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ProudKingbooker t1_jdx37dk wrote

Reply to comment by maniacleruler in Paradoxically, what makes you unique is your relation to other people. The more robustly we try to identify who we are, the more we become embedded in all others. by IAI_Admin

Exactly.

The people we love change us. When they leave, they don't really leave as the live within us through the actions and quirks that we pick up from them.

I think it's a beautiful thing and something to be embraced. I hope everything goes well for you.

I'm sending hugs your way!

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throwaway901617 t1_jdxr4k6 wrote

There's a profound point here that people are afraid of being forgotten, yet by this very analogy if we are largely the result of those we interact with "painting" us then there must exist an unbroken line of "paintings" back to the earliest social life forms.

Our.parents were "painted" by their loved ones including their parents, and the "paint" that they used in turn came from their own parents and friends, and so on.

So society in a sense is the buildup of "paint" across the ages creating certain patterns.

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BenjaminHamnett t1_je21c5r wrote

But then it goes back to what the other commenter said about the environment inducing thoughts

What we learn from others is mimetic. One definition of culture is simply how people adjust to fit their environments. So being “painted” is really imitating what we feel other people are doing right.

I feel very much like a vessel of memes and behaviors I adopted from other people who figured things out. Unfortunately I have a lot of junk wiring from society indoctrinating me in bullshit I can deconstruct with reason, but then you forget and drift back toward convention

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