sort of definition; even active avoidance of definition is another act of definition.

 

[snafupants]

How do you define yourself?

This is a question I've been struggling with for a long time. How are you supposed to do it? On social networking sites? Forums? Resumes? Psychological evaluation? And merely to have a strong sense of self?

Are you supposed to define yourself by how you interact with others? Like "Condescending," or "sarcastic?" That seems petty you're more than your social self. Or are you only what others see? Would Einstein be a great man had no one learned of his brilliance?

How you are alone? Your emotional qualities? How you like to behave or think?

I've been thinking about this for a long time, however I've never posed the question to anyone else. Thanks in advance for your replies.

I always thought this Montaigne quote was funny: “I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man." Funny in the sense that it's deceptively ironic and deliciously sarcastic.

On a surface level most humans are similar, in their wants, needs, desires, hopes and aspirations. The closer you come to defining what human means, the more diversity in pocket areas presents itself. This explains why human intelligence and personality are such endearing interests.

That's a stimulating thought-experiment with Einstein. My answer, though, is a definitive yes. Four months ago my father asked if you could still be an intellectual if you didn't disseminate your ideas, I said the answer was a reserved yes because the term denotes a thinking process and repertory of knowledge and aptitude rather than fostering brilliance in others via spraying ideas around.

The caveat, I guess, is one can still be an intellectual with the foregoing criteria as long as one can express oneself when called upon to do so. Essentially and in practice intellectuals tend to consort with their kind, but not doing so is not a disqualifying factor. The inverse polemic would be like arguing Michael Jordan wasn't a great basketball player barring the NBA. Bullocks!

Someone could probably be glibly encapsulated by what s/he does on a daily basis. For instance, a bloke who perpetually steals is a crook; someone who enduringly/skillfully writes songs and books is creative, and so forth. I'm sort of thinking of the conclusion of Bellow's Seize the Day for material here.

For myself, I would say I'm sensitive, passionate, intelligent, high-strung yet paradoxically phlegmatic, vulnerable, indrawn and analytical. This probably won't garner girls lining up around the block, but there you have it. Ultimately, and this may sound stubbornly individualistic and solipsistic, you can define yourself however you see fit. You might be totally wrong, but it's carte blanche.

 

[Philosophyking87]

I say one should define themselves according to their own personal self-knowledge above all else. For instance, I may come off grumpy, "mean," rude (because I'm shy), excessively shy, and slightly intelligent to some people. But to myself, I "feel" like a philosopher. Every impulse and drive I have seems to compel me towards thinking, towards analyzing, towards abstraction, towards curiosity and speculation, and towards logical reasoning. I feel like a thinker, like a rational person, like someone scientific who values objective knowledge and certain technical aspects of life (such as electomagnitism and psychoanalytic psychology).

Moreover, a person can learn much about themselves, I find, from also asking, "Who do I relate to most?" With what sort of person do I feel I have the highest affinity? Why do I admire the people I admire? Is it because they share traits that I value? Because I also bear these traits, this outlook, this way of understanding life?

For me, the answers to these questions are "thinkers" of all sorts (and some musicians/designers, inventors). Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Socrates, Bertrand Russell, George Carlin, John Lennon, Mozart, Rene Descartes, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Isaac Asimov, and so on and so forth. To me, these are the people I feel "most like." They are the human beings I admire most, largely because I value their accomplishments. I think the way many of these people think (at least based on their written work/personal writings). I often enjoy the problems much of these people faces, or the creative abilities these people bore (even if on a much smaller scale).

Farmers, car mechanics, government officials (for the most part), police officers, etc., etc., etc. I don't feel anything like those types of people. I don't understand them. I don't get them. They are foreign to me.

So, I would answer the question, based on these two considerations, by saying that I define myself, personally, as a general thinker, a philosopher, a psychologically curious and artistically acute person interested in design and invention. And when I die, I would love for people to acknowledge this, such that I will have lived this life with some general "framework." That framework being a thinking person who engaged in/contributed to fields of art, science, and philosophy. Even if I don't do much, the least that can be said is that I was of this general temperament, and that it's who I was - or at least what I was interested in. I would hate to die with people thinking I was anything other than this, because it's who I am as far as I've come to understand myself through tons of such introspection.

