Identity is what makes me who I am, as opposed to some other person. In the seventeenth century, English philosopher John Locke suggested a series of thought experiments that involved transplanting certain parts of the self, to find out what essentially defines us: Suppose that your next-door neighbor were in your body, and you were in hers. You suddenly had short blond hair, for example, and broad hips. Would you still be you? If so, then your body is not essential to your personal identity.
Now suppose that your characters were transposed. You took a lover and lied about it, or started going to church, neither of which is like you. Would you then be a different person? I don’t think so. You’d be the same person, acting in strange new ways.
But now suppose that your memories were transposed with your neighbor’s. You thought of your neighbor’s children as your own and remembered the day they were born and how that felt. They were asleep in maple beds that you remembered inheriting from your mother. At that point, I think, you would have become someone else.
So, to a certain extent, it’s your memories that make us who we are. For example, I am the person who remembers seeing a flock of white pelicans over Thompson Lake and the apple tree in the backyard of my house. And every time I notice something, every time something strikes me as important enough to store away in my memory, I add another piece to who I am. These memories and sense impressions of the landscape are the very substance of my self. In this way, I am – at the core of my being – made of the earth.
— from an interview with Kathleen Dean Moore.
Caterina.net 
“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
LikeLike
Ah, wonderful quote. Thanks for posting.
LikeLike
Hmm. I’m not feeling John Locke on this one. The older I get, the more embodied my sense of identity has become, the more aware I am of others bouncing their vibes off of this body. I also have a stronger sense of the fluidity of my identity, maybe because I have less compulsion to define or defend it. And as both research and my own random rude awakenings show, our memories are continually being revised in the remembering.
LikeLike
Curious who had the connection to make this comment. What is it about the memories of the person who originally posted this that made them post it. It surely has a personal connection, right?
LikeLike
Yes… but also, here’s an interesting perspective:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/amnesia-and-the-self-that-remains-when-memory-is-lost/266662/
LikeLike
on their new styles louis vuitton hlouis vuitton handbags replicabags replica events! Please provide a working email address in the form provided. One entry per
LikeLike