It'd be interesting if a few of you guys could also ask yourselves these questions (if you haven't already) and see what sort of answers you can produce.

 

[snafupants]

I say one should define themselves according to their own personal self-knowledge above all else. For instance, I may come off grumpy, "mean," rude (because I'm shy), excessively shy, and slightly intelligent to some people. But to myself, I "feel" like a philosopher. Every impulse and drive I have seems to compel me towards thinking, towards analyzing, towards abstraction, towards curiosity and speculation, and towards logical reasoning. I feel like a thinker, like a rational person, like someone scientific who values objective knowledge and certain technical aspects of life (such as electomagnitism and psychoanalytic psychology).

Moreover, a person can learn much about themselves, I find, from also asking, "Who do I relate to most?" With what sort of person do I feel I have the highest affinity? Why do I admire the people I admire? Is it because they share traits that I value? Because I also bear these traits, this outlook, this way of understanding life?

For me, the answers to these questions are "thinkers" of all sorts (and some musicians/designers, inventors). Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Socrates, Bertrand Russell, George Carlin, John Lennon, Mozart, Rene Descartes, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Isaac Asimov, and so on and so forth. To me, these are the people I feel "most like." They are the human beings I admire most, largely because I value their accomplishments. I think the way many of these people think (at least based on their written work/personal writings). I often enjoy the problems much of these people faces, or the creative abilities these people bore (even if on a much smaller scale).

Farmers, car mechanics, government officials (for the most part), police officers, etc., etc., etc. I don't feel anything like those types of people. I don't understand them. I don't get them. They are foreign to me.

So, I would answer the question, based on these two considerations, by saying that I define myself, personally, as a general thinker, a philosopher, a psychologically curious and artistically acute person interested in design and invention. And when I die, I would love for people to acknowledge this, such that I will have lived this life with some general "framework." That framework being a thinking person who engaged in/contributed to fields of art, science, and philosophy. Even if I don't do much, the least that can be said is that I was of this general temperament, and that it's who I was - or at least what I was interested in. I would hate to die with people thinking I was anything other than this, because it's who I am as far as I've come to understand myself through tons of such introspection.

It'd be interesting if a few of you guys could also ask yourselves these questions (if you haven't already) and see what sort of answers you can produce.

You're a bona fide badass for including John among those more traditional philosophers. I match your John Lennon with a Frank Zappa. The Zappinator really deconstructed and questioned and rebelled against (often publicly) and even presciently outlined our modern world.

Yeah, I also feel an estrangement to most folks around me. My interests and impetuses are vastly disparate from television and sex and sports and fashion trends and herd-mind stuff; this forum is a far closer approximation of how my mind works. Even among intellectual peers, I usually have more intensity and curiosity and diversity of interests and expression than folks I consort with.

Most folks have a hidden desire to be taken seriously; I, however, do not care what the majority of the population thinks about me or what I produce. I guess that's where I may veer off from your paradigm. As an illustration, I often do kind things and I have no mind for appreciation or recognition. I do things because they fit my conception of how the world should operate.

 

[BigApplePi]

How do I define myself?

I start with my bodily sensations as a center and then forget about that. I define myself by how I interact both with myself and the outside world. It's an open, ever changing proposition but with a central bias.

 

[scorpiomover]

I found out a long time ago, that I'm like Duke Ellington, undefinable. You can try, and I'm actually pretty simple to understand, if you accept me as an abstract. But on a practical level, I'm a mess of contradictions.

 

[snafupants]

I found out a long time ago, that I'm like Duke Ellington, undefinable. You can try, and I'm actually pretty simple to understand, if you accept me as an abstract. But on a practical level, I'm a mess of contradictions.

Self analysis is muddied by vanity.

Think of a doctor being able to diagnose everyone properly but himself.

 

[Puffy]

I think defining yourself has the potential to be a destructive act. By defining yourself you are also negating from your self what you think you're not.

The thing is if you keep telling yourself you're "this" or "that" it becomes inscribed over time, and difficult to reverse. I always used to tell myself that I was "introverted" or "awkward"; I may be a bit clumsy socially and enjoy certain amounts of time to myself, but I found by using such a definition to assure myself of my difference I was also limiting my possibilities of being extraverted (which is handy from time to time.)

In my case I've found some of my own definitions to be fortresses to hide in, where I think definitions serve a social function. Even by describing ourselves as 'INTPs' here we're doing so as a means of identifying with this community. If I say "I like cerebral horror films" it's a signifier to other people that like cerebral horror films that we might have something in common.

hindsight: I guess 'definitions' are inherent. I think I said destructive because I've found that I've defined myself as something way past the point it was necessary, and that had negative effects on me. Keep your definitions up to date, I guess.

 

[SpaceYeti]

How do you define yourself?

This is a question I've been struggling with for a long time. How are you supposed to do it? On social networking sites? Forums? Resumes? Psychological evaluation? And merely to have a strong sense of self?

Are you supposed to define yourself by how you interact with others? Like "Condescending," or "sarcastic?" That seems petty you're more than your social self. Or are you only what others see? Would Einstein be a great man had no one learned of his brilliance?

How you are alone? Your emotional qualities? How you like to behave or think?

I've been thinking about this for a long time, however I've never posed the question to anyone else. Thanks in advance for your replies.

I define myself in many ways, generally dependent upon the context of the definition. If I shared every definition of me, then I would be constantly writing a book. Instead, I'll share something I notice; People who think labels are restrictive or somehow bad should just shut up forever, because every word is a label. I find them very useful. Blaming labels for people using them improperly is dumb. On the other hand, sticking a definition on yourself is fruitless. Why define yourself instead of simply being yourself? Share traits you have, gather knowledge as usual. If you simply be, you'll have no reason to define yourself, for what you are will be evident.

 

[Nibbler]

I used to try defining myself mostly from the motivation to figure it out for myself. My personality was off track for too long--you know, pitfalls from being in an extroverted, too-often sensing, feeling world.

Now I just define myself in one word: evolving

If I am asked to publicly define myself, then contemplative types will get it. And those are the only people that I care who get it. Sensing feelers will think they get it, but the cost/risk ratio is lower than trying to spell myself out in more terms than necessary.

I don't do this because I "hate labels". I don't hate labels. I think labels are often accurate. I do it because to me the word says it all and leaves me open to explore.

 

[Nibbler]

People who think labels are restrictive or somehow bad should just shut up forever, because every word is a label. I find them very useful. Blaming labels for people using them improperly is dumb.

Agreed about labels. I get frustrated when people throw out this nebulous sentiment about hating labels, because usually they go on to explain themselves with alternate labels. I wrote in another thread that I'm an atheist which is a label and it's true. Nothing weirder than an atheist who refuses to call themselves an atheist because of the "label".

"I hate labels" is modern trendy mental bullshit to avoid being accurate and to appear more unique than one really is.

 

[crippli]

"I hate labels" is modern trendy mental bullshit to avoid being accurate and to appear more unique than one really is.

No. It's just a statement that one hate labels.

 

[Nibbler]

No. It's just a statement that one hate labels.

In context, it's "I hate labels; I prefer (insert more labels)."

 

[crippli]

In context, it's "I hate labels; I prefer (insert more labels)."

That's not needed, as they have already labeled the emotion as hate, and expressing it comfortably.

It's probably expressed in context, so specifying what labeling it is they hate is unnecessary, and corners must be cut due to inefficiency in English language.

But I get it. It's similar to people expressing that they would like to die, while breathing perfectly fine.

There is a bit of a mental disconnect. But "modern trendy mental bullshit to avoid being accurate and to appear more unique than one really is". Is a bit harsh don't you think?

You just witness the emotional chaos that can take hold on people. And a mental disconnect from ones action is valid I think, medically speaking. And more an indication of emotional turmoil then stupidity or dumbness.

 

[snafupants]

Labels tell me what I'm drinking. Anyway, I'm spiritual but not religious. So over it.

 

[scorpiomover]

Self analysis is muddied by vanity.

Think of a doctor being able to diagnose everyone properly but himself.

One reason why I also like to occasionally ask others' opinions of me. Many people think it's weird for me to rely so heavily on others' opinions of myself, when I should know for myself if I am acting correctly or not. I just see it as a good way to check for possible signs of self-delusion.